​As If Choked

I was born with patches of brown in the dippets of my throat and neck.

As if choked, said the doctor.

How accurate he was.

I remembered how I’d died when I was five. Big hands – white as milk but scarred with cigarettes – had wrapped around my neck. Pressed down. Counting. Holding even longer than my last breath.

I was so fortunate that he did it in front of me. I could see his baby blue eyes, sheathed in ice and some modicum of pleasure. His snarling mouth that slowly shifted to a smile as my vision darkened, moving to whisper each second as it passed.

That vision would never leave me.

When I’d grown enough that my fingers worked as spider legs, firm and reliable, and I could sit up and walk without fail, I used the time it took my new mother to make me Mac and cheese to get to the iPad and unlock it.

Then I went to google. Looked up my name, which had always been an echo in my ear. Not the same as the one I’d been given 5 years ago. It was a shame; I liked my previous surname.

Edith Rose. Died at 25 years old. Strangulation. Killer caught.

I had just smiled, relieved, when I caught the criminal’s mugshot. Then I felt my heart plummet.

The man staring at me, eyes wide and fearful, was black.