10
Mark suddenly remembered something and
flew back to the Myanmar slum.
He wanted to see, to confirm.
Confirm what? He didn’t know!
Rain leaked through the broken roof, the mud
and blood mixing, making it hard to walk.
“Sarah, if you’re tricking me, I’ll divorce you
and you won’t get a penny!”
He covered his nose, trudging through the
mud to where I lay.
The rain hadn’t washed away the maggots;
the damp air made the stench even worse.
The body was a mass of putrefaction.
Maggots wriggled in the rotting flesh.
He stared at the watch on the ground for a
long time, finally retching, terrified, trying to
run but slipping in the mud, falling into a pool
Г
of body fluids.
In the water, he touched a bracelet. He had
given it to Sarah, he remembered, he did!
He threw it away in terror, cowering in the
filth.
“Impossible! No! No! Sarah, don’t scare me,
show yourself! I’ll do anything! Stop playing
games! Seriously!”
“You know people at the embassy, you’ve
taken self–defense classes! You speak
Burmese, how could you not save yourself?
You said you’d never leave me!”
He muttered to himself, becoming
increasingly deranged. Suddenly, he
remembered… he had taken her passport, the
one that could save her life in a foreign
country.
“I’m sorry, Sarah, I thought you could hold out
until I came to get you. I didn’t mean to kill
you… I really didn’t…”
L
He buried his head, unable to face the truth.
“You must have tried to kill yourself, you
didn’t want to go home, you wanted to
escape, you wanted me to get rid of Vivian,
so you went there with those men, didn’t
you!”
“Or maybe you didn’t dare to go back, afraid
I’d find out the child wasn’t mine, so you
faked your death and ran away with your
lover. What a brilliant plan, such a cruel
heart!”
He began to cry uncontrollably.
He crawled over and hugged Sarah’s
decaying body. “Okay, stop it, wake up, let’s
go home, I’ll take you home, the roses in the
garden are blooming!”
The rotting flesh silently emitted a foul odor.
