PENDING

A short story by Elanor Miller

Summer passed in a haze romance, laughter and dancing. Autumn was unseasonably cold, and by the time winter came around putrefaction had begun.

Elise lay in a shallow grave under her favourite bridge. As a child, she had played on it imagining epic battles against gargantuan trolls never once dreaming, even for a second, that as an adult she would lie dead beneath it.

She was waiting to be found. The crick in her neck and odd disjointed angle of her limbs would have been painful if she could feel it.

The ground under her slowly decomposing body was soaked in blood and water from the last night's heavy rainfall.

Had she still been alive she would have heard voices close by. She would have felt the thundering of footsteps as they reverberated through the cold earth and smelled the dogs as they sniffed around the rocks that marked her grave.

She had no idea what the strong chemical substance that obscured her scent was. If she could have thought, perhaps she would have remembered her final laboured breaths. Maybe she would have remembered the shock she had felt in her last moments as she recognised his face. She might have focussed on the feeling of betrayal and dawning comprehension as he laid her ever so delicately in the ground. She probably would have itemised his face, absorbed every last detail and committed it to memory, but as her eyes melted away from their sockets and squirming maggots took their place; She would never be able to tell anyone that she had known her killer.

Spring came with a shower of tears, blending into summer in a blur of unanswered pleas. Autumn brought no new leads and by the time winter came around again, nothing but bones remained.

She was still waiting to be found.