Thursday, November 08, 2007

Final Walk

There is a black car parked just beyond the trail, on the shoulder of a forgotten road. The air is crisp with chill and a little damp.
Escaping from pale pink lips is an apparition suggestive of vitality. Breath, or spirit, it flees from those thin parted lips with every exhale. The breasts heave under the crisp blouse and tailored suit jacket, clinging to life as the lungs expand to take in another sacrament of life from the atmosphere, before expelling it again.
The shiny black shoes with their commanding square heels plod awkwardly along the dirt course. Shapely legs move mechanically towards their destiny, their elegant contours hidden by the smart gray skirt.
Their master, bleary eyed with un-cried tears has ceased to plead indignation or innocence. Her fate is certain.
In another setting, in a banquet hall, before a podium, in a marbled office, this elegant blonde creature would be an imposing figure, only those with power would dare to hold her frosty gaze. Here, her glossy hair and fine suit hold no enchantment against the low growing yellow grass and petite white wild flowers. The trappings and tricks of the cunning human animal and its politics fade against the elemental. In this quiet field laced by the outlines of towering trees, they only betray her mortal vulnerability.
With fawn-like submissiveness she tramples onward, the menacing figure at her back driving her along the path, towards the wilderness and oblivion. Calm and sure footed, this other moves with the absolute certainty of triumph. One black gloved hand wields death in the form of a drab 9 mm Luger. A shadow in a wool overcoat, this calculating, patient adversary urges its ward forward.
On she goes, waiting for the tell tale "crack" that will shatter the silence as bullet parts from chamber and slices through the same air that she now labors to breathe. With each progressing step the expectancy grows, but the only sound is that of her own ragged breathing and the crunch of dirt clods under heel.

A far away mist veils the sky muting the sun's seeking rays. It hangs like a white backdrop against which the jagged tree tops are a sinister green-black. They cut into the whiteness like a hungry line of teeth. The trail slopes downward to pass through a barren little valley. Nothing there but the stunted blades of yellowed grass fringed with sparkling frost and the little white flowers drooping with wet and cold.

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