A promise I leave tucked in his shirt pocket, whispered beneath the relentless press of the pellets raining down on us.
Hunks of flesh and ligaments cling to my blade, the serrated teeth keeping the man’s pride and dignity trapped within. I brush them off and watch them fall back into the mud, back to the filth they belong.
I’m just about to bend down and pick up his lost tongue when a streak of black hits my eye. The familiar sound of my baby tearing through the trees as he fights to find a way to get to me.
“Ronan, I kept you inside for a reason...”
The wrong set of dark eyes meet mine.
Intense and unblinking while water drips from his thick mass of hair and tumbles down his face.
Crystal droplets are wasted on the scruff of his jaw and the soft plush of his lips. The same lips that promised to hold me tight, not knowing the only monster in the room was the one wrapped between his arms.
“I thought someone had taken you.”
A confession that needles its way past my skin and triggers the bruising to settle in.
“I thought you might be hurt. I thought...” He trails off, rainwater streaming past the unformed syllables and shattering against the forest floor.
“You hunt men.”
It’s not a question.
The chasm that has always divided us grows in size. Inhales a gust of air and pushes the extremity of our positions to opposite ends of an uncrossable gorge.
A man and a woman standing ten feet apart.
Ten feet that has never felt quite so far.
“I hunt men.”
Christopher closes his eyes, sealing them to the apology mother nature rains down on him. My unfallen tears drenching his skin until there’s not a piece to be saved.
“They took everything from me.”
It’s not an explanation but it forces my eyes onto the man bleeding out beside me.
“For years, they took until I had nothing left to give.” Raindrops shatter across my cheeks, replacing the tears that ran out years ago, “And then they took some more.”
“All men?”
His voice is hoarse, stripped of any form of protection.
“The ones who hurt women.”
If it was possible for a monster to feel shame, I imagine that is what I would be feeling right now.
“And the men my mother orders me to kill.”
Christopher finally looks away.
Something close to disappointment settles in the empty part of my chest. Too callous and rotten to be of use, I push it aside and return to the job at hand.
“What are you doing.”
A question I ignore, my focus already splintered from the reflection glittering through Christopher’s eyes.
Moving from one broken body to another, I kneel gently beside the dead woman. Too young to be remembered yet too old to be forgotten.
