Incisive

A stabbing has unexpected results…

Illustration by author.

Celeste looked at the red mark in the centre of her palm, the place where the knife had snagged. It was a shallow wound and had not bled much, but the scratch remained still after all these weeks. Shouldn’t it have healed over by now?

The shock was worse than the injury, the trauma of being stabbed. She’d spent many turbulent nights unable to sleep, imagining the diseases coursing through her bloodstream at any given moment. But the tests had all come back clear, the cut had been clean.

The woman who stabbed her kept appearing in nightmares, the same chain of events every time, memory informing dream. Six weeks ago, Celeste had seen a ragged lady huddled under sheets in a doorway on the Rue Godot De Mauroy. The old woman looked close to death and it was very cold that day, so in a fit of guilt and sympathy Celeste had emptied her wallet for the poor wretch. It was a relatively small amount, about 50 Euros, but much more than she usually gave to the down-and-outs and everything she had on her. As she walked away, the old woman sprang from her nest, babbling some incoherent language. She desperately gripped Celeste’s arm and pulled her towards a break between the buildings. More embarrassed than afraid on the bustling avenue, Celeste weakly resisted the matriarch’s efforts, and was dragged further from the main street into a dimly lit passage.