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“I’m sorry.” He says.
You think it not unkindly: you feel like you should. But then, it doesn’t matter a whole lot, now. There’s no purpose in harboring hate or insult when it could be one of the last things you’ll feel. You think maybe, if you could forgive him, some god would be merciful upon you.
He sits in your kitchen, occupying a dining-room chair. Pushed out from the table and placed purposefully on the edge of the room, just where the hallway starts. As if he’s been waiting for you to walk down it - truthfully, you don’t want to think about how long he has. If he’s memorized the photos on your wall, what you have in your fridge - the few dirty dishes in the sink, if he’s made meticulous notes to himself about the smaller details. You don’t want to know.
You don’t even want to know if he sees you in any of it, if your face matches the wicker chairs or the white linen curtains. If any of it matches the fear you have right now.
You stand adjacent to him, face to face, his steel-toed boot pointed in the direction of your bare feet. There’s a dime on his left thigh, just before the crease of his knee. Not tails, like you had said it would be.
There’s a beat, where you look around the room - not seeking a saving grace but thinking, maybe, a wall would have an answer. Of where to go from here, how to face the shroud before it drops - because you don’t think you have the strength to do it on your own.
It’s only then that you stare at him, just as he does to you. You can’t find it in you to cry, or to scream. You offer a delayed nod to his apology, your hands moving on their own volition to grip the fabric of your nightgown.
Your eyes fall, seeing the doctored up gun on his higher lap - silenced to a T. You wonder then, if he lives the same way - silent.
“This is it?” You ask, only realizing how foolish it must’ve sounded until it had already been spoken. You see your face mirrored in the metal of the cylinder, you think of water, how one drip in a pond sends ripples all the way to the rocks and reeds.
“Yes, it is.” He’s soft spoken, in a way you wouldn’t have thought of in any other context. Yes, of course it is. Your nostrils burn, you curl your lips back in turn of it. Maybe he could sense fear - like a mountain dog, if he can smell the thick scent through his own nostrils, and if he only craves this more because of it.
You bring your fingers up to your lips, only now feeling the needling pressure of tears pierce through your eyes. You muster an ‘okay’ the best you can, not attempting to fight away that which cannot be fought. It’s a struggled action, but he hums in response to it — like it was a praise. You’re doing what you should be.
“It’s good, that you’re preserving your dignity. It’s good.” He coos, in a way you can’t differentiate from sincerity or mockery. Both, probably.
Your fingers curl, and you push your knuckles against your lips, nodding once more as your eyes screw shut. Obsidian molting and hardening into a thick stone that nests in the tube of your throat, already feeling itchy as warm tears run down your cheeks and neck. There’s nowhere to fulfill your want to hide, to burrow in a hole and get away from his stare.
Your sob takes form of a light shriek, muffling when you cover your mouth with the base of your palm. Your legs feel caught in quicksand to the knee, you can’t move, you can’t pull away. Your head cranes away from his direction.
“Look at me.”
You whimper like an animal. Terrified in a way you’ve never been before at the pure - unadulterated, even tone of his voice. Like he was only asking you the weather, eyes scanning across you like the morning news. You wonder if you’ll be on the morning news.
You shake your head, hiccuping against your skin. Crying like a child who’s lost their mother at the market. You can envision what you’d look like in a coffin, you cry like you’re already looking down upon yourself at the church alter. Then, you think it’d be closed casket, instead.
“Look. At me.” He speaks like he’s not used to repeating himself. Not keen on it, either. You choke on your breath in the process of catching it, breathing in sharply and finally turning your head to face him like he wants. The lack of agency in your actions makes you want to vomit, you’re falling apart and he hasn’t even sat up from his seat. One that’s no longer yours, now that he’s touched it.
He tilts his head, raises his hand and flexes his index finger downward, referencing the hand over your mouth. Be good, and lower it. Your eyebrows curl so hard it hurts, your skin chapped. The gesture revolts you.
