The Blind Goddess

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The man was dead. Conclusively, beyond all reasonable doubt. She could tell instantly. Afterwards she couldn’t really explain her absolute certainty. Maybe it was the way he was lying, his face hidden by the rotting leaves, a dog turd right by his ear. No drunk with any self-respect lies down next to a dog turd.

She rolled him over carefully. His entire face was missing. It was impossible to recognise anything of what must once have been a person with an individual identity. The chest was a man’s, with three holes in it.

She had to turn away and retch violently, bringing up nothing but a bitter taste in her mouth and painful cramps in her stomach, letting the corpse fall forward again. She realised too late that she had moved it just enough for the head to land in the excrement, which was now spread all over the drenched dark-blond hair. That was the sight that finally made her throw up, spattering him with the tomato-coloured contents of her stomach. It seemed almost like a derisive gesture of the living towards the dead. The peas from her dinner weren’t yet digested, and they lay there like toxic-green full stops over the dead man’s back.

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