Outsider by W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh

dogs. I’m not sure. I never remember. But sometimes I wake up in
the morning with brown stains on my jeans. I know it’s dried blood.
I know the colour. I know the smell. And I know what it means when
I wake up still wearing rumpled clothes.
     
    I wake up that morning with a weird taste on
my tongue. I keep my eyes closed for a little while longer, feeling
the heaviness of my brain. Drat. Another drunken night. Bright
light creeping through my eyelids. Then I know I am not at home
because my bedroom is as dark as a tomb. I’m laying on something as
springy as a sofa. Not comfy.
    The smell suddenly hits my nostrils, and my
brain translates. The tantalizing blood. Ripped flesh. A whiff of
decay, like rotten cherries in a too hot summer. Sweet and sour
Death. The buzzing of flies. My eyes swing open, meeting the
intense glare of the sun rushing through the French windows. I
blink. There is a garden outside. A fine garden. I can hear birds
joyfully chirping. I gyrate my neck to the left. Wow, bad kink
there. And I see. The tale-tell splashes on the white walls. I gasp
for oxygen. I am the only one who could have done that.
    I crunch my abdominal muscles and sit up. I
look again. It is no hallucination. It is real. Harsh reality. I
get up and my stiff legs take me to her corpse. The flies fly away
in sudden panic.
    I kneel down in the puddle of blood. I have
made quite a mess out of Sweet Jane’s body. I have broken a few
ribs, ripped the chest open, punctured the lungs, and stolen the
heart. Her clothes are in rags. I look around. So much blood and
pieces of bones thrown about. Shit. I am probably still digesting
the symbolic morsel. Her left leg is bent at an impossible angle
below the knee.
    I look at her face. Her blonde hair matted
and brown-looking now, spread in every possible direction. I can
see some clumps are missing. I guess the glistening skull where big
shreds of skin are gone. And her eyes, her gorgeous gray eyes. One
is still there, staring at me, not even accusing me, just staring
and wondering. The right socket is empty and blank. Great. I eat
eyes now. Deep cuts across both cheekbones, red and sticky. I
decide not to bet, but I know the nose is in pieces. Dry blood like
frozen rivers down both nostrils. Split lower lip.
    My dirty fingers slide gently down her neck.
There are purple marks across the still-skin-covered ropy tendons
and strong muscles. I feel for her Adam’s apple. It is crushed. I
let my fingers fall down by my knees, into the gooey puddle of
blood. How many pints of blood in a human body…….
    I feel tears pricking my eyes and fight them
back. I never wanted to kill her. What did I want then?
    I have no memory of what happened. I look
around. She has tried to defend herself. A glass coffee table is in
shards. Music magazines marred with blood lay in disorderly heaps.
A big flowerpot on its side, still spewing black soil and a
gigantic rubber plant. She was strong, with all the working-out she
used to do when she wasn’t bending over some plants in her green
garden or…….
     
    Sweet Jane’s warm and pulsating skin. A
golden shade of suntan. The life animating her muscles. The
determination and concentration in her fingers sliding along the
fretless bass, blonde hair falling over her face, hiding her
beautiful eyes. Sweet Jane, my shy muse…….
     
    I have to go, leave the “scene of the crime”
before anyone else turns up. I notice blood passing for messy brown
stains on my black jeans and T-shirt, but really blood-looking on
my skin. Where is the bathroom? I feel dizzy. Last night was the
first time ever Sweet Jane invited me in. I gently close the eyelid
over the remaining eye.
    I look around, spot a set of wooden stairs
and decide to climb up. It would make sense.
    A huge mirror confirms how matching I am to
the scene in the living room, just in case I don’t know yet. I sigh
and start to undress for a shower, thinking that her style of
clothes will never suit me. See, I wear