Love/Obsession
“If I can’t have you alive, I’ll have you dead.” I lay in bed, eyes wide open, as I stared up at the blank ceiling. I couldn’t stop remembering bits and pieces of him – his smile, his laugh, even the smirk on his face from when I last saw him. I loved him. I loved him immensely. As my mind wandered, I absently scratched at my hand, which I washed so many times a day until they were bruised and bleeding. Still, I could never get rid of how filthy they were, no matter how many times I obsessively scrubbed them over and over again. My hands were stained with his trace. I had not seen him since our last fight – and I would not see him again, for the rest of my life. My hand hovered over a scar on my arm that was so long it went from my elbow to my wrist. It was from the broken wine glass shards during our fight. Would this be the last of his marks on me? An ugly scar from a fight, from a heated argument, instead of one last love bite? What had happened to us, such that we got into this state? I got out of bed and sat on the cold, dirty floor. The cold cement under my fingers was akin to the cold reality, and kept me more awake than ever. Why sleep when I did not have long left anymore? I wanted to die – I was okay with letting Death come to find me, to fall from the clutches of Life into Death’s graceful embrace. Love and Death seemed light years apart, but they were, in the end, not so different. I slowly chewed on my dinner, making sure to savour every piece of meat, every crunch of vegetable. The door was opened, and I was led out. The lethal injection was placed on the table, and a masked person injected it into my bloodstream. I started to black out. My mind had a flashback – the last scene I would ever see. “You never loved me! You post pictures with other pretty girls on social media, you hang out with other girls, you have a female secretary and everything. Am I even important to you? Am I the only girl that you will ever love?” “I’m sick of you being like this all the time, Elizabeth. Stop being so obsessive! I love you, but you don’t own me at all! I still love you so much, but having female friends that I occasionally go out with doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you!” “If I can’t have you alive, I’ll have you dead.” I was insane, but it was exhilarating at the same time. To finally let myself free. To finally be able to bind him to me in Death. I walked towards him with a knife in my hand. “We can talk this out, please, calm down, please drop that knife! You don’t have to go to such extremes!” He tried to move to the door, but I was faster and stood in his way with a knife. “Please don’t leave me, Charles, you’ll always be a part of me… and I’ll always be a part of you,” I whispered, before I leaned in closer to kiss him with my knife at his throat. “I love you,” I said quietly. He pushed me away and I hit the rack of kitchen glassware. I sent wine glasses, cups, porcelain bowls and ceramic plates all tumbling to the floor in a sonorous clash. He picked up a broken wine glass by the stem, and held it with the sharp edge pointed at me in a threatening stance. “Don’t come any closer,” he yelled, while he backed towards the door. I had to. This was my final chance to drag him with me. Once he stepped out of this door, there would be no getting him back. In one last desperate measure, I lunged at him. He fended me off with one hand, while his other hand holding the broken glass dragged the sharp edge across my right arm in a bid for me to drop the knife. A jagged red line appeared along my skin, and blood started dripping everywhere, but my only thought was murder. I mustered my strength and maintained my firm grip on the knife, before stabbing him repeatedly in the chest. Scarlet liquid splashed everywhere, spurting out of his chest as he struggled for the last seconds of his life to live. When his body finally stopped convulsing, I rested my head on his chest, smiled to myself, and told him softly that I loved him. The police arrived in the wee hours of the morning just to see a girl in her late twenties asleep on her dead boyfriend’s chest with a smile on her face. End