Who of the Last Will Come

The woman approaching Grigor wore a headscarf and dress trimmed in beads of opal. Her nose sloped between dusky eyes in a long gentle arc like the last quarter of a rainbow. She held a gilded bowl that on second glance was hollowed-out pumpkin spilling over its sides a goop like rotten cranberries.

"It's der-lishes," said the woman. The spilled mass at her feet was moving, festering. The woman was backlit and moved closer to him. Her body corked the vanishing point of the tube station's far-off end. She held it to his face.

"It is so godawfully foul, why can't I smell it?" he said in revulsion. He inhaled deeply, horrified, his face twisted.

Grigor opened his eyes, his vision draped in ochre red, the room filled with the faint scent of his own tussled bedsheets.