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Love story (repost)
I honestly love you
Just the way you are
From here to the moon and back
Sweet love;
Even now,
In case you didn't know,
Nobody loves me like you do;
Remember:
I will always love you,
Nobody but you,
It had to be you,
It was always you,
Nothing compares 2 you -
My Immortal,
I'm yours,
Dust to dust;
Please,
Dance me to the end of love.
Into the fire
I didn't do anything wrong, I thought as I hopped over old Mr. Hunt's fence and ran down Pine Street. I could hear Officer Stone's heavy breathing. I didn't turn around to see how close he was.
"Stop!" I heard as his partner, Officer Pitt, landed with a thud on the sidewalk.
I kept my head down and my feet flying toward Main Street.
If I was so innocent, why was I running, you ask?
Easy: I live in one of those places where you're guilty until proven innocent. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but no one was ever going to believe me. I know the deal. So, I ran.
As soon as I turned onto Main, I ran into the first alley on the left. A door was ajar so I slipped in. Pitt and Stone thundered by and I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Welcome, my child."
The voice came from behind me. I turned slowly and froze. At the same time the door behind me clicked shut and locked. The room before me was dark, lit only by candles on the wall. And a fire pit in the middle of room above which was...I rubbed my eyes, sure I could not be seeing what I thought. Above the fire there was something...someone, turning like a pig on a spit. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the face and screamed.
It was me.
"We've been expecting you," the voice continued from next to me.
I turned and white eyes glowed beside me.
"Uh, I th- think I made a wrong turn," I stuttered, trying to surreptitiously twist the knob behind me.
"No, it was fate," the voice said as a clawed hand dug into my shoulder. "You've been expected."
"No, really, I have to go," I said, desperately trying to open the locked door."
"We insist you stay," glowing eyes said.
"We?" I whispered.
"Mmmhmmmm," the voice murmured as dozens of glowing eyes blinked around me.
For better or for worse?
I wrote our story before our paths ever crossed.
It would be love at first sight. You’d sweep me off my feet with flowers and dinners, visits to museums and the ballet, symphonic concerts, a Broadway play or two. You’d be a deep thinker, a voracious reader, and, most importantly, a family man.
And one day, there you were.
“Jay,” you said, taking the empty seat next to mine. I looked up from the book I was reading and felt a physical jolt of recognition though we'd never met.
“Hey, Jay,” I replied, returning to my book.
You waited a moment or two before saying, “And you are?”
“Studying for my macroeconomics midterm.”
“It's like that, huh?”
“What? Oh, I'm sorry. Linda.”
“Linda,” you said, putting out your hand, “Nice to meet you.”
My hand was engulfed by yours as I murmured, ”Me, too.” You held on a little longer than normal, staring into my eyes, smiling slightly. I felt my heart picking up speed and I pulled my hand back, saying,”I really do need to study.”
“Can I take you out Saturday night? Dinner?”
“I don't know you.”
“That's how we get to know each other, Linda.”
I loved how you said my name. You made it sound exotic though I'd always found it boring.
“Where are you from, Jay?”
“Army brat. Never any place too long. I guess I'm from DC. I've been here longer than anywhere else since I came here for college and stayed.”
“Oh, you're not a student?” As I looked more closely, I realized you were older than most of the others in the library. “Are you a professor?”
“Ha, no. Professors often hit on you?”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“Well, I am here to do research but then I saw you and I had to come over and introduce myself to the most beautiful woman in the library.”
“Oy. Give me a break. I have work to do,” I said, returning to my book.
“Don't be like that. I'm sorry. Let me start over. I work in intelligence and I was about to do some research when I saw you. I couldn't not say hello.”
I smiled without looking up. “Better.”
“Saturday?”
“What time?”
“7:00?”
“Okay. I'll meet you in front of the library.”
“I'll be counting the days! Wear something fancy!” You said before heading for the stairs down to the microfiche department.
You took me to a four-dollar-sign Italian restaurant where I had my first lobster and the most delicious red wine I’d ever tasted. We walked hand in hand from Dupont Circle to the campus. It was cold, but I didn’t feel it. You kissed me goodnight at the door to my building. I felt every nerve ending in my body spark. I fell asleep smiling.
