Boxes and busted suitcases held closed with straps everywhere.

Friends had helped with the move yet details blurred. Exhausted, she hardly knew where she was. She’d unpack tomorrow. Flicking on a television she found her favorite true crime show, ‘Fang’. She undressed and tucked into bed.

Later, she awoke she had an urge to go out. She exited and she was in a courtyard. She didn’t remember a courtyard. She locked her front door and started across a courtyard except she heard a noise and spun round. She saw a man in fatigues gripping a machine gun. Perhaps the last bolts of sun made her invisible because he said nothing.

She followed a path of shimmery pebbles, wandering past statues, ponds and follies. Up an incline she found a pavilion of stone with wide arches from which to see views of hills. On a table stood a flute of champagne. She sipped the effervescence and slowly her eyes focused on beds of white roses.

A noise like thrashing splintered her tranquility. Then the sight of a man, the man in fatigues. “Who are you?” he demanded. He raised his gun.

“I live here,” she replied, unsure.

She saw him sliding his index finger around the trigger. She replaced the champagne flute. She saw the trigger squeezed.

“But why?” she managed as she felt the slicing bullet. She grasped for her chest and the oozing blood. She sagged to the floor, knocking over the flute, spilling the drink, the cold liquid splashed her skin and suddenly she realized she was naked. When had that happened, she wondered vaguely, champagne mingling with her oozing blood. From sheer will she jerked her body upright.

Then she was upright. Sitting on a soft bed. Wide awake and sticky with sweat, slowly her eyes adjusted to the flickeringly light. Light from the television blaring her favorite crime show.

image by supersonic talent Momčilo Moma Bjeković

For more CHRISTINA OXENBERG please visit  her Amazon.com page.