For Love

Today is a good day. The sun is shining and I can feel its warmth even before I leave my flat. Some days are better than others and this is one of those days. My bones tell me this and I never disagree with my bones. The decision has been made. I am on a course that has already been set. I love Alice too much to turn back now.

A man needs a plan. My mother would tell me this over and over. Pay attention to the detail. It’s all in the preparation. And I have spent my sweet time preparing. I have my bag and I have everything worked out. I leave early and make the necessary changes. I make them for Alice, because I love her. I love her in a way that one day she will know, and once she does, there will be no turning back.

Alice is upset. They found John’s body in the canal. I comfort her, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. I listen to her and I hold her hand and I tell her it’s going to be alright. She shouts at me and tells me it certainly isn’t going to be alright. She says she loved John and that he was the one.

I almost believe her. He wasn’t the one though. John wasn’t good enough for Alice. She will come to realise that in time. She had a lucky escape. I saved her from that average man. Alice is meant for better things. Alice is meant for me. I want to tell her. I want to speak of my love for her and what I am prepared to do for that love. This is not the time for that. Not yet. I wonder when that time will be. But I wait until I have that answer. I have to be patient.

I would wait an eternity for Alice. I won’t have to though. We are meant to be. That’s all there is to it. I visit her every day. I make her mugs of tea and I listen whilst she processes grief for a man that does not deserve it. He was far too ordinary. Killing him was easy. As though he knew he must be sacrificed for my love. John was an obstacle that I overcame. We all need to overcome challenges in this life.

At the funeral, Alice sits with John’s family. John’s brother, Gary, holds her hand. I don’t like that display of intimacy. In fact, I hate it. My hate awakens and wraps itself around a feeling of rejection and I imagine removing Gary from the equation. There is a power in these thoughts. He wouldn’t hold her hand if he knew the consequences of daring to touch the woman I love.

The wake is a tawdry affair. The buffet has been sitting there since the nineteen seventies and time has not been kind to it. I rise above it all. I find I can do this now that I have taken John’s life. I float over the gathering and I smile down upon everyone. They are here because of me. I made all of this possible. If only they knew.

I leave early. Crowds have never been my thing. I need space to spread my wings. Time to decompress. I wait for Alice to come home. Watch as she lets herself into her house. One day we will have a home. Together. I deserve a happy ending, just the same as anyone else. I’ve worked hard for this. Bent the rules so we can be together. Forever.

Time passes. Time always passes. I try to make this movement my friend, but it is obstinate and thwarts my attempts at friendship. It doesn’t help that Gary, lingers in a place where he is not wanted. He is in the way. Obscuring my view of Alice. There is something off with all of this. I am not surprised. Gary is another apple from the same bad tree. I watch his visits and the way Alice is. Alice is always friendly. She knows how to put people at their ease. There is something there in the dynamic between them that worries me though. I sense a darkness in Gary that makes him a danger to Alice. And a threat to the two of us.

And so I begin to plan again. Piecing together the required actions. Purchasing the necessary tools and a special bag to carry them in. I psyche myself up for the quest that will win me Alice’s heart. I am a knight and she is my fair maiden. We all have to conquer dragons if we want to be deserving of treasure. For me, there have been two dragons guarding Alice’s heart. I do not think it too much. I feel a growing desire to be worthy of her and this is how I will prove myself. I will be stronger for having vanquished my foe. I am Alice’s protector and I always will be.

Sometimes time stutters and the world turns in a different way. Reality burps and what you thought you’d glimpsed on the road ahead is no longer there. Often there is something else instead, but because you were not expecting it, your mind is paralysed and you do not have the perception, let alone the words to describe it.

Gary died. He fell down the stairs in his house and he broke his neck. His was a slow death. He lay there with his life ebbing ever so slowly from him. Desperately wanting help, but not receiving it. He died alone. But then, we all die alone. An end to match our beginning.

This was quite unexpected. For Gary. More so for me. I felt cheated and confused. The result was what counted, but still I gnashed my teeth and wrang my hands. I was agitated and annoyed. A hawk deprived of its prey, I crashed to the ground in a befuddled haze of ruffled feathers. All fired up and nowhere to go.

There was only one place I could go.

Alice opened the door and smiled at me. Her smile has always warmed my heart and this moment was no exception.

“Take a seat Sam,” she told me, and I meekly obeyed, “I’ll make us a mug of tea.”

I wanted to protest, but the stuffing had been well and truly knocked out of me. I slumped into the soft fabric of the sofa and I wondered why I was here. Not just in Alice’s living room, but in this world. I had zoomed in on one objective and when it was removed I had nothing else. I tried reasoning with myself whilst Alice boiled the kettle. Told myself that Alice was my true objective. Gary was yet another obstacle. It helped. But still the dizziness in my mind span around and around. I took the mug gratefully when Alice returned. Holding it tight to slow the merry-go-round down.

“You OK, Sam?” Alice asked me, “you seem upset about something.”

“I heard about Gary,” I told her.

“They say it was an accident.”

I nearly dropped my mug. The way Alice said those words delivered another meaning. She knew it wasn’t an accident. Now the room threatened to spin violently and puke me away from here. I panicked at the prospect of being discarded by a universe I could no longer make sense of.

“It wasn’t me!” I protested.

Now time stopped on a sixpence and my words hung there between us. A neon sign advertising my guilt. Now I wished myself gone. If I were able, I’d have risen to my feet and run away. Kept running until I was as lost as could be. Lost to myself. Lost in a translation of thought and deed that should be erased with a contemptuous fire.

“I know.”

Somehow, I placed the mug of tea on the small table beside me. I needed to be free and unencumbered as I discerned the meaning of my love. I stared at her as she transformed before me. Unfurling into something I’d dreamed of but had never dared hope to be true. Not in this life anyway.

“You?” I asked.

She stepped forward and leaning towards me, she placed a silencing finger upon my lips, “we’re alike you and I. I needed to know though. I needed to know that we really were. That we were meant for each other.”

I felt a sense of loss as she removed her finger from my lips. There was an intense intimacy to that simple action. A tide of love receding from my lonely shore. Then she returned in a surge of madness and our lips met for the very first time. A passionate kiss sealing a union that could never be undone. Changing everything with the contact I had yearned for, for far too long. I did not slay a dragon after all. I awaked to my true nature and I became the dragon I was always meant to be, and I found my mate when I broke the restricting rules of a love that was never meant for the likes of us. We are made of fire and together we will burn this world.