The Last Few Moments of Eloisa July
If you listen closely, you can hear it: the lullaby hum of the city. The rush of traffic speeding its familiar way home along side-streets, the deep and constant whirring of fans blowing thick, hot air from buildings overhanging the roads. Lorries reversing, high-heels clicking, dogs barking and the chatter and blur of people conversing.
Sunday evening in Paris, the last day of summer, and these moments; these were the final moments of her life. Eloisa July lay flat on her stomach, trapped under five and a half tons of rubble and debris; the steak she had been eating was still warm inside her mouth. Her eyes would not open, but she could sense the darkness that cocooned and enclosed her. She could feel it, more surely than she could perceive her own body. It was as if during the falling, her body had become absent from the rest of her. She was aware of it, but it felt distant and unfamiliar to her, as though being imagined by somebody else.
Everything slowed, and her life––like a faulty pipe––split open, while she lay motionless in a shower of moments belonging only to her:
The velvety feel of the brick-red lipstick in her grandmothers bedroom, laying bullet-shaped next to the vanity mirror. She could feel it thick on her lips and the papery sensation of blotting the excess onto two sheets of folded toilet tissue.
The view of newly cut grass shrivelling into whiskers of pale straw and the bulk of a satchel resting under her knees.
The smiling eyes of a lover.
The changing weight of her body as she swam.
The drop of her stomach and her heart on fire as two mouths felt the heat of a kiss.
She smelled the chlorinated odour of a swimming pool mixed with something foreign, musty, sweet. She was six years old again and learning to float. Her young legs kicked out behind her as she fought to keep sight of the rippling surface above her. Rubble and debris fell into the pool.
The night crackled, spluttered, and eventually stopped. The silence dropped down from out of the night like a sudden inhale, an unexpected pause. Four seconds, two breaths; her eyes blinked open, saw stillness, then eventually closed. The lullaby hum of the city returned, and as one life was left behind, a new one began. The city began again.
