I Would Tell You That I Love You

I could hear his ragged breathing, and the scratch of his fingernails on the hardwood floors. Watching the blood that spread beneath him grow with each wheezing breath. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the shadows lengthen in the corners of the room as the sun began to set, casting somber monsters and men on my pale blue walls. They each seemed to stare at me with dark and empty eyes, emptiness that was mirrored in my own. On other nights I would have turned away from them, feeling a chill down my spine and a pit gape in the bottom of my stomach, but tonight was different. They appeared unimpressed with me, as if they had imagined someone more worthy of their reproachful presence. I almost welcomed their disdain. Everett writhed in front of me, his feet kicking out as he gasped and clutched at the bullet hole that had torn open his abdomen. I never knew that a shotgun could do this much damage. I tried to lift my head to see him better, but the weight of it felt as though I could have sunk straight through the floor. The silver wind chime that hung outside my window hollowly clanged as a breeze swept through, fluttering the pieces of hair that hung in front of my face and clung to my chapped lips. Shards of glass from my shattered mirror caught glints of a fading sunset, creating blinding bursts of light that erupted across my floor. I wondered how long it would be before someone would find us, an hour? Two? I didn’t know how long Everett would last, and the ever-widening pool of blood did nothing to reassure me that he was going to be okay. The day had gone so well, and I was finally going to do it. Finally going to tell him that I was in love with him. But things had gone wrong too fast for me to even say a word. Everett had tried to push me out of the way, to shield me from the man who had suddenly appeared in my doorway. He wore a ball cap pulled low over his face, but as he lifted his head and aimed the gun at my head, I caught a glimpse of a brilliant white scar that split and warped his eyebrow. With a deafening bang the gun had gone off, and the world grew dim around me before sharpening to the point that my eyes ached from the clarity. I didn't even hear myself hit the floor. I couldn’t move. I was only able to watch as Everett fell too as the gun went off again, he lay angled away from me so that all I could see were his shoes. The intruder had left nearly as quickly as he had appeared, leaving Everett and I alone to bleed out onto the floor.

I had struggled at first to move towards Everett, but my limbs felt as heavy as lead. After a few minutes, I accepted that I couldn’t move, that I would only be able to listen to his rasping breath and hope that someone would find us. Everett had grown silent, with only the occasional gasp, but I could see the jerk of his legs and I knew that he was in excruciating pain. I wanted to scream, to crawl across the floor to him. Cradle his head in my lap and wipe the tears from his face, finally tell him how much I love him. But I can’t, because my heart stopped beating ten minutes ago. So now I lay here unable to help him, incapable of comforting him. My body was growing colder with each passing second, and I can only watch the growing pool of blood that seeps from the hole in my cheek. I was able to briefly taste the metal, but now there are no sensations or sounds but my stillness and Emmett’s soft struggling wheezes. If only my heart would beat again, and I could breathe, but it won’t, and I can’t. I had promised myself that I would tell him today. Tell him how I felt, and if he said that he didn’t feel the same way then I would walk away, but some cruel twist of fate has left me like this, gone without a goodbye. I guess I should be glad, without asking I won’t know his answer, so now I am dead with hope in my still heart and emptying veins. We had once promised to be there for each other, and I have done the best I can. Even if my best means this, with him dying in front of me and me dead, only able to watch through empty eyes as his life drains away. With as much power as a broken doll I can only wait and pray that someone will come and find us.

           Everett began to pull himself up, his sharp groans echoing through my hollow head. With a shaking arm he turned himself so that we faced each other, his forehead beaded with sweat as his eyes dart across my face, searching for life where he will not find it. I wished for nothing more than that my eyes would be closed so I wouldn’t see the pain etched on his face, in the creases in his forehead and the tightness of his clenched jaw, but they weren’t. As we lay there, face to face, Everett reached out a bloodied hand and brushed the hair from my cheek, tears falling down the side of his face and beginning to puddle on the floor.

           “Chloe,” he whispered hoarsely. “please look at me.” I knew that he understood that I would not answer, with the soft trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth and my widened vacant eyes telling him the truth of my fate. I wanted to tell him that we would be okay. That he would be okay. But the dead are cursed with silence, and I am no exception. I don’t know how long we lay there before the door burst open and the paramedics rushed to us. I wished that I could breathe a sigh of relief, not even bothering to wonder or care how they knew that we were here. As two of them strapped Everett into the gurney, one walked over to me and crouched down. I wanted to ask him to close my eyelids, beg him to shield me from Everett’s shaking shoulders and wandering eyes that searched desperately for me as he was lifted off of the bloody floor and wheeled away. The man pressed two fingers against my throat in search of a pulse, I wondered if my skin was cold yet. His fingers were met with only stillness instead of the dull thud of my heartbeat. Everett and the others disappeared through the doorway, leaving me and the other paramedic alone. Sitting back on his heels he hesitated for a second before bending down to look me in the eye and whispering softly to me.

           “Don’t worry sweetheart, I’ll take care of him.”

His breath heated my skin as his face came into view, with terrifyingly familiar scar-twisted eyebrow and smirking grin. I wanted to scream, to tell Everett to get up and run, run no matter how much it hurt to. But as the zipper of the body bag closed over my face, I knew that there was nothing I could do, no way for me to warn Everett that the man who had shot us both was the one loading him onto the ambulance.