"Habitat" by Scott Cumming

Her new habitat had been untouched for years. Decades, perhaps. The fauna orgiastically entwined around her form. Brittle branches snapped where she'd landed. The blunt fingers of blunter minds pressing into her back and shoulders. Pressuring and demanding obedience.

Patches of sky sparkled in her eyes through beatific sun or many speckled stars. The natives traversed her veins like roadways. Her lower half sex doll splayed in the dirt. Not invitingly, but all used up.

The streetlights didn’t reach her. She remained undisturbed and unseen. She knew nothing of the necklace clasp snapped. Nor smelled the tang of exhaust fumes wafting in like an accusing abuser who no longer shook her. 

They called with no response. They searched and searched the last known whereabouts only feet from where she lay. In that time, new generational trauma was born because life must come from death.

Every type of driver came and went.  Horns blaring, tyres screeching, the tailgaters, the joyriders. The sirens wailed past unknowing to other scenes of cursed domesticity. Her bruises would never fade. Her name and face would be replaced in the headlines by her killer’s. The victim’s lot is to be forgotten. That is, if they are ever found.

Scott Cumming unsuspectingly went to see Garden State wearing his Shins tee. He has been published at The Daily Drunk, Punk Noir Magazine, Versification, Mystery Tribune and Shotgun Honey. His poem, “Blood on Snow”, was voted the best of Outcast Press Poetry Things We Carry issue and nominated for a Pushcart. His collection, A Chapbook About Nothing, was released in December as part of Close to the Bone's First Cut series.

Twitter: @tummidge Website: https://scottcummingwriter.wordpress.com/