Now That It's Over

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The body lies on the quiet beach, its long hair wild and brittle, streaking across the face and back. It has floated for a day on the waves, before finally being deposited on this stretch of fine, pristine sand, the shoreline of a tiny island that lies nine kilometres southwest of the coastal town of Phuket, Thailand, one of over four hundred such islands sprinkled all over the Andaman Sea. Until the body arrived, the only presence on the island has been a family of crabs that found refuge there—digging holes in the sand, multiplying in great numbers—as well as the occasional seagull that would pause and rest on its way to or from Phuket.

In its wake, the body—a woman in her mid-thirties—has brought along a school of dead fish, mostly red snappers and garoupas that the fishermen in the vicinity hunt for their livelihood; the decomposing piscine bodies litter the beach, their silvery corpses sparkling under the sun, already starting to reek.

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