Her hand, dirt beneath her fingernails, knuckles torn, bruised, wedding ring gone. Only the thin white band of flesh where it had hidden from the sun for so long. She lifted her head little by little recognizing more and more of her own body. Battered like a rag doll loved a little too much. Propped on one elbow her fingers found the button on her jeans and she undid them, pulling the zipper down and reaching inside, slipping beneath the waistband of her underwear to the pain that wriggled within her fingers as she pulled it out and brought it out to the light and closer for her weakened eyes to see. In the puddle of clotted blood that mapped out in her hand lay a fattened leech. She just looked down at it, the bile rising in her throat, and squeezed. Squeezing until it exploded its bloody insides all over her fingers with a hollow pop.
She leaned to her side quickly enough to release a splash of river water and bile. Wriggling her jeans down to her ankles she searched the rest of her body for more creatures that had found their way inside. Two more leeches straining their gripping little bodies against her found their fate as quickly as the first. Finding nothing more she reached into the water for more of the rope that bound her. Using all of what little strength she had, she pulled her anchor to the riverbank beside her. A concrete block entangled with expert knots.
With bleeding fingernails she untied and untwisted the length of rope, finally freeing herself.
Her ankle was swollen thick, rubbed raw and clotting blood.
Naked, wet and dead she rose to a stand and looked around the tree shrouded banks of the river.
Nothing. Just nature and the concrete block. Her reaper. Her death shroud. Distinguished and wrong surrounded by the water the green and the grass and the trees.

This post was originally published on Your Poems, Your Stories at She pulled herself out of the water.