Quietus

Prologue

I can hear her voice calling out to me before I actually see her. She shouldn't be here at this time of night wandering around in the woods, hell I shouldn't be here either, but circumstances as of late have forced me to do things I normally wouldn't have even considered beforehand.

The panic rising within me from just hearing she is close by must be showing on my countenance because this backwoods hillbilly's face that I'm having currently having a heated confrontation with suddenly transforms into something almost sinister. I can sense he wants her to see how far I've sunk in trying to get out of this latest predicament.

Not that I can blame her for what she did months earlier to ensure I'd lose everything that held any remnant of importance to me after what I had done to her. Betrayal can make a person do terrible things, awful things that normally you wouldn't ever consider doing much less act upon.

I had been in her situation a few years ago; being the one who felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me by lies and treachery. The sting of regret is still bitterly sharp of the lengths I had went to make her think her actions had decreed she would be hurt as much as I had been by her deception.

If only our pathway hadn't been littered with such horrific moments in time, the choices our selfish beings had made in moments of anger might not have led us to the depths of despair. I can't stop her from forging on in search of me any more than I can erase the sins of our past, a twisted past that has so intertwined us I'm afraid neither one of us will ever be free from the other.

If only my mind could telepathically tell her to get out of here, to turn around and run away like her life depended on it because I'm afraid in this instance it does. I've got a sinking feeling that won't dissipate and within a few seconds she will find us. Her voice is growing with fear calling out my name and if I yell out in response to tell her to go away it will only make her more determined to find me.

One thing for sure I know as surely as I know my name is how stubborn she can be when she sets her heels in and thinks she is right nothing can sway her from the course she sets. I have always wanted her to seek me out, but now I would give away my entire fortune to ensure she couldn't find me.

This isn't a place she should be.

I silently pray for her to please turn around, go some other way. It isn't happening though as I can hear her footsteps as she tries to navigate her way, twigs are snapping underneath her feet and now I can even hear her cursing. Something she does when she is frustrated, an occurrence which seems to happen when we are both involved.

Of course my prayers won't be heard. If I weren't so frightened for her safety I would laugh because I don't deserve for God to answer anything I request from Him since He never hears from me any other time.

"Seems like your little lady is determined to find you," his voice drips with the unmistakable drawl of another region of the country, one I wished he had never had left. When I find out who is responsible for his presence in our town they will surely pay.

Although now is not the time to be formulating plans of revenge. No, that time will be later.

I finally see her in the clearing, her hair in disarray, her eyes widening in confusion over who she has found with me.

"EJ?"

I hear my name upon her lips before the shots ring out in the night air.

And then she is falling, my beautiful decadent angel looks at me with a combination of shock and bewilderment.

We shouldn't be here. We shouldn't be here at all…