Every weekend thereafter was a gastronomic feast from some other international cuisine. You even cooked for me a few times, dishes you’d learned while living abroad, you said. You came to my spring musical and choral concerts. One weekend, we flew up to New York, seeing two musicals and hearing the NY Philharmonic play Rachmaninoff. Another weekend we spent hours at the MOMA and the MET. You took my mom and me out for Mother’s Day brunch. You bought her flowers. She didn’t hate you - which was as much as we could ask for since I was an only child; her baby.
I was in love.
The night of my graduation ball, you got down on one knee in the middle of the dance floor, and proposed and I thought, life begins now.
Within a year, we were married and living in your beautiful home in Georgetown.
It was then that I discovered you had a temper and very firm feelings about a woman’s place in the home. You wanted the house spotless, your meals at specific times and you didn’t want me to work. I had always planned on having a career, but I’d also always wanted to be a stay at home mom, so I didn’t fight you. I figured I’d be pregnant soon anyway since you didn’t believe in birth control and you wanted sex three times a day. At least. You said you were making up for all the months of waiting until we were married. That made me happy even if the sex was…overwhelming.
Within two years, I had been to the emergency room five times. Twice losing our babies due to trauma to the abdomen. But you were so good and kind and loving most of the time, I convinced myself I had caused your momentary lapses that ended with you crying, taking me to the hospital and lying to the nurses and doctors.
No one believed you.
For our third anniversary, you said we needed to spice up our love life. You took me to a hunting cabin in Virginia that I didn’t know you owned. I thought it was terribly romantic, surrounded as it was by woods, with a stream near enough that I could hear the soothing sounds of the water from every room.
“What’s that sound?” I asked as we walked into the cabin.
“I don’t hear anything,” you said, shutting the door and throwing the latch. You grabbed me and pushed me against the door, thrusting your tongue in my mouth and grinding your hips into mine.
I kissed you back but apparently I lacked the requisite passion.
You pushed me away from the door and said, “I’m going out.”
You were gone for hours, so I went to bed and fell asleep soothed by the sounds of the stream.
I woke up to you thrusting away at some other woman in the bed next to me.
“Are you out of your mind?” I screamed.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” you said, rolling off of her and on to me.
At which point I realized she was gagged; her hands were tied to one bed post. Mine to the other.
“Jay!” I screamed.
“I’ve missed this,” he murmured.
“Stop it, Jay! Get off me, right now! Untie me!”
“Shut up! You’re my wife!”
“There is a woman gagged and tied to our bed who you were just fucking next to me,” I tried to buck you off with my body. You punched me in the face. You’d never punched me where it would show before. I tasted blood.
“She likes to be tied up. She likes to be punched and bitten and choked. She’s not all no, don’t do that Jay oh, no I don’t like that, Oh Jay do we have to, tonight. I say open your legs, she says how wide. And when I’m done I can leave her on the side of the road or out in the woods, depending on how rough it gets. No one’s gonna miss her.”
“What?” I screeched.
You flipped me over and pressed my head into the pillow as you entered me from behind.
“Yeah, Linda. That day we met in the library? I was looking for my next guest at the cabin. But I found you. Something clicked. This is my forever woman, I said to myself. But I still found someone to take the edge off that day. She lasted at least four days.” You paused. “Yeah, I got rid of the body just before I picked you up for dinner at Luigi’s.”
Oh my god, I thought to myself. I’ve married a psychopath.
“And then I went on a diet. I said to myself, I’m going to be a one woman man. I don’t need anyone else.
“But, I was wrong.” You came and pulled out of me. “I need more, Linda. I thought you would be enough. But you’re like all the others.”
“All the others???” I was curled as far away from you as possible, huddled by the bedpost.
“Yeah. I wish it would have worked out. I really liked you.”
“Liked?!”
“Yeah, well, lusted after isn’t strong enough and loved is overused.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll let you go. But if you tell anyone about what I’ve told you, I will have to kill you.”
And to emphasize your point, you grabbed a hunting knife from I don’t know where and slit the woman’s throat.
“She’s nobody. You’re my wife. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me hurt you. Okay, Linda?”
I nodded. You cut the ropes tying me to the bed.
“Go get cleaned up. I’ll take care of this.”
I took a very long shower. When I got out, you still weren’t back.
