The Suicide's Room
David Mohan

That's the problem with a suicide's room. Draughts. The place is foxed with cracks and crevices. The world filters in at every turn, from floor to ceiling, smuggling whispers, traffic, seasons.
A suicide's room is deception. On the surface it's all lockets and secret diaries, keepsakes and sealed letters, but look closely and you see it's been pawed by the world.
Someone left open too many windows.
And doors -- the whole place was shattered by what was going on outside. It's more like a deserted shack someone found, a chalet on the edge of a beach, gone brittle on the inside, everything worn to scallops by the sea's long hush.
The occupant's gone and it's no wonder when you consider. For the record whoever lived here dressed the place up with foreknowledge. Tatty postcards. Never-washed sheets. Suitcases, half-filled, half-empty. Books left open half-read. Annotated skirting boards, driftwood on the mantle piece.
On a morning nobody noted this former tenant left behind their wrist watch, the semblance of their reflection in the mirror, a miniature bookmark lost amidst the pages of an epic, a purified tongue-stud, and like a faithless lover, this ex-resident stepped outside.

1996 © 2012