The Lake

She stared into the still lake. Its face revealed the light of the moon and she could see her own reflection. She felt a cold a chill come over her. An anxiety that filled her palms with a cold sweat. She took in a full breath and released it with a loud sigh to the moon. She felt the moon heavy, watching over her and the tattling lake reflecting it all. She blew her breath out at her urging her to go away.

She turned over her shoulders and saw the machete lying casually on the dirt besides her under its own spot light. The blood on the machete gleaming with the light of the moon, a whimper left her it hurt to think of him. She shook her head to shake him out. She kneeled over to the machete and picked it up the way she would pick up a dirty diaper without holding her nose. She walked it to the lake a few steps away and dipped it in the water. She saw the jelly like blood clots swimming on to the lake.

She watched them swim away slowly and her thoughts went with them. They looked like the same cherry clots that dropped from between her legs that night he killed her baby. The bastard, punch her so hard in her abdomen. He’d been drinking. She had been hitting the pipe all afternoon, so she was too out of it to fight back. It was partly her fault she thought. He laughed at her. He laughed at her pain stricken face as he watched her, a cry choking her throat her body freezing inward to release the living flop inside her that he’d loosened with the punch.

“Oh shit did you just crap on the floor” he said laughing. “Clean it up you sick bitch” He knew exactly what he had done. He cried to her later after she’d been back from the hospital. She knew he could not share her not even if it was his baby. She forgave him and allowed his sloppy drunk love making.

Giggles and cries escaped her. She was a mad woman. This time there was no denying it. She brought out the machete from underwater. How phallic she thought. It turned her on. She thought of him. She always thought of him, no one else but him. She clutched the machete with both her hands and brought it near her chest. She embraced it. She kissed the flat surface of it and pressed it against her face as she had often done to him. But it was so cold. Her tears rolled on to it. This was the closest she would ever be to him now. She kissed the traces of blood left over not washed off by the water. She kissed them gently at times sucking and filling her mouth with that penny tang his blood left behind on her lips when she bit down hard on him. The freckles on his chest she thought. She remembered his blood all over her and she hugged herself. She sobbed, sobbed as she hugged herself. Sobbed like an abandoned child, sitting alone staring at the lake embracing his machete.

Hours had gone by, the moon almost gone. She was still sitting in the same position, holding the machete facing the lake. Now awakening from a trance like state, her high had worn off. She found herself a bit relieved because she would now be able to drive herself out of there. She looked down on herself and saw it all different. She was covered in blood. Her shirt half torn, her jeans barely a hue of blue left in them. Her hair was sticky of him. She thought she would cut all her hair off once at home. The machete still locked in her arms. She looked at it “leave nothing behind”. She thought out loud as she looked around to see what else needed to go with her. But there was nothing. She’d taken care of everything.

She stood up with the machete in her hand and began to walk away leaving the lake behind with the moon no longer watching over her shoulders.