You Looked So Good In Blue

Her eyes were wide open yet she was not moving, not even blinking. A small trail of blood trickled down her face, the bright red contrasted against her pearly white skin. In the distance, I heard footsteps, fast, hard, going in the opposite direction. The glimmer of life was quickly slipping away from her eyes. Her cheeks were damp with tears, sweat, traces of blood. Her hair and clothes were mussed up to say the least. Strands of dusty blonde, once braided perfectly was now sticking out all over the place, stained with sickly congealing red. Her skin as white as snow was grazed and muddy. She was tarnished. Some perfect silverware left out in the rain to rust.

Nothing about her was perfect yet she was still beautiful, a twisted kind of perfect that caused me not to run and get help but to stay, I wanted to spend hours examining every detail. Her dress, navy blue, tight fitting and made of velvet was ripped, torn, and grazed. Her tights, shredded just like the skin on her knees that was partially hidden behind spider webs of nylon. The long brittle grass around her was crushed and twisted, just like her limp limbs.

The longer I stayed the more she faded away. Her face had completely drained of colour, apart from her eyes. They were a bright blue, the kind of blue you never forget. Her body was stiff and the putrid smell of death had begun to seep into my nostrils. By the time the police arrived, the sky was the perfect misty blue of dawn, not a single cloud could be seen, and a few stars were still out. They zipped her into the grey body bag, leaving me with one last image of her timeless face, and then she was slowly carried through the high grass and driven away to the cold stone slab in the mortuary.

That morning I fell asleep seeing nothing but her face.