by Neta Shlain
still water
So
many things went wrong that year for Frida: boyfriend breakup, patient death,
adultery, abortion. Her hospital shifts commenced at dusk and ended at dawn only
to be repeated a few hours later. This carousel ride was reaching its
end.
Day in day out Frida felt it rising in her stomach as if she were a volcano
getting ready to give in to the hot pressure of melting rock.
It is said that magma takes a minimum of seven hundred degrees Celsius to
become what it is.
It took Frida six months to be ready for her silent eruption. Every event
during that time contributed a pulsation, a thump that burrowed
deeper,
crystallising an idea into a fascinating plan.
Fascination isn’t easy to overcome or satisfy. It is something unreasonable
that grows on you. Frida’s fascination resembled a chronic illness that has
taken over, repeatedly presenting itself until she was wrapped in it like a fly
in a spider-web. It had become shockingly comforting to resort to it during the
day every time something went wrong.
On the night of her crime, Frida took a halt to ponder over the fact that as
an army nurse her life didn’t belong to her, in the case of survival she’d be
punished. To make sure the plan worked she added twenty more Temazepams to the
pile of fifty in her stomach.
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