Nimuesinvisiblegirl

Part 3
          	
          	I wasn’t sure how to make her feel better as she coughed up heaps of blood. I had never seen anyone die before. I didn’t want her to be my first dead body. I was just on my way home from the corner store. My hands grazed over a bulge in my pocket and pulled it out, the orange plastic crinkled in between my fingers. I opened it and took out the Reese’s Cup, such a small unconsidered thing in our day to day life but it would make a difference now. I pushed it towards her, “Want half?” she smiled and bit off a piece, her split tongue wrapping around the chocolate bits that crumbled off. She was gone before she finished chewing. I sat back in the alley way, not caring about getting her blood on my jeans. I chewed the other half, trying to remember what it was that she just said. Her last words were to me. The last voice she heard was mine. Was it alright that her last moment consisted of shared chocolate between strangers? As her body settled into death’s hold, the facade she had been maintaining slipped into oblivion and the snake skin bubbled up grotesquely. Her fingernails grew longer and her black dreadlocks turned to the bodies of long dead snakes. A Daughter of Medusa, half human and half monster. I had heard of the legends but never thought I’d share a Reese's Cup with a dying one. Anuka… wishful. I buried her body myself and placed a rock over her new home. Now and forever her resting place read “My Wish”.

Nimuesinvisiblegirl

Part 3
          
          I wasn’t sure how to make her feel better as she coughed up heaps of blood. I had never seen anyone die before. I didn’t want her to be my first dead body. I was just on my way home from the corner store. My hands grazed over a bulge in my pocket and pulled it out, the orange plastic crinkled in between my fingers. I opened it and took out the Reese’s Cup, such a small unconsidered thing in our day to day life but it would make a difference now. I pushed it towards her, “Want half?” she smiled and bit off a piece, her split tongue wrapping around the chocolate bits that crumbled off. She was gone before she finished chewing. I sat back in the alley way, not caring about getting her blood on my jeans. I chewed the other half, trying to remember what it was that she just said. Her last words were to me. The last voice she heard was mine. Was it alright that her last moment consisted of shared chocolate between strangers? As her body settled into death’s hold, the facade she had been maintaining slipped into oblivion and the snake skin bubbled up grotesquely. Her fingernails grew longer and her black dreadlocks turned to the bodies of long dead snakes. A Daughter of Medusa, half human and half monster. I had heard of the legends but never thought I’d share a Reese's Cup with a dying one. Anuka… wishful. I buried her body myself and placed a rock over her new home. Now and forever her resting place read “My Wish”.

Nimuesinvisiblegirl

Part 2
          
          She seemed annoyed that I had woken her from her nap before death. I could barely muster a whispered mumbled version of her name. I’m sure she couldn’t understand me at all. Her eyes rolled but I convinced myself it was blood loss and not annoyance. “Who are you?” she asked me finally and I stumbled over my name, “Emiliano?”. “You question yourself because you realize you don’t really know who you are. Do you know who you are Emiliano?” It was the longest sentence I had heard her speak and it was perhaps her last ever, and it was directed to me. To me, a stranger in her world. I just existed here, she lived in it. “What are you?” I asked and she smiled, as if I had answered some unspoken question.

Nimuesinvisiblegirl

Part 1: 
          She had always looked normal to me. If anything, she appeared beautiful to the unsuspecting eye. So long as you didn’t stare too long at her black hair that transformed into a medusa-like state, the snakes would slither out from behind her ears. The split tongue would escape her mouth if she laughed too hard. The yellow slit eyes would open and bulge disturbingly if she saw a rat in the grimy gutter across the road. Anuka was a national treasure of our tiny backroad town. 
          
          I hadn’t ever had the courage to speak to her but here in this moment, watching her bleed out in the streets. I had just enough bravery to kneel beside the decapitated snakes oozing blood out of her hair. Some of it had dried on her face and I resisted the urge to pick it off like a scab. Her eyes snapped open viciously and didn’t soften when she didn’t recognize my face.I couldn’t blame her, we had never spoken or made eye contact. In fact the longer I looked into her eyes the more of her I didn’t see as a human.