The humiliation it brings upon strikes entirely deep-rooted, you can feel it bloom in your stomach like a lush spring. Can feel the branches of it spread throughout your insides, foresting stems along the lining of your small intestine, crushing the whole of you with a finely grown tree: where there is no separation between you and it.
You do lower your hand, keeping it at your stomach — as if it’d hide the feeling away from him.
Your agony isn’t beautiful. It isn’t artistic, it isn’t reverend and it’ll never be noticed. A string of snot connects from your nose to your lip, your bottom lip curling and quivering. You allow yourself the privilege of shuddering into the open air.
“People have died in worse places, conditions.” As if he thinks that’s the problem - like he has no problem with roping you in with every other life he’s taken. You shake your head.
“This is my death,” Saying it makes you feel disillusioned. Verbalizing it, making it real. Knowing still, it already was.
“It doesn’t matter how others have -“ It’s difficult to finish. Your nose burns, you can’t stop shaking your head. You can’t stop crying, can’t stop sniffing and hiccuping and gasping, “-it doesn’t. Not now.” You swallow, moving one of your hands to wipe the tears from your eyes, pressing your fingers into your cheeks and ridding them away. “It’s mine.”
“Yes - of course.” His eyes narrow, otherworldly in nature and primal in principle. He takes a deep, measured breath before pinching the coin on his thigh between his thumb and index fingers, holding it up to you; to show the justice of it. Then, he rises from his seat, his opposite hand holding the neck of his gun like a vice. He makes the effort to take a step towards your dinner table. Still, his eyes never leave yours.
There, he places the dime. Just before the vase in the middle of it, making no sound as its cradled against the tablecloth. The oxymoron of it all lying in the fact that his gun grazes against the florals of your tablecloth when he turns to face you properly.
You have to look up to meet his gaze. He’s tall and encompassing as anything - as you’d expect. His firearm is leveled at his belt, still pointed at you: almost righteously. You blink slowly, catching the tears that fall from it with your fingers. You try to pretend it’s not there, that it’s just him. You realize that’s not comforting, either.
“Is it death, that you’re afraid of?” He asks you. And, obviously, yes - but it’s still so much more than that. Perhaps, it’s not the death itself, but the -
“I don’t want to die alone.” Your voice comes out as a whisper, your mouth curling down as you whimper against your clenched teeth. Again, the act of saying it out loud. “I don’t. Not by myself.”
He raises his chin, listening as you try to even your breath, staring like he’s been starving for years, and you’ve been prepared medium-rare. You doubt death means to him, what it means to
you. Now, and forevermore. Whatever he is, he’s not human, he’s not of your class or species.
“I’m here.” He says. You don’t even know what to begin to make of it. Pause for a moment, unsure if he’s meant it in a way that’s supposed to offer comfort, or if he’s just laying out what’s in front of you: the obvious. He didn’t particularly seem like the type to do so, though.
“I’m afraid.” You say to him.
“Of me.”
“Yes.” You hear a click as he turns the safety onto his gun. You look down at the hand that holds it, but he clicks his tongue. Assuming from the action, that he doesn’t want you to look at it.
So, you don’t. You look up at him - despite the mess that you are. He doesn’t seem to mind, but you didn’t think he would, anyway. It’s safe to assume he’s used to this, the song and dance of it all. He nods his head back in a come hither motion, you do.
You’ve beckoned into the wolf’s maw, nose twitching. Your feet position between his boots, close enough now that you can feel him breathe on the crown of your head. Can see his sideburns, the curl of his hair as it frames his jaw.
Your pupils are blown to hell, and you wrap your fingers around the opening of his jacket, gripping the denim tighter than you have anything else. You’re almost ashamed of how desperate you are for solace. Adding an additional layer, that it’s his version of it. Enough that you press your forehead into his collarbone, weeping your woes to the buttons of his shirt.
He brings his free hand up to the back of your neck, pressing you further to him. Petting your hair, like one would a dog. Your mind tries to convince your subconscious that it’s comforting - but it’s just insulting.
