No Time for Goodbyes

He held me close and then the sharp pain came, a stabbing in my abdomen followed by a cold trickle. That trickle became a river, and then the river began to gush. I felt my life flowing from me; I felt his rough shirt underneath my fingers as I stared in disbelief; I could feel the frozen quality my expression had taken on. He'd brought me so close, deceived me, and allowed me to think I was forgiven.

What needed forgiving again? Oh, yes. I wasn't her. I would never be her. That fact was trespass enough against him. I couldn't be her, willowy and graceful, dark and beautiful, an undercurrent of malice threaded into my soul. I couldn't emulate her likeness enough. I couldn't remind him enough of her, her shaded and jaded countenance, the stinging memory of her evanescence. She'd flown from him like a captured bird, and I'd eagerly taken her place, or tried to. I could never truly be her; I don't know why I ever thought I could.

I was so convinced of our oneness, our casual affability, that I was blinded to his true motives. Now, I was paying the price for that blindness. I had failed to become her, and so I could not live.

I crumpled as my soul slowly leaked from my body. My legs lost their ability to stand, my hands theirs to grasp, and I slid down and away into the dark nothing of disappointment. He towered above me, gazing down on my shock-ridden face with a cold and unfeeling demeanor. It was a mask to me. I'd never seen his face become home to such a dark look.

As my body lay back and my soul ventured forward, my eyes moved to his, and I saw the last pieces of his humanity flake away. He became statuesque. He became cold. And so I died.

No time for goodbyes.