I sat on the couch. When you walked in, I shot you with the hunting rifle I found in the closet.
I stepped over your body and went home.
The police never found you.
It’s been five years now. I don’t think they’re looking anymore.
Resurrection
“Mom, where are you?”
“Home, sweetie.”
“Lock the doors and windows. I'm coming right over.”
“What's going on?”
“It's all over social media. People are jumping out of caskets, kicking their way out of refrigerated drawers and in a few cases people have found a way to claw their way out of recent graves.”
“Stop. Social media? C'mon sweetheart. It must be some sort of deep fake or movie advertisement.”
“Just do it, Mom. Please. Don't open the door for anyone but me.”
“You're worrying me, honey. Hold on, someone's ringing the bell."
“Mom, don't!”
“Hey! Just a...! Ohwhuuuuuugh”
“Mom!!”
Natural causes
When the bell rang, I thought it was my mom coming to pick me up.
“I got it,” I yelled as I ran to answer the door.
There were two men in suits. One held up a badge.
“I’m Agent Brown from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is Agent Henderson. May we come in?”
“Lily! There’s two men here from the FBI!”
My great-grandmother, Lily, came to the door.
“Get inside, Danny,” she said to me. I ran to the living room and sat next to my Granny who’d been dozing while watching the Mets lose. “How can I help you, gentlemen?”
“Are you Ginny Dorsey?”
“No. I’m Lillian Hope. Ginny Dorsey is my mama.”
“Is she here?”
“What is this about?”
“Can we come in?”
“We’re two old ladies and a young girl. I don’t feel comfortable.”
“We can come back with the police, if you prefer.”
“What in God’s name is this about?”
“Let’em in, Lillian” Granny said in her raspy voice.
“Can we offer you some coffee or tea, gentlemen?” Granny asked once they were seated. Lily was standing in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, arms crossed and kind of evil looking. As usual. Granny was on the couch, me next to her. Mr. Brown was in the chair next to Buddha and Mr. Henderson was next to the tv. The Mets had just scored.
“No, ma’am.”
“I think you know why we’re here, Mrs. Dorsey.”
“I ’spose, suh.”
“Are you Virginia Dorsey, born December 8, 1886?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Were you raised in Dublin, Georgia on the Hicks plantation?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Did you leave the plantation in 1904?”
“Thereabouts.”
“Did you give birth to a girl-child that same year?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Was the father of that child, Harold Hicks, son of the plantation owner? The same Mr. Hicks you accused of raping you and who subsequently was found in his bed, neck slit and castrated?”
Granny was silent.
“Mrs. Dorsey?”
“Mama said he raped me. I didn’t say ’nuthin atall.”
"Ma’am. We’ve read the original file. The killer was never found. There were plenty of suspects, given that apparently Mr. Hicks was not a well-liked man, but no one suspected you because you’d been sent off months before he was found murdered. Isn’t that right?”
“Mama sent me to cousin Modene in Atlanta.”
“But you returned one night, didn’t you, Mrs. Dorsey?”
“I was gonna marry Henry Simple. But after Mr. Hicks put that baby in me, Henry didn’t want me no more. He said he loved me, but it weren’t true. I thought my life was over – like so many other girls Mr. Hicks cornered in the fields, around town and in his house when his mama and daddy weren’t around. It was his fault.
“A few years later, George Dorsey came along. He was a good man. A good husband and a good daddy.”
“I wish I had met him,” I said, hugging Granny.
“Mrs. Dorsey, did you or did you not return to the Hicks plantation and murder Harold Hicks in his bed in October 1904?”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Agent Brown.”
“Agent Brown, I am 96 years old. Harold Hicks has been dead for almost 80 years. I have seen two world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. I have seen the world go from horse and buggies to cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes and a man on the moon. I have seen more suffering than a body should, but I lived to raise my daughters, my granddaughter and my great grandchildren. My great- great- granddaughter is here with me now,” she said this, hugging me to her side. “I have been blessed with love and a good life, despite all the hardships.” She paused. “In spite of Mr. Hicks.”
“Did you kill Mr. Hicks?”
“You got my letter, didn’t you?”
“What letter, Mama?” Lily interjected.
“I sent Danny out last time she was visiting. I needed to get it off my chest before it was too late. Didn’t expect visitors though.”
