Never

He smiles, across the table from her. His hand reaches to clasp hers, massaging her palm. He eyes the ring on her finger. “You’ll never leave me, will you?” She smiles back, but there’s worry behind her eyes, and her hands slip out of his grasp. She glances quickly and sadly at the wine glass, untouched. “Never.”

When the ambulance is gone, she retires to bed. It feels empty and cold without him. She reminds herself that this is what she wanted. 

But she can’t get it out of her head. The endless song of thud as his body hits the floor  and the crash as the wine glass shatters into a million shiny pieces and the beep beep beep as she dials the emergency number and the weee-ooo weee-ooo as the paramedics arrive and then, finally, silence as they take the body and leave her, alone. 

When the morning light creeps its way through the blinds, she forces herself to rise. As if in a trance, she fumbles her way through the apartment. She shoves various items in a bag - first a silver watch from the bedside table, then a pair of earrings from a small box, and finally some wrinkled designer clothing from the floor of what was once a shared closet. She makes her way out of the building, stumbling, not realising she’s made an odd outfit with her dressing gown and heels. She walks to the car, keys in hand, the destination of a pawn shop in mind. Slumping down, she’s about to put the keys in the ignition, when there’s a sharp rapping on the windshield. 

A man stands in front of the car. She thought he was dead, but there he is, right in front of her on the street, smiling at her. Blood drips from his mouth in a gruesome display.

She screams and slams her foot down on the gas. The car bumps over him, once, then twice, and then it’s over. Sighing in relief, she cranes her neck to see the body, but there’s nothing there. Instead, there’s a mangled body in the passenger seat next to her. With broken and twisted limbs and a bloody smile, he waves and says, “Miss me?”

Her heart in her throat, she frantically throws open the car door and falls out of the car. Then he’s there again, standing above her, his twisted hand outstretched. “Need some help?”

She scuttles backwards on the warm asphalt. If her heart was in her throat before, it’s up in the clouds now. She pulls off the heels she’s wearing, and holds them in front of her protectively. But now he’s behind her, arms around her neck in a loving embrace, tightening, tightening. In a panic, she stabs a stiletto backwards into his eye and the pressure dissipates. 

She tries to return to the apartment but it’s so far and the cars are roaring by but better death by them, she supposes. Running and stopping, cars speeding by, she makes her way across. He isn’t so lucky. They slam into him from either side, but he keeps coming, unfazed even with crashes everywhere and a cacophony of honking. “I’m coming home, darling”

She dives inside and up the stairs. She locks the door and pushes a chair against it. When she turns around, he’s there again, all at once, a one-eyed monstrosity, lips on hers suddenly, and she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, and she kicks him as hard as she can and then makes her escape, her mouth tasting of metal, running to the kitchen. “Please, I just want to talk.”

Grabbing a knife, she hurls it towards him as he comes through the door. It sticks right in his heart, but he doesn’t falter, a sad smile on his lips. “Don’t you know I love you?”

Drop of crimson dot the carpet. He keeps coming towards her. She grabs the box of matches from under the kitchen sink and furiously lights one. But then he’s in front of her, and she waves the flame towards him, and it catches, but he won’t stop. “Remember what you told me?” 

She screams once more, and her throat feels raw. The fire’s caught, not just on him, but on the carpet. Smoke burns her eyes and he keeps coming, he keeps coming, and soon she’s running. There’s a glass window, and she’s nowhere to go, and he’s coming, he’s coming. She goes to the closet, where the gun is. She grabs it and loads it, furiously trying to remember how it works.

 She goes into the bathroom, she just needs a little more time, a little more time, but there he is, arms outstretched. She backpedals and the gun shaking in her hand, fires. His leg shakes from the impact, but there’s no stopping him. “Tell me, my love!” 

She runs, but there’s no escape, no escape, but out the window she goes. And down she goes, tumbling, falling, and he’s right there beside her, bloody smile, mangled body, one-eyed face, singed hair, bullet hole, knife and all. 

And they collapse on the ground with a thud and the glass of the window falls beside them with a crash, creating tiny cuts and soon the neighbours are there, with the beep beep beep and the weee-ooo, weee-ooo and once they’re in the ambulance, she doesn’t remember much else except for the words that drip from his bloody lips, like the poison that she fed him. “Do you remember?” And she does, as much as she tries not to. The words are a song, stuck in her head.

And in the hospital, when she wakes up, he’s right beside her again, a gun to her head and a knife in his heart and she can’t escape. “You’ll never leave me, will you?”  She says, tears in her eyes. And he smiles his poison smile, says, “Never”, and pulls the trigger. 

But it never made any difference, for they were both so very dead inside from the very start.