Violations and Wounds

Chapter 3

It resembled a canine, possibly a hound or a bull terrier. There was something she could not describe; it was too difficult to detail the organism beneath the compost. A piece of fibrous material— perhaps wood— lodged down its throat initiated a gruesome scene that Melanna could not bear. It was one of the most ghastly events that she experienced, but overcoming her brother's cadaver right before her oculars had traumatized her for eternity. 

Only a lunatic would perpetrate such menace to a harmless animal. The psychopath meant business. And this business could involve death.

Mella slowly inched towards the door, ascending the short flight of steps in a slow pace. Not affording to remove her vision from the scene, she hurriedly fumbled for the lock and inserted the nickel key into its slot, jerking it aggressively. Sweat exuded from her forehead, trickling down her skin onto her temples and her cheeks. 

The door swung swiftly open, creaking slightly on its barrel hinges. She stumbled forward and immediately slammed the door shut. The shopping bags slipped from her wrist and splayed onto the floor as she huffed hot air from her nostrils. The sweat stuck her hair onto her forehead, giving her the impression of a woman who journeyed through complete chaos over millenniums and could no longer withstand the suffer. 

With her back firmly wedged on the hardwood door, she relaxed her eyelids, engulfing her vision in darkness to shut out the world. She sank to her knees and buried her pale face in her palms. There was no clue, no indication that entered her crammed mind. Only the faintest knowledge of  hand and machine stitches lingered at the corner of her intelligence. 

She worked part-time as a tailoress for the first semester in a shop located in a compact cluster of retail outlets by the roadside. Her skills in stitching and embroidering had all begun here. It was the heart of her sewing expertise. The cramped shop-lot had its own signboard, written in enormous Gabriola font and displayed with marquee lights was the shop's obscured name, Beautifying Fabric. Beige wallpaper with intricate designs lined the brick walls of the shop. The only room in the shop held several tables with built-in overlock machines and computerized sewing machines. Influenced by the massive jump in prices and demand, her workplace rarely had customers— and those customers were the wealthy—  and the wealthy were sporadic. She was a professional at embellishments, but her mastery faded away as she struck the age of eighteen. She lost her interest. It went away just like that. Poof.

Recovering from her brief mental seizure, Mella quivered as she stood up. She padded across the room towards the nearest window to have a squiz at the creature, certain that it would still be there, lifeless on the now-infected snow.

There it laid, with its odour incessantly emitted, but the reek could not infiltrate into the house, courtesy of the locked door and windows. She immediately turned her back to the glass window, grimacing from the awful scene. 

A saffron-feathered bird sprang out from the widely open miniature door as the clock went cuckoo-cuckoo. Mella jerked in shock at the unexpected chime. The clock was past the stroke of three. It was already mid-afternoon. 

She fiddled for her smartphone in the hobo bag, her objective to dial 9-1-1 and have a team of policemen on the way to inspect the scene. However, that could not help to track down the maniac. Nothing could. 

The mobile went beep-beep-beep as Mella's delicate fingertips landed on the touchscreen keypad. She tapped on the green call button, switched the phone to her left hand and gripped it tightly as she brought the phone to her ear. The dialing tone was soon drowned out by the voice of a black female woman, presumably Jamaican. 

"9-1-1, what is your emergency?" the woman answered. 

"There is something in my front yard," Mella replied. 

"Could you please specify the object?" 

"U-uh, I think it's a dog with something in it's throat and it appears quite foul—" Mella could describe so much more of it but she chose not to. " —it appears to be dead and I have no idea who was the culprit who left the creature in my yard. I just came back from town and—" 

"No need for the long story, dear. How long has it been there?" she questioned further. 

She spun around in response to the query. She scanned the entire yard for the animal, her eyes wide open in shock. The phone slipped from her grasp, fell onto the cold floor, its contents spilling from the thin plastic case. The sheers nearly ripped from its hooks under her clasp. Clenched teeth, taut jaw and fierce gripping knuckles could only describe that Mella was in great stupefaction.

Gone. The animal was gone. It was as if it never existed, never present on the icy snow in the first place. It couldn't have vanished. 

Her main credence was that of the culprit who disposed the animal the same way he/she brought it to her home. Her conviction began to rise as she thought about the probabilities of the disposer.

The 9-1-1 call was improbable; it couldn't have sent the police right on her heels, arriving as fast as lightning before she could react, or disposing the creature before she knew it. Recalling what had occurred earlier, the line had been cut off as she had dropped her phone onto the solid wood. The only possibility was that of the bringer. 

The terror she'd felt for her situation had dissipated, leaving a trace of confusion and distress.  She had the urge to vomit as she felt the barf rising in her throat, almost ready to spill out. She swallowed it back down, wincing at the terrible taste of the bitter froth. 

She collapsed onto the floor, laid face-down on the carpet, feeling the pleasant warmth beneath, a smile across her face. The energy was no longer present, and she snuggled up onto the cozy carpet. Her last emotional state was of guilt— the 9-1-1 department would assume her call was just a prank— before she fell into a slumber.