Behind The Hands That Kill

TWENTY-EIGHT

The stars will die before we do, Izabel…the stars will die before my love for you does. I am not good at these things; I am inexperienced. Romance. Gestures of affection. Words weaved together poetically to proclaim love. Gifts and smiles and laughter and conversation about the simple things in life—I know nothing of these things. They make me uncomfortable, the way that embracing my father would have made me feel if I had not killed him, or crying on my brother’s shoulder. I may never understand these rituals, these feelings. But we have an eternity to find out. It takes an eternity for a star to die.

Those were the words I wanted to say to Izabel the last time I saw her.

If she had come here tonight, I would have worked up the courage to say them. I thought that she…no, I had hoped that she would come to see me one last time before she left for Mexico. I called her, but she did not answer, and so I left a voicemail with cryptic details only she would understand about the hotel I am temporarily staying in. For the night, anyway. I wanted to remain in Boston tonight, close to the residence Izabel and I once called home. Just in case.

But I know she is gone.

I glance at my Rolex. Four a.m. I wonder where she is. I wonder if I will ever see her again. Or if the talons of her old life with sink into her, fatally this time.

Clenching my fists, I resist the desperate urge to go after her.

I resist.

I resist…

Instead, I picture her radiant smile, and the light in her eyes, and her laughter, and her warmth. I picture the first time I saw her, hiding in the backseat of my car, and I remember the first time I heard her play the piano. And I wonder what I could have possibly done to deserve her. All I have ever done is wicked. I am a monster in the shadows; the blood of many stains my gnarled hands; the souls of the innocent are forever caught in my blade-like teeth.

So how can this be, that even an ounce of light be given to a monster such as me?

I go to the window of my top floor hotel room and gaze out, not at the glittering city, but at the stars fully awake in the early morning sky. And I see her, Izabel, Sarai, in every single one of them. And this is how I know, that because of her, because I see her in everything, I am not only a monster, but a man.