“What are you talking about, Mama?”
Granny looked at Agent Brown. “Yes, suh. It was me.”
Agent Brown stood up while Agent Henderson took out his handcuffs. “Ginny Dorsey, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…”
Granny was too frail to walk, so Agent Brown carried her down the five flights of stairs. She died before they reached the bottom.
Natural causes.
Kara
He was cradled in my husband's arms when I came home from work that day.
"Oooh [cooing sounds]! How cute! Whose puppy?"
My husband looked at me through long lashes with a tentative smile and said, "Ours."
Which led to our last screaming argument, his leaving the house to cool off and a few weeks of simmering. I have severe allergies and would become the de facto caretaker even if my husband claimed he would take care of him, so, I was not thrilled.
The puppy stayed. We named him Kara, which means black in Turkish. My husband had found him in a auto mechanic shop being abused by the pitbull daddy - apparently because he looked more like his Rottweiler mum. He was covered in oil and being pushed away from his mother's milk repeatedly. So, my husband felt compelled to save him. He wrapped him in a towel and brought him home.
He threw up oil all over the backseat during the drive. My husband bathed him until the water ran clear and Kara was the beautiful black and brown puppy I found in my husband's arms.
How could I banish him after hearing his story?
My only condition was that he had to be a sweet dog. All the stories of violent Pitbulls had me very concerned since our son was five at the time. (And overjoyed to have a puppy as you can imagine.)
I needn't have worried. Kara was the sweetest dog you've ever met. He almost never barked so if he did, you knew something was wrong. He loved people and only ever barked at two: and they deserved it. One was the contractor who took our money and ran.
Kara was so smart. Regardless of which bus my husband took home from work, he could feel him coming and would go wait in the corner of the garden a few minutes before the bus came. Then he would run the whole length of the garden as my husband walked up the street. He would wait on the front lawn, sitting yet tail wagging, with barely contained excitement.
He wasn't allowed on the furniture, but often, towards the end of his life, I would come home and find him curled on the couch or the recliner. He'd look up so happy to see me, then remember, uh oh, I'm not supposed to be here. Slowly, he would get down, tail between his legs and go to one of his doggie beds as I tried to keep a straight face.
He brightened our lives for ten years.
Glance of a lifetime
I spent most of that summer sleeping on trains. I learned to sleep in any position and through screaming children with harried parents, drunk young people as well as loud conversations I mostly couldn't understand.
At that moment, however, there was none of that background noise. It was a night train and everyone was sleeping or at least quiet. It was a whispering voice that awakened me.
Tú.
I opened my eyes, startled. The seats that had been empty when I fell asleep, were no longer. A man shackled both hand and foot was in front of me. Next to him and me were men in blue uniforms with bulges clearly delineating weapons within easy reach.
They were both deeply asleep, chins buried in their chests. But his eyes, a beautiful brown with flecks of swirling green and gold, were wide open.
Tú.
His mouth never moved, but I heard him call to me.
A warmth spread through me as something inside me recognized him.
You.
For as long as I can remember, I have felt emptiness, a feeling that a piece of me was missing. When our eyes met, I felt peace.
Then I was sitting in a café in Salamanca, writing page after page of existential reflections woven through a critical analysis of works by Azorín.
Puedo sentarme aquí?
The café-bar was full to bursting with loud college students on their way to louder drunkenness. I had been sitting in my window seat for hours and was just reaching a key argument in my paper so I was inclined to just say, no, I'm sorry, without looking up.
But I looked up. Soft brown eyes with flecks of green and gold smiled down at me. I took my bag off the empty chair and stuffed my papers and books inside.
An hour later we were walking the streets, looking for someplace a little quieter. Found, we played a game of chess while drinking Rioja at a table under the stars. We played, we talked, we drank, we fell in love.
Around one in the morning, he took my hand as we walked by the river. We sat on a bench, listening to the water, to the silence, the sounds of our hearts pounding in our ears. We held hands in silence for hours, butterflies running rampant.
Mía.
Mine.
He walked me to my hotel and kissed my forehead.
Before a month had passed, he came to my room. We had spent another evening by the water holding hands. That night, we kissed. First, a soft feathery kiss, then he licked my lips and they parted, welcoming. I melted in his arms, liquid warmth pooling low. We kissed for hours, first standing against the door then laying on my bed, bodies entwined, pressed close. Wanting.
