Oliver Benjamin
her skin provided a protective barrier. Dry skin will burn more
readily than oiled.
Like a ballerina she fixed her gaze upon a single point—the exit—
and when the time was right, charged through the wall of fire.
Dessicated from neglect, the garden too was ablaze. The kungkum
bath was still full and she jumped in. Every thirty seconds she came
up for a breath of scorched, smoky air and when the time was right,
made a run through Roy’s house. It was burning as well, though not
as badly. She pulled a sheet from Roy’s bed, wrapped it around and
fled down the road towards the ocean. Her throat had swelled,
making it difficult to breathe and as she floated in the sea she tried to
reduce her respiration as the water caressed her mildly-singed flesh
and the pain faded. She lay there resting belly up against the evening
sky with no one around. She claims it was the most peaceful moment
in her life. The glow of the burning pyre cast tall shadows against the
waters.
Leona still had the old beachfront apartment, rented under
Morris Bidden’s name, and when her strength returned, so did she,
briefly. Following that, it was not hard to secure a room at the
Biddenbrooks Home for the Mentally Ill. She knew precisely how to
forge her way in. Despite her brief appearance in the media, no one
recognizes her here. With her hair shaved off, no makeup and a
ragged frock she looks like the average crazy fat homeless woman,
the kind no one can bear to look at. And no one will hear her either.
She no longer speaks.
I touch her feet and try to smile. She smiles back. I really don’t
know how she feels. She did terrible things, but it was not her
intention to be terrible. It was not mine either.
I shuffle back to my room to record what happened today; to
write down these words. There have been so many of them, flowing
from my pen like water from a broken dyke. Sometimes the water
flows from my cataracted eye. It flows now. I raise the black patch
and let it flow; I cannot stop it. I will write and write and the river will
carry me on.
There is a scratch against my window. I open it, and surprise!—
in comes Sheba. Her burnt hair has begun to grow back though she
is still nearly unrecognizable, reduced in size. Despite the ordeal she
seems healthy and vigorous, a testament to her perfect and enduring
design.
This harmful, necessary thing has brought me the gift of a dying
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