I stopped looking around knowing, there had to be someone watching me. The streets were so quiet, dark, wet from the storm passed.
It raged as I took his life.
I stood on this corner, this damned corner, and listened.
The drip drip drip, was it the few remaining drops refusing their fall from trees finally made to let go and plunge to their collections, or was it the blood coming from my hands?
My mind was as cold as my skin as I thought, remembering the few short moments ago.
I was standing at his door; I always loved his door. There were flowering vines in the spring surrounding the door. The deep red brick looked happy to entertain the dark green vines with splashes of sun yellow flowers that climbed it with ease.
I stood and listened to distant thunder. It matched the rolling wrath in my heart, and thoughts caught in the cauldron of my mind.
My girl, she was my girl and he ruined her. Her smile would not come easy any more; her pale face now white as winter snow yet void of the promises it could bring. Her eyes, once a deep and serious shade of the favorite, now seemed black and as if she had seen her own death, resisted dying, simply to sit inside the moment, and waited for it still.
Her body, so slim, so tall, covered in bruises and blood; her blood, was still in my eyes as if she stood before me now.
How?
He was our friend, he was my companion. How could he find it inside him to terrorize her, to molest her to, ruin such a rare thing as a genuine woman?
I put my hand on the handle to his door. I twisted it slowly as more thunder rolled in the distance. The handle unlatched easily; the door, was unlocked.
I opened it slowly and came into a dark foyer. No, candle no gas light, no light at all.
It made me think again of my self, sitting in the study of my beloveds fathers home.
Now here, my heart ached and my mind went rolling with the thunder as I stepped quietly into his lovely home. He had no wife, mother or sister living with him, but the home was so lovely you would swear this home had known a woman’s kind touch.
I walked through his familiar hall, now feeling as if I had entered yet another mockery of what was once familiar and good.
I felt in my coat pocket. There I had a knife my father had used during one of the campaigns he had fought for the sovereign in his time.
The blade was long and curved slightly. It was cold. I felt the strange reassurance and excitement it summoned deep within me.
I pulled it out slowly while walking to his den.
I opened the door slowly and saw him sitting before a warm fire reading a book. The room was warmly lit and comforting. It smelled of savory meat cooked not long ago, and smoke from his pipe.
He picked up his brandy and took a leisurely sniff from its wide crystal top, then took a small sip.
Outside the rain began to fall in great sheets and I froze in place thinking he might turn towards the door I had left open. The sound was coming in louder from the foyer, but all I could hear very clearly, was the beating of my own heart. It seems so loud, as if the bastard himself might turn any second to see what new rhythm was so loud behind him.
He picked his book up again to continue reading. I was so close; I could read the words myself. I stood, and looked at him a moment more. I feel the heat of the fire, but I was still cold, so very, cold inside.
I spoke his name softly. I wanted him to look me in the eye.
He turned and looked startled for a moment, but then smiled and said my name. He called me old man and invited me in for a brandy. He started to stand and I thought to knock him to the floor then, but instead put the blade behind my leg and allowed him to stand.
He smiled still, speaking of how he did not even hear me come in and how I must have just walked in before the rain because I looked dry.
He kept talking but I heard nothing but my own miserable thoughts, saw terrible visions of my beloved molested and broken, crying silent tears.
I looked into his eyes and noticed, they were a dull blue. They looked void of any real happiness or depth. Were they always so dead? Have I really been so blind all of this time?
His false smile finally faded and he was asking me something about my demeanor. He started to look uneasy. I pulled the blade from behind me.
He looked confused at first, but then, oh then, his dreadful true face surfaced.
He smiled. It was ghastly.
Outside the thundered roared as an angered and wounded beast, and then rolled slowly through the ripped air. I felt as if it was there for me, to cover me and allow me this moment, to see what had to be seen, and to do what I must.
It was my accomplice.
I didn’t think when I struck him, I simply lashed out with the butt of the knife.
I hit him squarely between his dead light eyes.
He fell over hard sounding like a fallen statue on a marble floor. The thud made me worry if I had I killed him.
I knelt next to him and pulled him close to me. I sat his upper body on me as if he were one of my children. I set the knife on the ground and felt his pulse in his neck. He was alive.
I looked at his chest. The question that burned in me every since I found my dear one in her garden, bleeding and naked and speaking his name.
The cold I felt seemed to become deeper, and my soul, in silence, accepted my corrupted curiosity.
I put the knife to his throat just under his right ear. I slide the blade to the center of his throat parting pale flesh into a gaping wound. I watched as crimson life splashed against his furniture, his floor, his fire place. His eyes flew open and he tried to cry out. All he managed were drowning croaks, spitting bloody pleads out into the air for no one to hear but me.
I ignored them all.
Instead, I was drawn to his eyes, now alive and blazing fear from his blood splattered face.
I wondered, was he making the same face my love did when he was trying to steal her life.
He made lame attempts to pull himself up or push me from him, but he was never going to succeed in freeing himself from the fate he created. He struck out and hit my face, my chest the furniture around us. All dripped with his blood, growing sticky now freed from its machine.
Though I wanted my question answered, I felt no need to hurry. I wanted him to be afraid, to feel pain, and to feel his life draining from him.
He soon started to wane. I did not want him to go before I went in once more to get an answer to my question. I raised my arm high, knife shining in the mellow light of the fire. I plunged the blade deep into his chest, feeling bone break and sinew snap. He groaned out a louder sound of pain, but I ignored him. I stabbed and stabbed until his chest became a mass of holes and torn flesh. His breathing stopped, all sound and motion from him, over.
I placed the blade back into my coat and breathed. I reached to his chest and began to find the answer to my question.
I was able to push the ragged flesh and bone aside and see into his chest
The light was the same as when we started this work, but I felt it growing dim as I reached into his chest.
I let him fall off my legs,.
I pulled myself over to the fire on elbows and knees; my left arm shaky from over exertion and looked into my hands. The light was well enough to see, but I didn’t understand the sight.
I stared into my dripping hands and felt hot tears burning my tired eyes.
I put my hands on the floor, and rested a moment more, then decided I needed very badly to leave this place.
I stood, slipping in his blood once then righting myself, and ran from his home.
Now, here, standing still, breathing easier and listening to the dripping of what I know not, and thinking back; I feel vexed and alone.
I was so sure, what my answer would be. How was I wrong?
After all of this and I was still sure of what I would see.
I was sure.
I was so sure, his heart, would be black.
