Dreams of Wedding Rings
The ground scattered around him smelled baked and burned, like a loaf of
bread left in the oven an hour too long. He looked up, up at the cracks
in the buildings, at the gashes that ran through their stone skins, and
wondered what God had made hands so big. Everywhere was red,
and he pretended that the red was just the glow of the fires and the reflection
of the setting autumn sun on the ground. He pretended not to taste the blood
in his mouth and ignored the sharp pangs of misplaced pleasure that
ran through him at the taste of it, as if his brain realized that the blood
was not his and savored that fact, because it had to prove that it was in fact
still a part of a living, breathing thing before some nameless jury. He wondered
why for a moment, looking down at just one of the many bodies before him.
Bending over, almost painfully, he touched his fingertips to one of the broken
limbs, and stroked a digit over the now soiled wedding ring on the victim's
broken hand. He wondered, if just for a second, why it was that the Fox
had decided to show him this scene each night ever since he had been
made aware of his tenant's presence, but shook the thought off. He was
grateful for the dream. He wondered, in his darkest of times, how easy it would
have been to give in to the rage and blood-lust he felt sometimes boil beneath
him each time a rock sailed through his window. Letting go would have been so
easy he realized, and so each day he clenched his hand tightly into a fist,
hoping that the smooth, cold feeling of that bloody wedding ring would
never leave him as he walked down the streets home to the decedents
of yesterday's slaughter.