It's amazing what can trigger a lost memory, what tiny insignificant sight or scent can throw you back into a moment you didn't even realise you'd forgotten. Even something as innocent as the way a beam of sunlight hits the bonnets of the parked cars outside your house can leave you trembling in fear as you recall the time you mistook a corpse for some cheap Halloween trick until you noticed how the maggots danced in that same dappled sunlight.
Everybody has sudden flashes of memory like these, for me it was the sight of drying blood on a STOP sign out by the caravan park. That was when I remembered by first friend, my dearest friend who I knew for less than a day and whose presence hasn't left me since.
She stole her cousin's pellet gun and tried to reenact a scene from one of the dodgy action movies her aunt and uncle adored. She never thought to check that it was loaded and neither of us reckoned it had that much punch to it.
The sound of a small metal ball tearing through flesh is one you never forget, much like the way she just slumped over as blood flew in an arc behind her, painting the faded STOP sign and the grass and her neck and her dress.
The fact that such a small body can contain so much blood still astounds me.
Everybody has sudden flashes of memory like these, for me it was the sight of drying blood on a STOP sign out by the caravan park. That was when I remembered by first friend, my dearest friend who I knew for less than a day and whose presence hasn't left me since.
She stole her cousin's pellet gun and tried to reenact a scene from one of the dodgy action movies her aunt and uncle adored. She never thought to check that it was loaded and neither of us reckoned it had that much punch to it.
The sound of a small metal ball tearing through flesh is one you never forget, much like the way she just slumped over as blood flew in an arc behind her, painting the faded STOP sign and the grass and her neck and her dress.
The fact that such a small body can contain so much blood still astounds me.
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