Ode to Molly

A Story by Genevieve

She's just a figure, a small part of the picture held within my hands, but she's also so much more.

They said it was murder. Death is never pretty, but there’s just something about a slit throat that makes something already more than unpleasant just plain ugly.

The pictures are enough to make anyone sick. Features swollen and distorted in death, skin discolored so that it’s hard to tell what she looked like at all. Hair gone wild and caked over with God only knows what, the ends of it stuck to the floor as it fans out all around her face. Her death was harsh…one of the harshest kind there is but she, the woman herself, she is beautiful.

The cop and his partner, they’ve got theories about motive…suspects in mind. Cops are like that. There might have been drugs involved, indirectly. On of her kids is involved in the stuff so they can’t rule it out. There’s an ex-husband floating in and out of the picture who might have had reason to kill her off. There were a couple of close friends who could stand to collect on the life insurance policy depending on the outcome of the criminal investigation. Too early, really, to be able to be sure one way or the other and the CSI guys are still working their magic.

But none of that changes that she is gone now. No matter what is discovered, decided, dragged out into the open, this beautiful woman will still be dead. It was senseless and violent. Does she know peace now that it’s over? No one alive will ever know, though they certainly will hope for it. They’ll pray that her kind soul finds the rest it never quite knew in life.

The coroner, he has to catalogue every inch of her. Scrutinize every crease of skin, every freckle and small hair on her body in his search for evidence. Does he see her though? Does it register somewhere deep within that this vessel was once a person, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a lover? Or is he so weathered with the job that he can become completely detached from it all. Does he simply see all those separate small parts in his quest for the story of her murder or does he connect them all and acknowledge the whole?

Those long blonde locks once fell in waves past proud shoulders. The swelling can do nothing to hide high cheekbones that once gave her that regal appearance. She had a graceful sweep of long neck reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn that even in death holds her head up high. She might have been tired, might have been feeling her age, but she was strong and that was enough to get her through.

I didn’t know her. I barely even know her name. It’s sad to know that, to me, she will unfortunately always be that woman from the pictures, the one who in the pose of her death managed to break my heart and make me cry.

I don’t know her but the tears fall all the same and perhaps they are selfish, because really I have no right to feel misery here when I am not the one who has suffered.

So I find myself wondering what her life was like and hoping it was filled with love and joy enough to eclipse the unfortunate end. I pray to those I love who have left this world that she find her way to them and the peace she deserves and I hope to hell that the monsters who hurt her are found and punished for what they have done.

I didn’t know her but I hope that somehow she knows that tears have fallen for her and that to me she will always be beautiful.