"...cold, dead fish."

              I used to get salmon at work and I would cut off the best fillets and throw the skin and the scales into the garbage can. 

             Her body: limp, cold, covered in an oily sweat: reminded me of those salmon. The smell was vaguely the same as well. I woke up to her like this: Just dead beside me on her back. I have woken up to her like that thousands of times, but today I knew that she was dead. I could smell that sweet, sour smell of lingering death. I tasted it in the film in the roof of my mouth.

             I tested the pulse on her neck and wrist and felt nothing but the chill of blood that has stopped pumping. A whole body that has known nothing but pumping blood from six weeks in has now stopped its futile work.

             I propped up a couple of pillows in bed, rubbed my eyes, and looked straight ahead into the dim future. I thought of all the changes I would have to make in my life in order to accommodate this unforeseeable event. I would have to find a new place to live, move all of my things, go to a funeral, probably answer a couple dozen questions about my whereabouts; “I was sleeping beside her all night. I woke up and she was a cold, dead fish.” Well, death has its consequences.

            The morning sun pierced in through a sliver in the curtains. My head ached and my eyes burned. I went down a flight of stairs to piss, I patted the dog on the head as I passed him on the couch, and I went back to bed. I picked up the phone to call the cops, decided against it, rolled over and went to sleep.