Inversa

The beginning is the end in this upside down Italian melodrama.

Silence in the courtyard, the moon peeking behind heavy cloud cover. Night rolls into day.

A figure wearing beige chinos and a white dress shirt clambers through the kitchen window, his handprints vivid scarlet. A ginger tabby rubs up against his legs. Opens its mouth. A bird falls from it, the head twisted backward, its body in reverse.

The figure wipes his brow. Swaps blood for sweat and sweat for blood.

The woman is still.

But her eyes remain open, sightless, staring.

And then she exhales, blood bubbling on her lips.

An agonised spasm wracks her fine frame, delicate as a dandelion, fragile as a butterfly, her small head haloed by a crimson coronet.

‘You lied, Nico.’ Her voice is saturated in sadness. Surprise. Regret.