Charlotte

  The sound of her voice still echoes through my mind as it tears through my sodden flesh. The rhythmic pulsing of her once beating heart throbs throughout my entire being. What drove me to this madness? I can only begin to explain.
    In one moment we were laughing whimsically, I remember rolling through the crisp autumn leaves and kissing the tender flesh of her warm breast. But just a few simple words drove me mad. After a long, heart wrenching silence my own, now blood soaked hands grasped onto her swan-like neck with such a force that her bones nearly shattered. For how long this went on I cannot say,  but the haunting memory of her lifeless face may never be divulged from my mind.
    What were those words she whispered to me What could have fallen from those delicate, angelic lips what would drive me to such a horrid sin? Oh yes, “I don’t love you,” that’s it. As soon as she uttered these terrible words I was plunged into insanity. My heartfelt love turned to overwhelming hate, a hate that burned within my soul with such a fury that I have never witnessed. But where is that powerful hate now? I feel no hate whatsoever, only sorrow, regret, and angst. And now here I am, clawing at the dirt, slaving away at making a grave deep enough to hide my sin.
    For hours I’ve been digging, her bruised and bloody body lying next to me as I labor. She gone cold and pale, her lips a ghastly blue and her dress a dirty, torn up mess. A line of red seeps from out of her mouth, and drips down onto the white lace of her neckline. The sun now peaks over the blue green hills in the horizon, and my eyes droop heavily from lack of sleep and exhaustion. Yet my task is still not complete. I dig for at least twenty minutes more until I find my makeshift grave to be befitting.
    Slowly, I lower her still corpse, rigor mortis not yet taking its effect. For the last time I kiss her, slowly and softly, but so passionately. But what now? What is left for me in this world? I am a murderer, a sinner, doomed to be forever tortured in the bowels of Hell. Nothing will ever be the same. And now that I gaze upon her, resting quietly in her shallow grave, I realize that I want her. I want her so badly, more than I have ever wanted a woman in all my life. Without a second thought, I climb into the grave next to her, gently resting my head upon her breast.
    For years she was my life, my obsession. I watched her almost every night, peering through the window into her candle lit bedroom. It was only for a few moments at first, but the obsession quickly grew. The minutes turned to hours as I watched her read, undress, sleep. I especially loved to watch her sleep, her delicate body wrapped in thin silk, her small mouth agape as she tossed restlessly in the night.
    Something cold and sharp jabs into my leg, and I realize it to be my pocket knife. Its bright silver gleams in the dim light of the early morning sun. Without even thinking, I bring the blade to my wrist. A thin line of red marks the blade’s path; the line becomes distorted as warm crimson oozes out from the wound.
    I look back now at my lost love, the only woman I’ve ever really cared for. And she made me kill her.  My hand traces the lines of her face, her dark brown hair, her empty green eyes. Oh, how I long for her. The blade cuts through me wrist countless times more, and I’ve become a pale, bloody, dirty mess myself. I hold her tenderly in my blood soaked arms as I drift into an eternal sleep, an eternity with my beloved Charlotte.