The Exposure

There she was, lying on the ground covered in blood. People were running around, screaming from top of their lungs… It was not helping. There I stood, frozen. How long, I do not know. Forever, perhaps. The woman who spent her life trying to protect me. I knew I should have closed my eyes, not to keep this image in my mind forever, but I just could not. I kept my eyes wide open having the shortest saccades in my life, almost out of breath and out of time, collecting every detail I should not have been collecting. Her hand around her purse, still holding very firmly. My birthday gift to her. Like it meant anything. And why she still had her high heel shoes on anyway? Besides zillions of bullshit we have to bear every day for no good reason, besides the death waiting around every corner, why high heels? Why shoes even? Why clothes, why purses, why brushing hair, why brushing teeth? Life is so overrated. That red lipstick she wore… as red as blood coming out of her neck. That red lipstick that transferred onto my lips when we first kissed five years ago. The taste of her lips… the touch that was so soft, yet prurient. I thought for a second what my life would have been without her. On the day we first kissed, 245 more women were infected in our town only. Some died right there; some were somehow saved… I gave up keeping the numbers in my mind after some time; there was no use. The survivors of that shit sure died the day after or will die of some other shit soon. We were all going to die at some point because of this… shit. But she died before me. This was not supposed to happen. I was going to be the first between us. Because I had a much higher level of exposure. She barely had any.

People were coming to gather around her. And when I say people, I mean men. Women were running away, covering their eyes, faces, screaming… They were trying to reduce their exposure; I cannot blame them. You can never guess a woman’s exposure level. Maybe she had been beaten, raped, bullied… or perhaps she watched these all happen. Then after the last trigger, you never know how big or small it is -and actually it does not matter; she is gone. They could not help; they could not risk their own lives. So men gathered instead and did not help. It was another science exhibition for them; she was a thing – or even better, an alien!- dying from an unknown cause -yeah, right if we do not consider the creep cut her neck.

Her eyes were wide open like mine. Men were watching other women running away. As her pupils were contracted and glassy, they were no longer responding to the light; she was spared from further pain. My eyes got fixed at her glassy eyes. Once looking warm with love, once alive like mine, now frozen forever. Ambulance sirens were getting closer like it meant anything. I still held the gift she had made for me, in my hand, so tight that I was hurting myself. I knew I should have been looking at her warm and alive eyes in her picture in the heart-shaped locket that she had made for me. I knew I should have been looking at her picture instead to protect myself from the exposure. The exposure of her. The end was closer for me now, I knew. And I was closer to her, the woman who meant everything.