The 13th Mar 2010 WriteOnSite Winning Entry
Perhaps, if it hadn't been quite so bright, he could get it out of his mind. He could tell himself it was the washed out orange, the colour of the local dogs. Perhaps he'd been mistaken, perhaps it was one of the local dogs who all looked alike after generations of in-breeding. He wished it was one of the local dogs. They weren't pets, not as he knew them, as his family knew them, not like that, not part of the family. Here, they were an appendage, an afterthought to cuddle and to kick according to mood.
He knew it wasn't one of the dogs. Dogs don't have daisy patterns in bright melted butter yellow.
He should have tried to get closer, to make sure, but he'd been too scared. The gathering darkness had prevented him from seeing what he knew to be there, lying like a discarded, valueless thing in the ditch. Soakings of red dipping into the yellow, the grenadine in a cocktail. All he saw were dark patches on the bright canvas of her dress, still wet, like paint.
He should have gone to her, taken what was left of her into his arms and rescued if not her body, than at least her dignity. A body looks so unseemly, so indecorous in death. And yet, once again he couldn't quite overcome the selfishness which had put her in that situation, his selfishness, and then his fear. She had tried to warn him of the consequences of their affair. He, and a white man at that, and she, married. It did not matter that she did not love her husband, it did not matter that she had never loved him and that he had been chosen for her. There was only one punishment for adultery.
He left on the first flight that evening, back to his country, back to rules he could understand. Perhaps it had been one one of the local dogs after all. A brighter, yellower dog, like the colour of the sun when it creeps out of the clouds after a dismal day, just to set in a small, rebellious flash of light.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.