Dance Of The Blood Moon

I've been here before. That moment when my eyes set on the crimson tide of day before it meets the evening before the gentle night concludes the day. I've been here before when I felt afraid, a swirl of emotions infected by violence, charm and deliberation all in one. I've been here before, but this was different.

I slid my winter coat on as thoughts trickled like darkly sweet treacle sliding down the crest of my chin. The thoughts distracted me from the lie I was committing to.

The car engine bled to life as the ignition was turned. My foot pressed against the gas with such natural conviction. I had reason but this was an unreasonable action I was about to commit.

I recall pulling up outside the bank around thirty-five minutes past three on a Friday that autumn afternoon. The leaves were rustic orange and bloody red. They were mesmerizing but all I felt was the numbness tingling through the tips of my fingers.

I had to stop because the emotions were boiling over like a volcano on the precipice of that moment when the violence of earth's core pressurizes it into a lava filled violent exposition of exploding volcanic rocks.

I had to take a moment, because my breathing was all out of whack, my palms were sweating profusely, and my hands shook as thought they were about to dance off my wrists. I was a mess so I couldn't do this.

I recall that when I was walking up to the entrance that some old lady was walking out and she smiled at me. I don't actually recall my frame of mind at the time and whether I even smiled back. Or if I stood at her with vacant eyes that teased the events about to unfold, I simply don't know or wish to elaborate on.

The bank wasn't full, maybe ten-to-fifteen people were inside. There were a couple of tellers and neither were busy.

I had to push it further into my waist, so that people didn't see it and start panicking. That was the last thing I was aiming for and I didn't really need to draw attention, maybe if it got to that point.

And there she was, she'd walked out of the office unaware I'd even sat myself down, to be honest I wasn't surprised because that's who she was. Vacant for most of our lives, concealed by her own vanity and fast approaching an era where that would only multiply.

When she finally did see me sitting in the corner, she acted as if she'd seen a ghost. She walked over and greeted me, asked what I was doing here and went off on a tangent about visitation rights. We're talking about my kid here right? The one thing in this world that means more to me than anything and this troubled lady with a history of abandoning her family to go off on weekend benders with her friends is lecturing about parenting. Where does she get off?

I pushed back, she told me to calm down and that we could go in her office to discuss things. I stood up when she noticed it hanging from the belt on my waist. She was about to cause a scene, and I flipped - I mean, this is a woman who claimed to love me, who's stolen the one thing that I love more than anything.

And I go back to that moment, the sunset, crimson. It's authentic and it's what got me through these raw and unhinged moment when the world colluded against me. That, and my daughter, she was everything. I didn't even know I could be a parent or that something so small and dependent on my safe arms would bring me to this point. Defending my integrity, what a world we live in?

Did I pull the gun? Did I make a scene and scream blue murder? Did I point the weapon in the direction of the woman I once loved because she took what was most dear to me?

I don't think you'll ever understand what drives a person to commit a heinous crime. To shoot. Because I don't think I understand and moreover, will I ever understand what compelled to launch the bullet that sent her to hospital on life support. I once loved this woman but who was she too me now? Just a black void, limp and staggering backwards in my mind as her body hit with full propulsion, the ground.

I don't think I even saw all their blank expressions, they were witnesses, sure but I don't think I was in a frame of mind to care. I just wanted my daughter and I just wanted to feel like a father again without the savagery of a separation that split lives and induced hate.

So detective, you can tie me to this table in handcuffs and demand an apology. You can relinquish my right to council as you see fit, but you will never drive a wedge between me and my child because she is light, my crimson sunset, when I see the dark void of night seeping through the sky.

I wanted to go home that night, think over things and resolve my inner conflict by way of a reasonable dialogue with my bloody demons. You can speak of me ill, or as you see fit, say that I am a repulsive creature that defiles the canvas of our legal system, with its neatly packaged bundle of polished words and intricacies but it has one side-effect. It sees what those words written by people who sit atop the world in their shiny glass towers who have never lived the torment of a lost love. Or who remain superflurous to the stranger that sleeps beside them at night, who you once were certain you'd known.

I'm not an unreasonable man, oh I'm not but the human condition doesn't always have a rule book or a handy checklist for our emotions and the floodgates they open. That can make us beautiful and dangerous in equal measures.

It seems our time is up, you're eager to get back to your family perhaps? Do you have a daughter, a son? I hope you appreciate them as I do mine. Knowing I may never see her grow up and graduate, have children because I had every intention of doing the right thing. The wrong thing got in the way, and you know I can't take that back even if I tried now.