Preservation

Photo by Wren Meinberg via Unsplash

Written by Emilia Zarychta
Edited for FalWriting by Kimberley

A life of a killer

Do you think we could’ve found happiness together?

Sometimes when I’m lonely, on a random rainy afternoons,  I sit and wonder just that. Happiness. I don’t think it was invented for everyone. I think about you, your lips, and your magnetic gaze. I think about all that we’ve done, all the people we’ve killed. Whether it was moral, or just a job.

I haven’t had a resting thought such as that one for over 50 years, haunting and stirring deep inside my conscious. I wander round every time I see a body of water, calm and still, the way your body was when I told you I was leaving, pulling out of whatever the  profession we acquired that you loved too much to ever abandon.

Through all the adventures and the lists we’ve gone through, experts at our job, aimlessly shooting our guns at hearts and heads, I think of the mundane. If we led a normal life, filled with taxes and sunny side eggs on toast, would we be fulfilled. Would our minds be at peace knowing we never did anything worth sharing, nothing but love and building a home. For you, for me, for our family.

Sometimes I sit at the lake, where we once vowed our lives to each other, swirling the top of the reflecting water with the tip of my shoe, getting it soaked. If we led a normal life, filled with brunches and funerals, would you stay with me through the thick and thin. Would I finally be able to trust your words, your gimmicks. The promises you made of faith and honesty. Would I reach for the gun, waking the slumbering birds on the blossoming trees, flapping their wings for the closest escape. Would I cry, knowing I’ll never see you again after your body hits  the undisturbed water, lowering with each trembling breath. Disappearing into the void.

Once I thought I saw you drifting up to the breaking point of the water, your youth remaining, preserved through time, nothing but a white, mossy exterior covering your once sun-kissed skin and a bullet hole between your eyebrows. Your hand creeping out, wet, grabbing my ankle and pulling me down, down, down to the depths of our love. After letting out a muffled scream and staring into your lifeless eyes I woke up, as if from a daydream, thanking whoever is up there that it wasn’t real.

I haven’t been back, crossing the pathway to the nearest forest, changing my usual route on a sunny walk, hoping to forget.

I forgave myself long ago, for the money, for death and pain. Would you forgive me for just that and more, if we chose together to end that unlawful scheme, breaking out and running.  Would you forgive me if I said I wanted happiness?