We were married by Christmas. He moved to New York with me and got a job teaching at Columbia. I finished my doctorate a few months before our first son was born. Within six years, we had moved to the suburbs and had three boys. They all had their daddy's eyes. It was a loud house and a happy home full of love and laughter.
Of course, time passes. They grew up as children do. The youngest married first, his high school sweetheart. The eldest was next, marrying a colleague from work. Our middle child took his time, but love found him, eventually. Our hearts were full as they all built their own joy- and love-filled homes.
We retired when I was 55 and he was 62. Over the next twenty years, we traveled the world, played with our grandchildren and spent hours weeding our flower beds. Indeed, he was in the garden when I felt something was wrong. I ran outside and found him lying in the freshly turned dirt.
I ran over.
Querida…
Darling…
He grabbed my hand, grip strong though he was dying. His eyes pierced mine and I heard him say
Te quiero, vida mía, cuánto te quiero.
I was still staring into his eyes, tears of grief pouring from mine, when the officers pulled him up to take him off the train.
Dead by Dawn
I was home alone when they came. My boys were trekking up Mount Kyanjin Ri in Nepal and I was getting a little staycation. No cooking, minimal cleaning, reading, writing and sleeping without being awakened by earthshaking snores or multiple visits to the bathroom that didn’t coincide with my own.
I always thought I would have a heart attack and die if someone broke into my home in the middle of the night. Alternatively, I saw myself grabbing the surprisingly sharp pocketknife I keep by the bed and shocking said invader with a nicely placed jab to the neck…or wherever my flying fist might land.
I did neither.
It was my third night alone and I was sleeping like a baby when a hand covered my mouth, startling me awake for the seconds it took another set of hands to put pressure on my carotid arteries. At least, I assume that’s what he did. All I know is one second I was ready to bite a hand and scream, the next I was waking up in what appeared to be a one-room cabin. I was laying on a cot, hands and feet bound, while seven men sat watching me.
“I hope you don’t think you can actually get a ransom for me. We own a small business. We don’t have major profits. We pay our bills and have no debt. That’s it. You seriously chose the wrong side of town. You know we live on the blue and pink-collar side of town, right? I mean, you saw our house. What were you thinking?”
I babble when I’m nervous. Needless to say, I was nervous.
“You have been chosen,” said the only un-bearded fellow.
You can imagine where my mind went but all I said was, “Is this some kind of religious thing?”
“No,” replied a different guy.
“Kind of,” said a third.
Right. “What have I been chosen for?”
“To kill us.”
I giggled, also a nervous habit. “Great. Give me a gun and the keys to a car.”
“It is not that simple.”
“Of course it isn’t.”
“We were sent here long ago as punishment. We had to live and suffer as you humans…”
“Whoa, what. Wait. You humans? Um, I am sure I don’t really want to know, but, if you are not human, what are you?”
“There is no word for us that you would understand.”
“Fallen angels?” I said, giggling again while my skin had goosebumps and a sheen of sweat.
“More like gods, than the angels that come to your mind.”
“Well, if you are gods, how did you get sent here?”
“We angered the Creator. Our punishment is eternal damnation. Eternal damnation is living and suffering as a human without end. We cannot die.”
“Then how am I supposed to kill you?
“It is the night of the seventh moon in the seventh year of the seventh century since we were relieved of all that made us gods and forced to be but men.”
“Okay.”
“On this night alone, and not again for another seven hundred of your years, the barriers between this plane and ours will open for seven hours – from now until dawn. In that time, if we are killed, we will finally throw off the chains of our earthly imprisonment and return to our true existence.”
“And if I kill you, I get to go home?”
“Yes.”
“So, give me a gun.”
“As I said, it is not that simple.”
“Yeah, I remember. So, what’s the deal?”
“We cannot just let you kill us. We must run away from you, and we have to try not to die. You have to catch us and stab us seven times with this dagger,” the un-bearded one said, pointing to a very pointy knife with a bejeweled handle that I hadn't noticed on the cot next to me.
“Well, I guess you’re stuck here because there is no way I can do that. Have you looked at yourselves lately?” They were seated, but it was obvious they were all in the over six feet, six pack, I eat steak for breakfast and bench-press your mom group.
