Where did I go wrong? How did I not see the signs? Why was I so blind? My treachery haunts me. Is this what the fires of hell will feel like? I don't care - I have made a pact with the devil if he would give her back to me. I have begged God to show me mercy.
I close my eyes to sleep to be awakened by my own screams and my waking hours are torture that I beg to die.
I go in circles, what could I have done differently? Maybe you can tell me...
Sigh!
It was November 12th, 2019, the sun had set minutes ago and I stepped out to take a picture of the full moon. How beautiful she was, shining down on her side of the world, taking her turn to help the sun bring light to us mortals.
But even the moon cannot compare to my love. That first time I turned around to see where the rustling was coming from, my eyes laid on the most ethereal beauty I had ever seen. It was like she had stepped out of my dreams. She glowed by the light of the moon and my heart burst into a thousand rainbow colours and in that second I belonged to her.
She had come riding on her bike she said, but she had lost control and it had slipped into the river. "Could you please let me use your phone?", she asked. I would have let her do anything without question. But maybe I should have questioned.
We spent so much time together that when the pandemic hit a few months later and lockdowns were called for, I invited her to stay with me. I could not imagine not being able to see her a single day, and she lived too far away from me, "in the city," she said.
I closed the gate to my farmhouse and bolted it. We were safe and could live off the food from my land, my pantry was full and supplemented with online purchases, we never had to leave home ever if we chose to.
Days into weeks into months and then a whole year and more. I did not complain and I loved every moment we spent together. While the world outside raged with all the chaos, we played all day and when nighttime came, she'd sleep in her own room as requested - "not till we are married," she said.
One night, the heavens opened up and rains came pouring down, there was thunder and lightning and I knocked on her door, to see if she needed company. She didn't answer, worried I used the spare key to open the door to an empty room, the balcony doors wide open, swinging in the wind.
I called her name, over and over, louder than my pounding heart, louder than the thunder. Many minutes passed when I found her wet and shivering under my mango tree. She had seen a cat and "wanted to save it from the rains", she said. I loved her kind heart, she was beautiful inside out. Should I have questioned it then? Would you have?
There was that time when I found her in the kitchen mumbling to herself. I asked her what she was doing. She replied, "I'm trying to talk to the moon." My love was poetic.
The shed snakeskin outside her balcony, made me grab the gun for finally I had an answer to my missing chickens and two goats but she begged me to be kind. My love had a heart of gold.
The feathers all over her room one morning, you could say I should have known something amiss then? She said, "a bird had lost its way and did not know how to get out, not before some feathers came off in its panic". Even the birds flocked to my love, I thought.
Then that dreadful night, I heard something unusual in her room, and she wouldn't answer me, how could I not check on her? I inserted that spare key, even though she had made me promise to never ever use it again, and opened the door with my love nowhere in sight, but a snake slithering to hide under the bed, a rage came over me. A bad feeling.
I grabbed my gun, always tucked behind my pants for such a time, and shot the snake twice. I had to kill it before looking for my love. I could not let it get away. I had to protect my love. I prayed it wasn't too late.
And there she lay on the bedroom floor. My love was a lady by day and a snake by night. And now she was dead. My love is dead.
Sob... Can you please help me? I will do anything, anything to bring my love back.
This is my entry to @theinkwell & @dreemport's writing challenge. You can find out more HERE.
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