And here’s a vision no-one needs to see, so you oughtn’t read it.
It’s just a cellphone, ringing.
Only it oughtn’t be. Lilianna wasn’t buried with her phone, and if she was, it would be dead by now – long dead, dead as a doornail, dead as a Lilianna.
Lily’s friends told her she needed girl power. Sometime that is good advice. They told her she needed to stop dating inferior men. Sometimes that is good advice. Lily’s friends told her to flee every lover who cared about her, heap crap upon their heads and reputations, and go somewhere else. She did, and she had some sense shaken into her – hm? That’s impossible? You’re right. I doubt she had anything shaken into her but pain, and after hard enough shaking, she broke her neck, and the guy put her in a plastic bag and – pathetically – threw her in the water, perhaps in the belief he wouldn’t be in a cell three days later.
Maybe he loved her. It’s hard to know what she’s taken from those who loved her. I have these two hands; I type with them; they’re attached to me. They did not hold her down and hurt her; I know; I was attached to them at the time. But that’s not what she said.
I believe this fellow shook her. With intent to intimidate? To abuse? To murder? To stop the torrent of knife-fighter cuts flowing from her mouth? Who knows? He shook her hard enough to kill, and there she is, somewhere in the middle of America, under a grave I’ve never seen, after a funeral I never considered attending.
The phone ring and rings on her chest. She’ll never pick it up again, fill you with sweet kindness that makes you feel you can solve all your problems. She’ll never thumb it to life and describe the ten worst parts of yourself, in a detail no-one should know without drilling a hole in your head.
Lily thought she was a sweet Angel and a mischievous Devil. In truth, Lily was a sweet Angel and a conduit straight to the gagging, groping, unerring voices of the Lowerarchy.
The phone rings. She doesn’t pick up; she never will.
I’ll never hear her sweet voice.
I’ll never hear her gagging, choking fury.
At least, for the first time, I know which part of her will answer when I call:
Neither. Lily’s dead, after all.
