As I watch the fight leave his body, the dread tightens my muscles. The guilt for killing him is wading on the surface of my mind, but killing this woman is the monster lying beneath it. Can I really bring myself to do this? I’ve lived by two things my entire life: that women are sacred, and children are innocent. I don’t hurt them—I protect them. The worst part of it all is that there’s no choice. It’s either this woman, or my wife. Images of Ashia flood my head again, and the one that sticks out the most in this moment, is the evening she laid on our kitchen floor.
I imagine her lifeless body. Her head was so heavy and limp when I picked it up. No matter how hard I tried to wake her up, she just wouldn’t. The emptiness I felt in that moment isindescribable. I can’t go through that again. I can’t lose my wife…
When I look back down at the man, I realize he’s stopped moving. His eyes are still, and there aren’t any breaths beating against my palm. I move my hands away and pull the letter opener out of his neck gently. It slides out easily, but it only contradicts the difficulty of this assignment—how hard it is for me to do this. My eyes find the woman once again, and she hasn’t moved an inch.
The relief I feel makes me hate myself even more.
I move silently around the bed, treading carefully on the off chance that she wakes somehow. My heart starts to pound against my ribs once again, and my arms feel like static. The hum slithers around my spine and up to my neck, making the room tilt. Everything inside of me is telling me not to do this. The moment I take this woman’s life, everything changes. I’m vile. I’m retched.
I’m a liar.
My eyes are glued to her face. As my vision throbs with my pulse, I can’t help but remember every detail. Her cheeks, her hair, and how warm and flush her skin appears all engrave into my memory. The regret is carving scars into the walls of my heart, but it doesn’t matter. How I feel right now is irrelevant. She’ll never know the grief or the remorse I feel. Even in the afterlife, she won’t know how sorry I am. She’ll just be another face that haunts me. Her spirit will take every step that I do from this day forward. I might as well become acquainted with it now.
Slowly, I reach over and pull the pillow out from under her head. She falls back so softly that her hair barely moves. The same peaceful, deep expression is on her face, and somehow that only makes this even worse. Maybe she won’t wake up. Perhaps when she does, she’ll be waking up on a beach or some far away dreamland. Maybe she’ll wake up at the lake. Wherever it is, it’llbe better than this. It’ll be exactly what she deserves. I have to grit my teeth to keep my lip from quivering, but my eyes still sting with tears.
“I’m so sorry…” I can’t help but whisper, even though she doesn’t hear me. My fists close around the sides of the pillow, and I press it to her face timidly before putting more pressure behind it. My entire body feels heavy, like I’ll never be able to move freely again. At first, she doesn’t move. Even as I press a little harder, I don’t feel anything, but then my chest twists in a torturous way.
She stirs, and as a tear of mine falls onto the pillow, I press even harder. I need to do this quickly. I don’t want her to be in pain. She doesn’t deserve to know what’s going on—she’s too pure for that. Her hands lift off the bed, and they attempt to move towards my arms, but she’s unable to pull them up completely. Even in her drugged state, she’s trying to fight me. She’s just like me, and nothing like me all at once. We’re both too weak to fight back, but she’s the only innocent person in the room.
I’m the villain here. I’ve become everything I swore to destroy. I’m a monster. It’s despicable. I’m killing a woman when she doesn’t even have the strength to fend me off.
“I’m so fucking sorry…” I choke out, and almost like she heard me, her arms fall back to the bed. Silent sobs wrack my agonizing form, and I don’t care if they’re watching. They’ve broken me. I can’t sink any lower than this.
I jerk away from the pillow like it burned me, and I just stare at my hands. They tremble and move hypnotizingly under my tears. Blood still covers my palms and arms, and now that it’s all over the pillow, it’s wiped away. But they’re stained. Her death with forever be on my hands. I can feel the darkness taking over, and I can’t bear it.
As I look away, I glance at the nightstand again. I don’t deserve to know anything about her, and it’s not that anything would change, but I need to know that at one point she was happy. That no matter what they wanted her dead for, that she lived a full life. The world needed her smile, or she wouldn’t have been here to begin with. They obviously cherished their life so fully that they kept it in the forest and away from all of the evil that lurks just beyond the trees. The objects on the nightstand are the same as any other innocent person’s, and I can’t help but reach out for it.
I bring the picture up to my face and take a closer look. She is smiling happily and stands beside the man I just murdered. Their eyes are locked on one another as they encircle their arms around their world’s. They both have cheerful emotions on their faces, and they look like a happy family. Maybe now, they can be at peace togeth—
Family.
This is a family portrait.
The man, the woman, and…two kids. A boy and a girl, both about eight to ten years old, stand in front of them. Their little faces look just as happy, but my heart rips in two at the sight.
I have two cards… Cinque has two cards…
Oh, God. No!
I drop the photo and sprint out of the room, not giving a single fuck how it shatters behind me. The edges of my vision are throbbing red, and my heart is racing faster than it ever has before. I haven’t moved this quickly in weeks, and now my body is in overdrive, trying to make up for the neglect. My limbs pull and tear at every step, but I push through, sprinting around the corner and up the stairs.
There are soft creaks coming from the top, like somehow even the house is trying to alert me to what I fear is happening, and I push myself even harder. I trip on the last couple of steps andscramble back up, desperate to stop him before it’s too late. My body aches with the effort, but I can’t let it stop me. I can’t let anything stop me—not from this. Ashia will understand. They’ll probably kill us all because I intervened, but I can’t sit by and allow children to die.
There’s one door closed in this hallway, and I immediately run to it, as if their spirits are guiding me. I’m sure my steps can be heard from outside with how loud and frantic they are, but Ihaveto get there. It doesn't matter if I fuck this up anymore. I can’t let this happen. I can’t let this happen.I can’t let this happen!
I burst through the closed door, and every bit of life is sucked out of the room. My chest burns as all of the air is forced out, and my head immediately aches with how intensely I’m focusing on the scene in front of me. A ringing takes over my ears. The space is dark, but it doesn't mask the innocence that was taken away. It reeks of iron, and the air is heavy, like even the Reaper had to cover the death.
I’m too late…
The world comes to a stop. That bite from the cold outside forces its way into the house and conjures right in this spot. It hurts. It all fucking hurts so much, and I don’t have the right to feel their pain. I can’t fucking breathe. The demon inside me cowers, and I almost collapse on myself. My entire body quakes as I force myself to move, and this life becomes the ultimate punishment.
My legs fail me. I stumble back, and the room instantly sways. Swipes of darkness and red cloud my vision, and bile instantly rises in my throat. I’m sick. I’m too sick. Cinque turns to look at me, and the moment I see his face covered in splatters, I gag.
Screams start to play through my head, almost as if the veil between this world and the next has parted so I can hear them. Guilt assaults me in a violent attack, hitting me right in the chestwith the harshest of blows. The walls close in around me, and the shadows jump off them to claw at my limbs. Their talons are burning with the embers from hell, and they were scorched, especially for me. They're tearing and ripping into my skin, digging so far down that I can feel them in my bones. My body burns more with every second that passes, and I know they’re claiming me now. Voices echo in my head, and they collide in a stampede as they overwhelm my psyche.
Murderer…
My body forces itself over, and I retch. Each heave feels like a hit from God, and even the muscles in my back tear as punishment. I crawl away like a coward, unable to look at the scene before me any longer.
