The story stopped being about me the moment I died.
Which is ludicrous when one considers there would be no story without me.
I thought he was joking at first, a bit of rough and tumble fun, meaty paws wrapping my slender neck and squeezing light, making my head swim a bit. I didn’t think to stop him, to cry out, not that there was much space for it.
I didn’t think he would do me like that until it was too late. I’m not sure he expected it either, though it must have been something he’d carried around with him for some time.
I remember the sound of the river growing louder until it filled my ears, until there was nothing beyond the feeling of slipping beneath the surface, drowning in the tall grass beside that familiar backdrop, rain gorged and indifferent.
There is only cold now, but it’s not a feeling per se. I don’t feel anything anymore. Not the wind in the grass that hides my paler by the day corpse, my blood having settled with gravity. Not the creatures which seek to assist with transference of energy, what used to be my life becoming something more and less simultaneously.
And I certainly feel no remorse for the look of fear on his face when he wakes in the dark to find my eyes, opaque and staring without seeing, my limbs cold and stiff along the length of his body, fingers curled and pale reaching for his throat.
His screams, calling others in the house, the sudden light proving that it was just a nightmare, I was never there.
The moisture on his sheets surely the sweat resulting of his subconscious panic, and not the cooling dew of the tall grass that grows by the river.
Yes, that must be it.
Photo by Chennawit Yulue
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