"What a terrible sin- having pity for a killer." -Anonymous

I knew this town, listened to the familiar clicking of the trees from a memory of years ago.

I shouldn't be here. The thoughts are reflected on by a numb mind. They promised I would never have to come back here.

My feet walk in any direction- more of stumble if I was honest but in the movement I was allowed to be absent not think not think not think

When I steady myself on the door, the pale blue smearing the red- no the red from my coat smearing- no the blood from that child- the sleeping girl's blood- or was it her parent's-

My hand beats once- twice before my legs give and I curl on the door stoop, pulling my jacket tighter around my stinking body. Tonight they said I wouldn't have to- they wouldn't make me- no one would get hurt no one would- they wouldn't-

The light feels like fire and my head ducks underneath the stinking coat, but I can feel the door open.

He doesn't say anything and it cuts more deeply than his words ever did. But he takes my arm like so many nights before, carefully pulling me across the door stop as he shuts the door. He ignores the red- the red he never asks where it comes from- and sets me on a white chair. He doesn't ever ask why I come to him after everything- he'll never ask just like I'll never see this white chair again after tonight. It's how we live and I can already feel the heat of the fire rising in my chest.

He doesn't ask who it was or why I smell like gin, doesn't ask anything of me but I babble every second. Statistics, analytic theories, anything anything to stop the blood, the screams, anything

Anything.

And nothing.

He pulls my coat, my shirt, strips me to my skin but I don't care. In this nightmare I need to feel bare, feel anything. He waits as the shower warms but I step beneath the freezing water, bracing myself against the wall as the water runs red- red.

Oh God.

From freezing to nuclear hot- I force myself to bare it. Anything, feel anything. But it's just water and when it finally runs clear I step away from it.

He sits outside the bathroom door, glasses catching the light from within it.

I never asked if he loved me all those years ago when I could smile, when my sleep wasn't so filled with nightmares I could dream, when he whispered my name as he drank in my skin, when I left this house and didn't come back the same. I never thought it was important- never thought-

I curl into his embrace and like he took me into this house without a word I accept his lips on my own without a whisper.

X

When morning comes I find my clothing and slip out of the room, feet silent on the freezing tiles beneath them. Outside a car waits, engine already running. I should be running but if they don't find me here, they'll come and carve my name into his skin, cut his finger one by one and leave him for me to find alive because being alive is worse than death when you're with me.

My arms long to be around him, my hands itch to slide through his hair but I steel myself as the cool pre-dawn air hits me and I drink it as an elixir before stepping into the car.

He'll wake up at exactly nine o'clock and his brown eyes will find the small note my bloodied yet clean hand wrote. There are so many things, so many words, letters, emotions, feelings that I want to write to him, so many memories I could drudge up but I can't- my hands shook and are still- I can't. So his eyes, eyes that crinkle when they smile, eyes that lit up when they saw me all those years ago, eyes that will read three words, as emotionless as mine when I watch our house disappear.

I am sorry.