She moved her head an inch—a gossamer inch, ever so slightly—off the

pillow, until her dry cracked lips touched the dry starched linen of the bed sheet. A
matted wisp of hair, gray and oily in its disuse, fell in front of her eyes. She had not
the energy to brush it away from her face, but let it stay there, tickling—taunting—
slowly.

Her leg, thin and varicose-veined, dangled over the edge of the bed. The
(now faded red) bed sheet twisted round it like a barber’s pole—red and white,
faded dusty color on faded dusty skin. The minutes ticked by, unforgiving soldiers
marching on—blindly. Whose orders did they follow? she thought, angrily. She
remembered when her legs had been white and not transparent. She remembered
when the bed sheet’s red was not faded, but proud in its garish glory. She
remembered all this from a time before. But minutes—days—years—were
unceasing soldiers. It had been folly to think that she could fight against them—
she, when no others could. Not the belles she’d envied, whose rich locks of brown
and gold had turned to white and gray; not those spry gentlemen she’d danced
with…Dancing. What a word. It was like honeyed water, dripping slowly,
torturously before a parched traveler—out of reach, far away—and when you
reached for it, gone.

A cough forced its way through her frailty. She seized up in pain, then
stilled. Moving never helped.

A minute passed. Stubbornly she kept her wrinkled eye open, scanning the
room back and forth with bad, desperate vision—she was the man on the edge of a
cliff barely hanging on, prey encircled by predator with nowhere else to go.
Insistently, she did not blink, though she knew sometime, she would have to fall,
be killed and eaten. Then she heard the clock tick once more.

Wobbling on the bed’s edge, she allowed—she had no energy to make—her

leg’s descent, sloth-like in its speed, but jarring in its movement, as though she
were a rock climber in freefall. Her foot, her useless twisted gray cracked foot, hit
the floor. She winced, clutching the sheet as though it were a climber’s rope.
Fondly she remembered those towering peaks her brother liked to climb. They
called him crazy then, before he won the medals. Then they liked him. She smiled
as she thought of it, and glanced up at the wall where she saw the medals glint.
 But what good had they done? Had they saved her brother? Had they paid
for his hospital bills? Were they food, water, shelter? Her brother was dead. The
peaks he climbed were gone, strip-mined, no longer pretty. Yet those medals
glinted, untouched, on the wall—as though to remind her of lost things, as though
to say, “We’re still here.”

She had no time for vengeance. Her second leg drooped of its own accord,
following the first in its drop off the bed. When she had both legs on the ground,
that was when she could try to lift her dizzy, weary head. It made her gag the first
time. She would have retched, except for that she had not eaten any food. She
coughed up blood instead. It made splotches on the bed sheet. Where the red had
faded, her blood restored it. The crumpled yellow blouse she wore gained two
more stains, one on each side, like small red buttons. She did not care. Her head
fell back down to the bed.

Instead of lifting her head, she decided to slide downward, off the edge. She
knew it would hurt, but it was less energy. She dragged the bed sheet, blood and
dust and all, with her as she slid off the hard strict edge—then fell onto her knees,
legs bent under in an awkward position. The fall, onto her knees and the cold wood
floor, sent pain through her legs and made her faint.

It was too hard to stand upright and walk. She would crawl. She was past
humiliation, indignation now. She wanted water, and that was that. Feeling half-
crippled, she dragged herself past old dusty stacks of letters from friends (now
dead, long ago), past the folded evening gowns that reminded her of dances with
spry gentlemen, ballrooms and rich families’ houses…

There, on the old table that had been a gift—from who she didn’t know, nor
care—sat a pitcher of water and a box of pills. The doctor had told her to take them
all—with water, he said. Pills, and water, she thought, as she gulped them down
hungrily, what a breakfast. She was knelt down on the ground in pain, surrounded
by the dusty stacks of letters, evening gowns spun of rich memories, her brother’s
glinting, smirking medals on the wall…

The clock ticked by. Seven minutes had passed since she’d awoke. It had felt
longer, just as the minutes when she was young felt shorter, quicker. No matter.
She looked back at the clock though her neck, twisted and painful, told her not to.
She looked at it with the calculating glower of a fencer, looking at her enemy in the
face, about to begin another duel. Perhaps she had won today, but it had been folly
to think that she would win forever—her enemy’s unceasing, unforgiving minutes
—days—years—marched on blindly. Perhaps she’d thought that she could win?
She had waged a losing war. But today—today was her victory.

THE END.