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coursing blood had coagulated. Her usual fleshy lips were drained of color and slightly parted to reveal yellowed teeth. If she was breathing, he couldn't detect it. There was a musty odor about the woman, an odor of things not alive. Only the splotches of the too red rouge applied to her sallow cheeks gave color to her death mask. It looked to Driver as though the undertaker had been called away from his grim task before the job was completed. |
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Lastly, and this was the thing that made him recoil, there was a large, gaping hole in the middle of her ample bosom, where her heart had once been. |
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Driver's breath lodged in his constricted throat and he reeled backward, the towel dropping from his hand, revealing his nakedness. |
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Flora appraised him, her dead eyes slowly scanning him. "I've been waiting for you to come home," she said softly. Her voice was somehow fragmented, something apart from what he was witnessing. |
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Driver tried to respond, but his words never materialized. |
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"You're later than usual, Colonel, but I knew if I waited patiently that eventually you would come home to me." |
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He was on the verge of panic when he pushed his way past the woman and ran down |
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