Backlit

I woke to screaming. My head ached from too many tequila shots. Okay, I remembered that much. Dry grass crackled underneath me. Lying on the ground outside…oh, my, an all-time low.

Opening my eyes to palm fronds swaying in a blue sky, I sat up abruptly. My mind whirled with the sudden motion and confusion.

Another scream propelled me to my feet. The shrieks were coming from a black-haired woman clutching at the doorway of the bungalow. As she started toward me, I realized she was Jules’s new girlfriend, Gabrielle.

How had I ended up outside Jules’s bungalow?

Beside me now, Gabrielle shouted, “You killed Jules!”

“Jules?” I looked at the pink stucco-faced bungalow, my face contorting. No, not Jules, so beautiful, so alive. I could see him smiling, calling me Elizabeth, a name only my mother used. Until him. Gabrielle had to be wrong. I lurched toward his house. “We’ve got to do something, help him.”

Inside, the shutters closed in a rotting, sweet odor, but I hurried toward his bedroom, the place where we’d spent the most time.

Jules sat up on the bed, naked; I could see that through the blood. His handsome face, which I used to gaze at in lovesick despair, stared past me vacantly, his mouth in an unfamiliar grimace.

My photos of him were tacked on the wall facing his bed. Perfection that I’d captured. And now the ruined face before me. Gelatinous chunks covered the wall where clots of blood glued his hair. The exploded head was like a picture cut up into crazy angles and then pasted back together.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

I never threw up, no matter how much alcohol I drank. A point of pride. But the blood and the brains… I ran to the adjoining bathroom I’d used those nights I stayed with Jules, sticky from lovemaking.

Tears flowed down my face as I retched. The medicinal smell of tequila came back at me, mixed with blood that spattered the claw of my hand as I held back my hair, sticky with hair spray.

Inside the house came male voices, their radios sounding robotic commands.

“The killer’s in there!” Gabrielle cried.

A knock on the door and then a stern voice called, “Ma’am, you need to come out now.”

“Just a second,” I gasped.

“Now! I’m going to bust down this door.”

I dragged myself to my feet, wiping my mouth with a tissue, trying to banish the picture of Jules’s shattered head from my mind. What had happened? How had I gotten here? My head still buzzed as if more than alcohol was in my system. What had I taken?

I startled as the officer bumped against the door hard enough to make it rattle on its frame. “I’m coming in,” he shouted.

As I turned the knob, I caught sight of my blood-streaked face in the bathroom mirror. My eye makeup had run, creating morbid black patterns down my cheeks.