The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Snapshots
by Marge Simon
An August sunrise in Montego Bay. The heat begins like this, even thicker than the night. He sleeps naked whatever the weather. She disengages his arms, grasps a pillow, pulling it over her chest.
The night table is littered with crumbs from last night’s snack, flies are already at work. Some appear as big as her thumbnail. She fancies the biggest ones have faces of famous actors, and one of them is making its way across his thigh and down into his groin. Noting this, she looks away.
There’s the empty bottle of Sangria, a shattered glass on the floor. She considers taking a photo, smiles. She has a box full of snapshots taken on holidays with him. This one could make a great conversation piece at his wife’s gatherings, were she to be invited.
It’s cooler in his study. There is an antique desk in the corner. A telephone, all gold and white sits nearby. Like the ornate clock by their bed, she doubts it’s functional. But neither is their pretend newlywed holiday at the end of summer, when his wife is visiting her mother.
How he loves this Jamaican paradise, “nestled along the unending shoreline of the most exclusive, private white-sand beach”. That’s according to the brochure. But also a place where the natives talk too much, laugh too often. Their language is a compendium of melodies. Everyone lives on island time. Everyone seems so happy. But no, not everyone. She shivers, suddenly feeling cold.
Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
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