Spilled Milk

This is a short character sketch written for one of my other stories. It bears no resemblance to reality and is pure fiction.


Night, darkness, despair. I used to love this time of the day-or night as the case seems to be. Not anymore. Not since that night. Now, I despise the darkness and the light with an equal, unparalleled passion.

         It's amazing how things change; the paths life takes are bitter reality filling my blackened soul with acrimonious hatred.

         I still see him of course. Every night, every morning, every time I dare close my eyes. I hear the screams and the crying, pleading children begging me to stop hurting their daddy. I did not stop and I could not stop. Even now, I fear their retribution.

         He was innocent. I hadn't known.

         An innocent man is now dead and it was by my hand alone.

         It's been one week since that night. One week ago today, tonight, this very hour. The minute is creeping closer.

         More than ten people have died by my murderous hand in the past year alone. Innocents too, probably. I didn't know. I didn't care. None of those deaths, murders, bothered me before. It's just business and my business is all that mattered.

         One innocent man's death, his assassination, haunts me. I fear to know why, but worse, I fear that I already know that answer.

         They told me that I was the best woman for the assignment. They said that I was the perfect person to kill that man, that father whose children have haunted my nightmares since that night.

         What they didn't say was that he was a loving, caring man who wanted a wife and someone to help him raise his children with him. He wanted me to be that woman. He loved me.

         I kept telling myself that the entire relationship was strictly business and nothing else. He was the mark, and I, the assassin. Perhaps it was love but I wouldn't know because I've never loved anyone ever before.

         That night, he asked me to marry him, to become his children's mother.

         Why did he have to ask me that? I knew that I had already broken all the rules. I had gotten too close. Way too close.

         The children screamed when they saw me murder their father. I hadn't known they were there. I thought they were in bed. I was so horribly wrong. They had been in the kitchen eavesdropping under the guise of getting a glass of milk. They saw everything and I saw the glass of milk fall.

         And my permanent resolve crumbled and I cried for the first time in memory.

         People told me that the children ran away that night, taking nothing more than they clothes they were each wearing. It's so much like me, too much, and I find it frightening.


         I cried again.

         Now I'm here, in this six-by-six foot cell lamenting on my crimes. Business, I tell myself, nothing but business.

         Always business.

         A business I created and upheld but it doesn't exist anymore. I know they're gone.

         It was a business that ended with a glass of spilled milk and my never ending tears.

         And my death. They will kill me. They can't afford to let me live and have the chance to tell someone of their existence and their crimes.

         I'll be dead before the sun rises.

         I do not fear death, but rather a life confined, a life ending in this slow, decaying, dehumanizing existence.

         This is the end, my end, and for once in my life, I do not fear crying, even if it is over something as mundane as spilled milk.