“I’m scared.” You hiccup out, eyes open wide, feeling stilted. Feeling sick, frankly, from the mixture of fear and devastation. You didn’t think it was possible to mourn yourself, to mourn your own life.
You thought, death wouldn’t have opened its door so loudly, that it could’ve came quietly. That you could’ve went, quietly.
“You need to breathe.” He says, tightening his grip on the back of your neck. Compressing you between his hand and his chest. You swallow, nod your head frantically, try to breathe through your mouth and nose. You feel like you’re underwater.
“I,” You heave, hard, “I’m try-ing,” You shut your eyes against the feeling, clutching his jacket until your knuckles pale. Make an attempt to focus on how his hand feels against the back of your neck and head, the faint smell of cologne he emits.
“There was little that you could have done to prevent this,” He says, so quietly that you think he’s mended the words just for you. You hear a click, and he applies more pressure to your head, closing you in. Your breath slows, gradually. You begin the revel in the airiness of it.
“Please, don’t let me fall. I don’t want to hit the floor,” You say, breathing raggedly through your mouth - your nose too clogged, “My room is to the left, down the hall. Please, put me in my bed. Please.” You feel how cold the cylinder is when he pushes it against your lower stomach - somewhere towards your uterus. You feel, the way his opposite arm moves back on the gun.
“I won’t let you fall. I will put you in your bed.”
“Do you promise.”
“Yes, I do.” He says, you nod. You take in his smell, take in how much it hurts to cry, the color of his shirt.
You think about everything that you’ve ever felt and experienced, be it good or bad. How lucky you were to have the bad, so the good seemed just as great. You think of when you were little, when your mother would brush the knots out of your hair after a bath. How large things always seemed to you as a child, the impossibility of the world. You think about your dreams, how you wanted to make something of yourself one day: every aspiration you once had rolling down your cheeks in rhythmic succession. You think of your grandmothers house, how the sun always bled in through the large windows of the living room, how you could see the dust in the air if you looked close enough. You think of every puddle ever jumped in, how others’ dreams must be coming true at this very second, even if yours aren’t. You think of laughter, and of joy and of sadness. Of love and of passion, of everything that’s made you up into the person you are right now. The person, who you will never be again. Still. You think of hope. Of how beautiful the stars must be when you’ll be able to see them up close, close enough to kiss them and hold them in your hands. How warm the sun will be when you lay upon it, and how unafraid you will be.
You smile lamely, and close your eyes, a final tear rolling down your cheek. You think, you might’ve felt more alive than you ever have. You hold him tightly, listening to the slow beat of his heart, of what it means to be human.
“Do you see?” He says, his finger fastened on the trigger. You nod, curling his jacket closer to your face.
“Excellent.”
—
He doesn’t let you fall. He doesn’t let you hit the floor. He keeps you up with the arm that held your neck as your legs give beneath you. The whole of you, dripping from your abdomen, to your legs, to your feet. To the floor.
He shifts, clicks the safety of his gun on and places it on the dining table, using both arms to collect (most of) your body. Your hands dropping naturally from his jacket, and to your sides. Still, he hauls you into his arms like a groom would his bride. Your head, slumped into the crook of his arm, still shuttering and gargling. Dead, but still fresh.
His boots creak against the floorboards when he walks down the hall, turning a sharp left and looking at the half-opened door of your room. The air is stiff and humid. With his shoe, he pushes the door open properly, and looks down upon your bed.
He thinks it fitting, a quilt with flowers. One too many pillows, a bed-skirt. He leans over the mattress and lays you down to rest, purposefully putting your limp head on a pillow. It’s not long before your quilt is stained, now red, the smell of metal replacing whatever air freshener you might’ve had.
He goes back into the kitchen and reaches the dining table, eyes scanning until he finds the dime upon the table cloth. He picks it up, and walks back to your room, looking down at your face. He takes it, and tucks it into the breast pocket of your nightgown, leaving it there with you. Leaving you then, entirely.