Cecilia

Cecilia said the barrel stayed warm for two hours after she fired the first round, the only round, and that by the time it finally cooled she had done the same. I guess it’s pretty accurate to say that George was cool long before the gun or her temper, but that’s just the rules of physics I guess; bodies cool faster seeped in blood than bodies seeped in rage.
She said he looked like “Jesus Fucking Christ” lying here on the warped kitchen floor, both his arms stretched out on each side, a cold blue cross that seemed to float on top of a pool of blood that flowed out from beneath him. His own rosary that hung round his neck floated too, on a delta of blood collected where his clavicle bone dipped down, growing larger as blood dripped down his nose, through the crease of his lips and down the slop of his chin and neck in one slow stream. But he was no savior; he wasn’t even close.
The coroner counted nine entry holes and only five exits, told her he didn’t die from the first eight shots, but from the last, right to the heart. How cliché, she thought, how cliché and impossible. She was sure his heart was impenetrable if it even existed at all and would’ve preferred to do her own autopsy and probe the empty cavities herself, with a scalpel and grin.
They were both taken to the hospital by ambulance: him to the morgue and her to the ER for all of the bruises on her chest and her broken leg. Cecilia said he killed her long before she did him in. That was her defense, that and the bruises, cuts, nightmares, broken bones and their dead baby. She’d taken his pistol as a last defense; the only thing she could find that was quicker and colder than his fist.
She told them she’d felt nothing when she saw him standing there at the kitchen sink, filling a glass of water and staring out the window, nothing but a twinge of pity, pity and hopefulness; that and a sudden need to believe in god and an urge to pray for a steady shot.
When the smoke had literally cleared, she watched him for a while noting the metamorphosis of his body, changing from pink to blue and contrasting the terra cotta floor so perfectly that she cried. She cried for the first time in three years and sat on the floor digging her big toe into the pool of congealed blood. The delicate skin broke open and she watched the blood run through the cracks, pushing away all the crumbs and dead skin particles that had collected there as a last ditch effort of survival, only to be cleared away by him. She dug her toe in further, until her entire foot was covered in blood, and ran her toes back and forth, scraping the tile underneath until the tips of her toes were raw, laughing the entire time because she knew he couldn’t fight back.
But she cried in spite of herself and regretted each heave of her chest, and tried not to breathe him in anymore. She didn’t want him to sink into her anymore than he already had, every time he eyed her through the bottom of a bottle or his steely hands touched her and her shudder wasn’t enough to push him away.
She cried because she was worried she might drown in her tears and his blood, just like her baby had the last time he touched her. Mostly though, she cried for the beauty of the scene; she always cried at endings.