Caught.

Caught.

And there’s a sound before he hits the ground. An unmistakable sound. It’s not the sound that usually happens after he falls back with release. And there’s no laughter this time as I slide down with a slump on top of his chest. The skin on my arms creeps up when I feel his heart slow and stop. A shiver runs through the room only too late for a warning. Then his voice says it before I can turn around.

“He won’t come around here no more.”

And I know that he won’t.

It’s a situation anytime you’re wetting one man’s whistle and blowing another man’s for fun at the same time. It happens to be a whole other story when the two men happen to be brothers. That blood between the two won’t be thicker than water when one of them finds out that you’ve been with the other one. In this case there isn’t enough blood to stand between any of us now that...

“He’s dead.”

He knows this from across the room. And I don’t need to confirm that he isn’t breathing or that his heart just stopped.

Even though I’m still straddling his warm body and the evidence of death is visible I say it.

“why.”

“Why didn’t you ask me if you needed love?”

Even though I know there’s no way of getting out this I say it.

“WHY!!”

“Why my brother?” It’s like hearing a broken record when he says it. “Did you love him more than me?” asking because he can’t resist. Its words that I think he said already, but they’re different now when he says them.

And he stops me before I can blame him.

“Shh… I’ve known long enough.”

Out from the wound it spills. Out from thinly cut perfection reaches the slow growing red. As my hands lift from the final opening of life, that delicately precise hole in his chest, out it spills. Blood. Slow like honey it crawls outward from the chest cavity and falls. The dark crimson malevolence it falls steadily down his lifeless body, coating his face and falling onto the open floor. Sliding delicately between the floorboards into the slats. Creeping after me. Creeping towards the slanted grate in the floor.

“Why?” I say it with a mouthful of tears.

“Because this is what must be done.” He says. “These are the actions of elimination. The ends justify the means. And you’ve left me with no other option. It just… it being him… It made me crazy.”

My face sits there staring downward at love interrupted instead of backwards at love intruding. And he’ll never change that way he looks while love intruding moves closer and takes a seat behind me.

As the blood creeps closer toward me, I just sit there and wait for him to wake up. Waiting. It’s like I’m on fire and all I can do is wait and watch the flame crawl up my arm to consume me whole. I want him to hear a wake up call. Cause there’s nothing like the alarm of love to wake you up. But that call will never come loud enough to revive his mind from those last moments beneath me.

Shell-shock comes when love intruding says it. This intruding love that I can not bear to turn and face dares to say it as the tears continue.

“Tell me,” he says. “Just tell me. Tell me that you love me.”

Make a liar out of me.  

“Tell me as if I’m dying,” he says. “Pretend it’s me and not him.”

Don’t matter if it’s true. Just say it.

Why is it whenever someone is about to die on the screen they always ask, “Do you love me?” It’s their dying request. The last rites can be bypassed and thrown out the window at the wolves if someone loves us. There it is. Salvation is in a set of words. Wouldn’t you rather die with a kiss? Or heartfelt embrace? No it’s better if someone says it instead. It doesn’t matter if it’s true.

But I don’t tell him. Deny him salvation. Instead I get up from the naked body and creep back from my destruction. Our destruction. Further. Stepping backwards. Further away from the blood. Away from the blood that edges nearer to the tip of my toes. My bare feet that descend in retreat with every step. Descending from the unsaid. The unspoken. This disease. A growing cancer that will eat between us.

This contagion can not become part of me. It smells of his mistake and my indiscretion and I can’t get far enough away from it.

As I back away from it the blood gets closer to me. It chases me to the corner of the room where he’s sitting. When it reaches my feet and pools, I stop to look at him and he puts his hands on my thighs. The heat from the revolver stings the bare skin on my left thigh as he wraps his hands around my legs to pull me closer before leaning his head against my stomach. I run my hands through his hair as he grapples with the situation.

“I’m sorry. Don’t go. Stay with me.” saying it like there’s nothing wrong. “I’ll love you. Make this right with me.” He leans in and kisses my stomach. I say nothing. He continues to behave as though we’re amidst a simple quarrel and the bleeding lover isn’t his dead brother in the middle of the room. “It can be better now. I’m so sorry. Don’t leave. I don’t know what I was thinking. I reacted. You have to stay…”

Between his words I can hear the underlying dialogue that’s implied.

 “You have to stay with me. I love you.”

You’re trapped just like me. You know you can’t leave.

“Baby, I can’t do this alone. I need you.”

Where will you go? This is your fault too.

“Say you’ll stay.”

There’s no other way.

His hands grip me tighter until there’s marks in my legs. Tell me it will be alright say his eyes when they look upward into mine. I can’t break away and there’s nowhere to look but into his eyes. So I tell him. Tell him what he wants to hear.

“Baby, it’s alright now. You’re mine. And I’m all yours.”

The lie.

This is what he wants. He wants the lie.

“Did I do the right thing?” he asks.

But this isn’t the right thing.

I say nothing. Because I can’t and won’t and he’ll never guess why.

Instead of him finding out and leaving, he is deep into this feeling with me. We now both share something that can not be changed. He says he wants my love. He wants us to be right again. All he really wants is my forgiveness. Absolution. They say a priest can lift the burden of your sins with one confession. Through the simple admission of the crime does it clarify the soul and scream redemption. Through his confession he’s free. Only it’s not redemption that he wants from me. He wants me trapped in this with him. Someone to blame. Because I’m as much to blame for it. And I am. Guilty. And he’ll never let me go. Holding on as long as there’s someone else to blame.

Cheating. This is a bit of darkness. Have you ever cheated on someone? Been caught? Spun from wondering what that perception might be. Never being in those heels. Can’t even contemplate that desire to be. Being completely in sync with one person in a committed relationship should be enough but for some it is not. And I know what it feels like to be on the outside looking in when being deceived and wanting to... So I wondered how it would be. What if he caught her cheating and spared her? Would it be out of love or hate? Forgiveness or reproach? Letting you make up your own minds. Anyhow this is something different with darkness. enjoy. kisses. m.