“Raymond!” Marta screamed. Her heart threatened to leap through her chest and her lungs burned with exhaustion.
He can’t be dead, she thought. Even yesterday when the runner had limped out of the triple canopy forest bearing the bad news of Suman’s and Raymond’s deaths, she refused to believe.
Maybe he didn’t die. My husband isn’t a man of war.
Marta continued to sprint toward the four men bearing the bodies of two fallen comrades. She saw sadness, fatigue and shame on their faces.
He doesn’t look like Raymond, she thought with a spark of hope. She stopped just short of the tired and beaten men. But she knew it was him. His soul was gone, taking with it all his identifiable character and charm.
Her eyes focused on the gruesome puncture mark and dried blood on his thigh. It was too much. The knot gripping her stomach loosened and she became sick. She could barely feel herself fall on Raymond’s chest. It was as if she watched the scene from outside of her body. She heard her good friend Numah anguishing over her man’s equally lifeless body.
Marta couldn’t feel the arms of others trying to comfort her. Everything she had grown accustomed to now seemed foreign.
Who keeps screaming Raymond’s name? She couldn’t feel her body or hear her own screams. For the first time in her life, Marta was completely numb.
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