Omnipresent – O – A to Z Challenge 2019

The images couldn’t leave her mind. They would not leave her alone.

However hard she tried to forget the atrocities she had seen during her childhood. During the warfare in her country of birth.

The streaming blood, the grey and cold limbs covered in dust. Where always there. Haunting her.

She rearranged the flowers. It didn’t help. Fresh roses had been placed on graves. Now, she was trying to sell them. This job she had hoped would not trigger the memories.

The sirens sounded. Terrible images came over her. She wanted to hide, but hiding during the exam was not an option. Here she was safe. Still inside she panicked. The clock indicated that it was noon, the first Wednesday of the month. Every month she started to panic, over and over again.

In the café, the TV was on with the news. She stepped back in horror. Those images felt like the ones she had witnessed without the protective layers of journalism and screens in-between.

She sat down at the kitchen table. Crying, shivering, shaking. She couldn’t lift the fork to her mouth. This time it wasn’t the food, for it was her husband’s cooking. It was the neighbours fighting, yelling for the whole world to hear, slamming doors and breaking plates that took her back to the past.

She had to live with her fears, her memories, always. Everything could trigger the darkest things she had seen to come back. It was raw, even years later. It was omnipresent in her life.