BRUISES

The blood was streaming from her eyes, her ears, thick runnels ran 

from her nostrils like flu snot. So much blood. "How could you?" 

she screamed, her voice shrill. He felt the weight of his suitcases in 

his grip and put them down. He tried to console her, but he couldn't touch her. 

Bruises had mottled her exposed skin, blossoming one upon the other until 

every inch of her had blackened. And still it continued, past the point of 

discoloration as her arms and legs began to erupt in minute fissures at first 

pink and then a deep crimson. "You promised me," she mumbled through 

lips split like boiled meat as she sank to the floor, her eyes no longer 

capable of sight. "In sickness and in health... For better or for worse... 

You be the passenger, I'll drive the hearse," she said in sing-song fashion. 

She was laughing now, a maniacal grin spread across her ruined features. 

He stood by in horror and watched as her finger stretched out and, in the blood 

that now pooled around her, she scrawled out the word "COWARD" 

in tall, child-like letters...



-from the story "Bruises"