A Crime Scene



The golden edges of the pancakes are speckled with pores. The pores are gushing syrup, like a grisly cross-section in a biology textbook. The fork and knife that had come with the plate were sticky with dark brown. It was almost as if she had been handed a crime scene, the utensils the discarded weapons. No signs of cuts or stabbing. Blunt force trauma might have made more sense, but the buttered top of the stack looked intact. Perhaps they just began to bleed through every available orifice.

Across the street the police are still excavating the basement of the motel. She pushes the pancakes away, her appetite having been bled dry.