petit rouge
The morning started out like any other.
That was the way the trauma therapist told her to start. Lil was supposed to say it, "The morning started out like any other." Then she was supposed to tell about how it really wasn't, how it didn't end like any other morning. How it changed the way the woods were for her, forever.
She hadn't quite made it that far yet.
The therapist was a thin, quiet man; fragile-looking despite his expensive suits and Rolex. His office was, of course, in the City, and Lil rode the train in each Tuesday, 4 weeks now, at considerable expense of the county's Crime Victim's Reparations Fund. Each week the therapist looked with big sad eyes at the mute Lil, and encouraged her to tell the story. He claimed by telling it, Lil would be released from its power. The nightmares would stop. She'd be able to walk in the woods again. She'd be able to look her grandmother in the eye, without screaming. All she had to do was to start, to say it.
"The morning started out like any other."
The words became a chant in her head. Not the therapist's voice, but her own, in continuous loop as she gathered eggs or worked the garden. And the story, too, came into her head like some overwrought art film, all garish colors, and dizzying angle changes. Such vivid detail! She remembered the basket, scratchy wicker against her hand. The way the light dappled through the trees, as she sashayed to her grandmother's house just as she'd done a hundred times before. On those other mornings, like any other. She remembered the smell of the warm biscuits, and the mourning doves, keening softly. And then the wolf appearing on the path, greasy-friendly, inquiring as to her errand.
She supposed the therapist was right--that those details weren't important. It didn't seem that way now. The recollection of the wicker was sandpaper; the steam of the biscuits nauseating. The mourning doves, a warning. If she memorized these things, she thought, then it could never, ever happen again.
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