Friday, February 05, 2010

The Watch, The Rat and The Woman (CH04E01)

He looked at his watch, two days ago the batteries went dead and he was wondering if they had lasted as long as the salesman had promised him when he bought the watch. It had been cheap, only $14,99. He tried to remember when he bought it and although he could picture the face of the salesman in front of him, he couldn’t get the associated date with it. He tried to count the seasons, saw the open eyes of the salesman in front of him, covered by snow, fresh spring-grass, bathed in sunlight and covered in leaves fallen from the trees. He counted the times he saw each of the seasons and decided that it had been 3 years since he bought the watch.


He took the watch from his wrist and opened the cover. He looked at the battery as if it would recharge by miracle and shook it. After a minute he decided that he didn’t need the watch anymore and threw it away. He heard the glass break when it hit the wall and he counted the pieces. He was able to distinguish 37 pieces from where he sat.

He looked down at his wounds they had stopped bleeding. The blood reddened the pieces of cotton sticking out of his chest and stomach. The uncomfortable feeling in his stomach had been replaced by an itching feeling at his legs. He shook his legs, worried that he could move them. He was relieved seeing his feet shaking at his command. He took some water from the bottle and freshened his eyes and while putting the lit back on the bottle he saw movement in the corner of his eye. He turned his head just in time to see a rat crawl into a hole in the wall. He realized that his legs now felt normal, he shook them once more and a red spot appeared on his jeans, it grew larger in size, he stopped the motion and put the lifeless body of the woman aside. He stood up, amazing himself that he still could, and pulled up his jeans to see a gaping hole just above his ankle. There the rat had nibbled on his leg he figured. He had to get out of here, this was no place to stay in a condition like his. He turned around and picked up the woman, but her weight pulled him down to the dirty floor again his head hitting a concrete pillar. A stinging pain went trough his head and he lost consciousness.

The sun was shining on his face when he woke up, not knowing how long he had been unconscious he looked at his wrist, remembering he had thrown away the watch. He looked down and saw the lifeless body of a rat next to his shin, blood cluttered at its fur. The woman was still lying next to him, but it seemed as if she was asleep, all cuddled up against him, her head on his chest. He pushed her aside, and as he did so, he felt how warm she was. He checked her pulse, but she didn’t have a pulse. He held his hands in front of her mouth and nose to check if she was breathing, but she didn’t. She couldn’t be alive because her heart was on the table in the far corner of the room he was in, next to her liver. Both showed bite marks, probably rats he thought. He wondered who might have killed the rat; this wasn’t the first time something similar had happened before.

No comments: