In droves they came so as to string her up by her retarded mentality.
She swung on long after her twitching had ceased, almost like it was a testament to the effort she'd put into dying.
I looked at her eyeballs and wondered whether any minute they or the sockets that held them might burst. How strange to see eyes so strained and know they observe nothing.
The way she fouled herself at the last, so common now since she'd lost her memory to that time. I refused to join the "Hurrahs" as they'd seen it trickle down first one leg then the other, pooling in a pile on the ground.
Flies feasted on semi-digested offerings, and those with limited senses of smell craned their necks for proof of what she'd told them she ate.
One or two pulled at her feet in order to salvage shoes or socks and to check for traces of sand that they said dwelt between her toes. Why they'd wasted clothing at all on one so wanton with her flesh bemused me as I sat and watched them dance a merry jig upon pronouncement of death. In time to the music they swigged and passed round home-rolled cigarettes, the air fairly reeking with hedonistic intent.
I see all this in a haze of red and wonder whether it's of their projection or the gauze my mind slips over itself in order to strain that which I view.
Some form of tribal dance manifests itself amongst all this mayhem and I see one after the other lift their partners by the throat, shake several times, then release. The one gripped smiling with this show of attention, this excuse for some liquid refreshment. On long into the night their revellry continues, the corpse like a mistle-toe to be kissed under in the hope of luck, hanging limp and lifeless, slowly bloating.
Dogs lap at the pool the flies had vacated when the air began to chill and the sky became dark. Barely a slither of moon tonight and the stars, if there were any, and we all know they just don't disappear, so far away as to be invisible.
Hand-held torches light the festivities and give the impression of sunbeams gone epileptic, jumping from here to there, then back to here, and off to where, and then gone off completely, saving themselves for something worth showing.
One of the hounds sniffs at the air scenting the source of it's rich meal, nose up-tilting, eyes skyward, piercing the night for more excreta on which to feast. It stills and I can just make out a tongue licking chops, bare fangs, and the steam that issues jet-like from it's nostrils. It leaps high, but not high enough. It's jaws snapping loudly and emptily still a good distance below toes once known to sand now dangling enticingly before the hungry horde.
How silent and sadistic my vigil?
Perhaps I should have intervened and protested some kind of humanity or shouted innocence in the face of the maddened crowd..
Maybe I could have swollen their number by one and turned them from a rabble to a gathering, my presence giving them some form of direction or stability.
It's the dogs that worry me inside, their domestication slipping with every drive of that tongue into the ever decreasing pool. I see them poise, hackles up, frame low and all teeth bared as one of the celebrants teeters on the brink of collapse. Several of the mindless cur leap ceaselessly at the feet as if hypnotised by their effort. To cease now would see them leave what is there staring them in the face, filling their nostrils with it's stench, turning their stomachs with hunger, obsessing their entire being, go to waste or become something for some-one else. Some soap for the beauticians, some hair for the wig-maker, a filling for the undertaker, breakfast for the worms.
It's the obscenity of this vision that holds me. The endless possibilities of mixing animal instincts with hunger, fired by a taste, with intoxication, all stirred by the knowledge that they survived longer that her.
I close my eyes and sleep takes me back to it's safety before Hell breaks loose and man starts to eat man, while dogs watch and feast on scraps. Those remaining are then ravaged by the need to remain blood-crazed and dominant, to the extent of collapse, which offers their canine audience the opportunity to consume at will.