The putrid stench lingered inside the house; it was no wonder to him now why she had them sit outside, on the porch. When Rina opened the door to Kimbra’s room, it was as if the smell punched him in the gut, provoking a fit of abrupt, acidic nausea. Yet, it was the same room that he had last seen Kimbra, alive and well. But no melancholy memory of her could withstand the image that his eyes were now beholding.
A sudden, terrifying notion brought a chill on his bones, the same notion everyone else had had the first time they saw this awful scene: that he had just walked into a murder room and he was witnessing the aftermath.
Everything, from the walls to the floor, was an open wound, scarlet and black, and deceased. Flies swarmed in the stench-contaminated air as larvae slithered in the fresher, less dried out blood in the room. His panicked gaze followed the trails of dark blood drying up on the walls and onto the hardwood floor, and all over the rest of the room’s scattered furniture. Then he noticed the large puddle of black blood simmering in the center of Kimbra's bed, where he had spent her last hours making love with her.
Something cold touched the top his forehead. His hand moved by instinctual reflects. There was something there, liquid, yet it had a spongy texture. He brought his trembling hand in front of him. Two of his fingers were smothered in a thick red substance that reminded him of cranberry sauce, like the kind he once loved to eat at Thanksgiving parties, though now he doubted he would ever eat it again.
She's dead, it became suddenly all too real for him as his eyes were still locked on gore covered fingers. She can’t be… She can’t be...
His hand began to shake heavily now. No, his whole arm, his whole damn body was shaking as the panic increased. He had lost the ability to breathe. A surge of nausea was germinating in his gut. The slightest of sudden moves would bring the vomit spilling. But somehow he was still moving, looking up at the ceiling, trying to understand what he was beholding. A giant inverted puddle was plastered onto the ceiling, still dripping thick stalactite chunks of crimson coagulated blood.
He rubbed his hands against his forehead desperately trying to clean off the rotting blood, but it only seemed to smother it more and more over his hair and his forehead, and he feared it would stick to him the same way it was absorbing into the room.
“Zane,” Rina said, but he didn’t hear her, she seemed too far away, becoming unreal. He felt like he was trapped in a timeless dimension of horror and desperation. “Zane, are you okay? You don’t have to do th―”
“I need to get out of here,” he struggled to say, and then her pushed aside and sprinted past her, and stormed out of the room. He fled across the hall, past the kitchen and the living room, and went out the front door.
“Zane! Stop!” Rina called to no effect on him. He continued to walk away through the yard towards his car in a fit of fear and frustration. “Zane, wait! Please!”
Still nothing. He didn’t want to believe that this was how it ended. It wasn't fair. Whatever had really happened to Kimbra, she didn't deserve it, and nobody deserved her loss. Of that much he was sure.
But now he felt that any effort to atone for this loss would be futile, and would only sink him further into a deeper state of grief that would become the end of him once and for all.
Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, he thought. I could never do this without you, Kimmy…
He had loved her for almost two years, and he felt like he had lost the most important thing in his life, that there would never be a future for him that is free of tragedy and death. But that was just his human nature, once again trying to fathom what he couldn’t comprehend. And yet, no one ever thinks that things like these could happen to them, even though Death is always lurking around the corner, waiting like a ticking clock. And while most of us get lucky and walk right past it, like a ghost, some people never get to hear when the clock stops ticking.