Friday, May 11, 2007
♥ Friday, May 11, 2007
He held her dying pulse in his arms.
The soft slow thudding of her heart, as it tried as hard as it could to find another vein to pump the blood through her stomach where her own knife lay, deeply embedded in her flesh, stopping the blood from flowing all out. Keeping her alive.
He chanted a continuous mantra; his fault, his fault, his fault. His fault.
He could feel it as he held her wrist, holding her cold, cold hands. A golden drop of tear squeezed its way out of his eyes like rain in a drought - he could not remember the last time his eyes had felt so wet - how long ago?
Twenty-six years.
Too long, Greg. Too long. He had not cried the day he plunged a knife into his old man's heart.
Yet it rained for a woman he met this day last year. It took him three hundred days to love her and sixty five days to reject her love. He could not fall for anyone.
He was Greg Cullum. The invincible assassin. Too many enemies to count with the tentacles of a billion octopuses.
He could fly from New Zealand to Canada in an hour. It was impossible, but he did. Just like it was impossible to hold back his tears for twenty-six years.
His fault, his fault, his fault. His fault.
But now it was all coming back to him, and it hurt. So, so much.
He wanted to end her suffering; to take out that knife and dig it into his own heart. He was not strong enough to live without her love.
But - why? Oh why? Why did he not tell her earlier? Sixty five days ago would be enough love to live through his life. Her love amounted more strength than his bulging muscles did.
Oh, how his heart ached.
Why did she have to die today? Why was life so cruel - how much lower could heaven possibly bring him than to make him lose the only woman he had ever loved in his thirty-six years of existence? Why did he wait until she was going to cease breathing to say the three words she had longed to hear from him for the past sixty five days?
Why did he have to love her?
His fault, his fault, his fault. His fault.
He held her hand and lifted it to feel his face, as if she could keep the memory of his features once her heart stopped beating. She followed, feeling the wet skin and his warm lips - oh, how she would miss tracing them with her finger every day. She didn't know if the knife hurt more or the thought of leaving him as she left for another world.
"Nobody else," he broke, "will ever touch me the way you do."
A tear rolled down her pale cheeks, and she gave him a broad grin. Now it was her turn to reminisce; through the three hundred and sixty five days, where he had shielded her from guns, where he had loved her but never once said so, where he had fixed the necklace she broke in the jungle that day last year. She knew he loved her, but he had never once said so.
She betrayed her country for his love.
And yet she would die in his arms under her own knife which she willingly ended her life with. For him to live, she would do anything.
"I love you, Greg," she whispered as she felt the rush of death coming up close. "Forever and ever,"
And then she died in his arms, her body a lifeless buoy, the remnants of the only love he had left for her in his cold, cold, heart. He could not find her pulse. Nothing.
His fault, his fault, his fault. His fault.
The truth stabbed him with its unmerciful blade as it ripped his heart apart and pierced through what was left of his being. Outside, he cried; inside, he bled. He could not live with this guilt, of losing his only love it was.
His fault, his fault, his fault. His fault.
And as he lay her on the rock he picked roses for her bed - red ones, she would not settle for anything less - he said his final goodbye and pulled out that knife stuck in her flesh.
His fault, his fault, his fault. His fault.
And stabbed his once cold heart, feeling the blood rush out of his skin, soaking his shirt, its metal leaking out of that knife and trickling down his body, cleansing him of his sins and his bloodstained hands.
He took one last glance at her and felt warmth in his heart.
His fault, his fault, his fault. His fault.
And then he died, lying there, lifeless.
The great hero, Greg Cullum. That was what he was.
