Frozen Amaryllis

She was a red and white amaryllis beneath the shower’s spray in the summer dress she’d neglected to remove.  Blood spread along the white fabric like the veins of the tropical flower and trickled onto the matching acrylic to trace a pedal towards the drain.  She took in deep, rapid breaths, filling her lungs with steam to numb the swelling in her chest.  Knees held tight to her breasts, she rocked back and forth to expel the shock from her nerves, but she knew the trembling would not subside. 

As the hot water began to dwindle, she ignored the descending temperature until it provoked miniscule bumps along her flesh.  She raised a quivering hand to the knob, turned it right, and then pulled herself up.  She struggled to maintain her balance climbing over the bathtub’s barrier, using the curtain as a crutch, but she was careful not to detach it from its rings.  She left behind a stream of water as she lumbered out of the bathroom.        

Ten feet away a wooden door lay dismantled on the foyer carpet, its splintered remnants protruding from the jamb.  She scanned the room for anyone else that had arrived, missing a fallen vase whose shattered fragments obstructed her path.  She winced as broken glass pierced her soles, but was too captivated by the scene before her to pay any notice.

Opposite, green drapes flailed from the open balcony like the gaping mouth of a famished beast.  It bellowed at her from the depths of its murky throat, setting her aback with the force of damp coastal winds.  Despite its view of the ocean glistening beneath the moon and the orange traces of abandoned fire pits scattered along the beach, the balcony was not inviting in the least.  But a downward glance from its mangled banister would testify to that night’s occurrences, and this notion was enough to draw her into the grisly orifice.

Walking through the open screen was easy enough, but every anxious step past that point quickened her pulse.  Approaching the banister, her heart threatened to leap from her thoracic cavity and propel the shrapnel from her ribs amongst the railing’s scattered fragments.  One hand depressed her sternum as the other seized a portion of the banister that was still intact.  She had stood here an hour before with company that reluctantly departed from her life and his.  She leaned over the edge and was paralyzed by the sight.

Three stories below an expanse of bushes parted to confine a crippled, expired man.  His torso was similarly agape where a high caliber round had perforated his chest.  The red crater held the only color on his body as the December chill accelerating the pallor mortis fading of his skin.  Though a ring on his left hand possessed the same radiance it had in life, his eyes were a hollow haze as they blankly stared up at the frozen amaryllis looming over his herbaceous tomb.