cannibal carpet

Louise dropped onto the soft carpet of grass that covered the hill on the southern face, letting the folds of her white eyelet lace dress land gently about her, which contrasted nicely, she thought, with the saturated green of the ground. She gazed about, her eyes level with the tops of the few hundred gravestones of fallen civil war soliders that stood at tired attention in roughening rows, casting diagonal repeating shadows. The sun shone down on her face, the warmth kissing away the pervasive chill in her bones. A fact unknown to her, this was the highest point in Brooklyn, and when the sun shone in November, the warmest.

Louise had been coming to this spot regularly ever since Ward Jenkins had gotten married and went off on his African tour honeymoon with his socially ambitious and, she opined, commonly pretty new wife. It had been three months now since they left, and Louise was charged with the general upkeeping duties of the office as well as the house, including the feeding of the three macaws, two cockatiels, one african grey, and that damned loud cockatoo that always sounded like it was being tortured.

Aside from the cockatoo's screams, it was lonely and dark in the first floor office. She looked forward to the afternoon light that would stream in through the stained glass windows in the foyer. Her days and nights melted into each other eventually, and sometimes she didn't speak to a single soul for a few days, in the back-and-forth from her apartment to Ward Jenkins's. It got to the point where in the mornings, when she unlocked the front door, she would pretend that things were going on exactly as before, with Hilda the housekeeper bumping noisily around in the kitchen and Ward sitting contentedly at his desk eating his daily breakfast of grapefruit halves with the serrated spoon. That was when she decided she'd better get out, and one day, found herself on the hill in the cemetery.

She imagined, with a revolting, leadened feeling in her stomach, Ward and his new wife touring the pyramids, smiling and happy and sickening. And his wife was just so... boring, thought Louise. At any rate, Ward could be so self-centered and moody, and maybe they deserved each other. He'll probably make a terrible husband, she thought, as she brought her gaze down to the ground, picking at the little blades of grass, tearing their innocent, young bodies in half in undeserved cruelty and throwing them back onto the earth where, certainly, the soil would swallow the dead matter and the grass would grow strong from feasting on itself.