Burned woman - TLC 47

Well removed from erotic games of loneliness, regret, alienation and impending loss Metro doors opened at 9:23 p.m.

She limped in dragging her right foot. Scared. Excruciating pain. Alone and cold in a thin black sweater and long gray skirt. 45, slight of sight, olive pale skin, black hair pulled back. Her left foot was normal. Her right foot resembled elephantiasis.

Bending down she raised her skirt from around her ankles. Burned and bloody skin ran three inches across and ten inches high. First or second-degree burns exposed a layer of red lined white skin. She touched an edge of fried skin with a white tissue. Clear cold air sent shivers through her central nervous system shutting down pain receptors.

She needed medical attention. Two embarrassed men diverted their eyes.

Grimacing she fingered a phone. No tears.

Metro rolled through darkness, over a river, past an Everest furniture store flashing red neon and shuttered Doner diners.

Why was she alone on a freezing late night in a flimsy sweater her skin below the knee running to her ankle burned away exposing blood red lines wearing an abstract expression on her sacred scared distracted face watching night fly past windows where blue flickering TV images and children eye spied on each other as she kept going

past the expensive private hospital on a hill gleaming its extensive intensive care wards filled with antiseptics, bandages, lotions, potions and patients with money as her treatment was delayed, forgotten, useless now

because she was poor and silent in her seat, anxious, feeling pain wondering where she’d go, where she would end up on this cold dark night of her soul

as a stranger

lacking the ability to heal her studied her anxious passive expression feeling her violent burning sensations as fire and heat nerve impulses penetrated synapse sensory channels where signals blocked by neurotransmitters shut down her final inconvenient chance.

The Language Company