Surprised

I found myself momentarily unable to move. This was not a sensation I had experienced before, and it startled me in a way that I am still unable to fully articulate.

My faculties rebooted. Clarity, Zeiss-ground crystalline, instantaneously regained. Seconds passed, stretched taffy-like into subjective minutes as my senses evaluated every aspect of my surroundings, the hindrance of conscious input as absent as the usually present illusion of control.

The smell. Nothing else was out of place – no sound, no sight.

I bent towards her corpse, slowly. Methodically. Olfactory information: she was long, long dead, yet I knew this could not be so.

I reached out my hand to stroke her hair.

She shuddered.