air conditioner

When the air conditioner clicked off the smell of death began to seep out of the room like a snake through the cornfields. Slithering its way through the air, a man in Japan looked up, holding his cup of coffee half way and said, “she is dead.”

The children in the apartment below heard the click of the air conditioner go off as well. In this case I say children not because they were young, but because they were her children. They were all adults, and had children of their own, but lived in the flat below her. When the sound of the insistent buzzing went quiet they looked up at the ceiling, a quiet gasp, a moment of silence, of doom filled the apartment and they looked at each other with dread. They knew that one of them had to have the chore of checking up on her, but none of them wanted to visit the old women.

They didn’t know of her demise but they all remembered the last time she hobbled down the wooden stairs with her metal Wallgreen’s cane. She came to their door during dinnertime. With her cane she tapped at the door, with a tap tap echoing down the alley.