The story of Mrs Clarissa Dalloway
At first light, in the center of London, it is already very hot this summer. Suddenly, the sound of a broken window slams into the street, followed by endless seconds of silence and a soft noise on the sidewalk. The few passers-by, early-risers, cleaning ladies, startup workers, scream in horror, their bodies and faces splattered with blood. The shouts wake Clarissa up with a start. She gets out of bed, puts on a robe, crosses the huge living room of her apartment, goes out on her balcony, leans over and sees a disarticulated body in a grotesque position, lying in a pool of blood, straddling the pavement and the street. Seen from her perspective, it looks like a child's drawing of a clumsy little character running.
“Where is he running to?” she thought. Some passers-by stop and take a picture of the body, some take the opportunity to take a few selfies, hoping to make a buzz for a fifteen minutes glory on social networks. The others don't have time, they have to go to work, some to manage teams, others because they have to obey their managers. Why stop ? She thought.
In truth, Clarissa is not trying to understand what is happening. Her husband is away on business in San Francisco; her lover is not responding to her text messages. What if it was her lover who had just killed himself under her window ? The idea makes her smile. During her breakfast, alerts appear on her cell phone: it will be even hotter today; nearly ten thousand people are expected to die in England today, but most of them very old, or migrants or the poor; the riots in the suburbs are ending, the rioters are starving. What a world, she thinks. What fools.
At the end of a lazy day, it was far too hot to go shopping, Clarissa takes a walk to Abbey Woods to get some fresh air. The sky suddenly darkens with the sound of breaking glass. But Clarissa sees nothing. An ink-black raven hovers over her head. Clarissa sees nothing, realizes nothing, ten thousand years have whitened the lenses of her eyes, generation after generation, by dint of work, discipline, morals and betrayals.
The raven lands, then walks towards her, positioning itself between her legs, as if it were melting into her, like big black hairy sex. Clarissa feels it enter her, but she still sees nothing : she has done nothing in her life, nothing that prepares her for what is coming, for the biocide in which she has carefully participated. Nothing allows her to see, neither outside nor inside. There is nothing left. Neither Mrs. Dalloway, who has forgotten that she has to join a charity event that evening, nor Clarissa in the middle of this forest that is drying up.