Epilogue
Meursault died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. The days and nights seem to blend together when you lay in bed with heavy drapes pulled over your windows, perhaps awaiting the moment when your physical body wastes away and you become nothing—free of loneliness, numb to pain.
I've heard it said that you can never truly appreciate something until it's gone, and I didn't believe that until today. Sure, I loved Meursault, would have married him, born him children, and been the happiest woman in the world. But it wasn't until that cop pulled the trigger—until Meursault went down, bleeding profusely on the pavement, his handsome face a mass of grinded meat—that I realized how deep the roots of my love truly went.
When Meursault died, so did a piece of myself. Maybe the rational part, maybe the part that had time for anyone or anything at all.
When Meursault was killed, the officer told me that he would come to question me on Wednesday, and it had been…Monday then, I think. It might have been a day since then—since the moment when my life was brought to a screeching halt along with that of my mysterious lover—it might have been two. They might be coming for me soon. I can not have that.
I bring the blade to rest against the tender skin of my wrist, and without hesitation, I pull, creating a deep gash which opens my artery and makes me gasp. Quickly, before I lose feeling in that hand, I repeat this on my other arm.
Yes, they will come for me—today, tomorrow, maybe the next day—and they will knock. When no one answers, they will walk right in. And they will not find a lonely woman crying and cursing over the death of one whom they knew only as a murderer. They will find only a corpse, laying on its back atop the bloody quilt of her large bed. They will find her lifeless, staring at the ceiling, with eyes every bit as warm as those of my long lost love.
And maybe, for a just second, they will feel regret.