Taking Too Long

The collage looks random but she thinks long about each element. Which bits to use, if they need trimming, where to put them, how to make it look right. It has to looks right.

She is taking too long. Isn’t she always?

The scissors in her hand are trembling again.

It’s the photo’s fault. She doesn’t want to look at it, but not looking at it is not the way to go. She’s tried a few times to cut it to size with eyes closed and each time she dismembered someone.

She pushes the images of stray limbs out of her mind.
The images come back. She mustn’t take this long – the sooner she’s finished, the sooner she’ll get rid of the unwanted images.

She wants to lose herself in her creation.

Once finished, the collage will be a recreation of the minutes before the carnage. She doesn’t need to remind herself of the scene afterwards – she sees it all the time. No, she wants a reminder of what it was like up until then. She wants to pretend time stopped then, and everybody and everything still looks the way it looked then.

She wants to drown out her own useless shout. She’d taken too long to get down there. If she’d not dithered… But she had, and the warning came to late, and the first thing her cousins knew of the bomb was when it exploded.

She’s taking too long again. If she’s careful with the scissors this time, nobody will lose any limbs at least.