’While the barriers are down, you will be able to tap into energies and powers you’ve never dreamed of. But you must figure it out on your own or else it would be considered cheating, and we will continue to rot in this hell.”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
“I did.”
“Oy. Anyway, I have never killed anyone, and it is not on my list of things to do. Couldn’t you take me home and get someone else to do it? Why not hire a contract killer or something.”
“We cannot hire someone. That would be cheating.”
“And this isn’t?”
They looked at each other.
“You have been chosen by the Creator.”
“You are fricking kidding me. You must have really pissed him, or her, off.”
“Clearly since we are here.”
“No, I mean, I am the last person in the world to choose to kill someone. Seriously.”
“If you do not kill us, you will die.”
“As I said, last person. I’ve been suicidal since I was 12. Get it over with. Just shoot me now.”
“You do not want to die.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I definitely don’t want to stab seven men.”
“If you do not find and kill at least one of us an hour for the next seven hours, you will lose a finger each hour. If you do not kill us all by dawn, those you have killed will rise as we have ever done these last seven hundred years we have tried to die in the many wars that have plagued the earth, and you will be beheaded – by seven strokes of seven angry immortal men.”
“That sounds horribly painful.”
The only one who hadn’t spoken looked at me with haunted eyes and said, “It is.”
I wasn't certain we were talking about the same thing.
“Fine, I guess I have no choice. Untie me.”
They looked at each other with a sense of hope or dread, not sure which. “You must free yourself. And you must do it without one of your fingers.” As he said this, one moved quickly to flip me on my side and, using something that must have been made for cutting off fingers, he snipped off my pinkie.
I was still screaming when they left the cabin.
I wasted fifteen minutes of the first hour whimpering. Then I started to think. Okay, if the walls are down, so to speak, and those guys were supposedly like gods, I must be able to tap into some powerful energy.
Why would I be chosen? I thought. Well, because it had to be someone who didn’t want to kill, who had a healthy fear of a painful death if not death itself…what else? Maybe also someone who wanted to believe in other worlds and beings or varying layers of existence… who wasn’t power hungry.I suspect someone who sought power would have a field day figuring out what powers he could get tonight and how to hold on to them.
I just wanted to get home so I could see my boys again. I might even take off from work and hop on a plane like they’d wanted.
A half hour had gone by before I thought, so, if the walls are down, on this amalgamated plane, my pinkie is not gone and the bindings on me do not exist.
And it was so.
I took a deep breath. OMG, I thought. I wanted to think myself anywhere but there, but figured I would end up fingerless and headless, so instead, I grabbed the dagger and went out the door. I thought myself into the form of an owl, carrying the dagger in my claws. I flew above the surrounding forest and began my hunt.
I found the first within minutes. I landed in the branch above where he hid, retook a human form and landed a death blow before he knew I was there. And then I added the six to complete the seven stabs.
And yes, I meant “a human form.” Why take my normal, five foot seven, 120-pound form when I could be six foot six carrying two hundred fifty pounds of pure muscle?
I thought myself into owl form and set off to find the other six.
I found all but one within the first three hours, but I hunted all night for the seventh, flying miles of circles around the cabin. I finally flew back to the cabin to rest and think. As I was landing, I saw him through the window. He was sitting, looking at the door, a gun in his hand.
Hmmm, I thought. Either he doesn’t want to go back, or he has to make a good showing.
I flew up to the roof. I heard him speaking.
“I know you are near. I can feel you. You will not be able to kill me, and my brothers will come back, and we will have to stay here. We will take your head and we will have life still. I don’t want to return to the ether. I have grown to love this world. I do not want to leave it.”
Great.
I wondered how to get in the cabin without being seen. Then I thought, why go in the cabin? If there were no air in the cabin, he would suffocate and die. Bingo!
I could hear him choking from my perch on the roof. Within moments, there was silence.
I flew down and peeked in the window. He was on the floor, unmoving. I thought restraints onto his wrists, just in case, and removed the gun from the room. Then I entered, dagger at the ready. As I stabbed him for the seventh and last time, his body faded away or perhaps it was just me, for I found myself standing over my bed in my home. Alone.
The dagger was still in my hand.