Terror

Six





















Kyle Gregor-Pearse

She met him at the grocery store on February 13^th, 2003. Six months later they were married, and she was in heaven. Five years later, without knowing quite how it had happened, she was in hell.

It started with the words. Words that came out of him and stung her with all the strength of her love. Words she never imagined she would hear from the man she loved so completely came flying out of his mouth to lash her with their scorn. And so very strong was her love, that in spite of how her spirit cried out against the injury being heaped upon it, she ignored that inner voice that warned her that so very much was wrong.

So she was silent. She worked harder and harder each and every day, blindly trying to fix something that she had convinced herself was her fault.

And it began to work. He seemed now to love her once again, and no more did he speak the words which had hurt her so much. And she was lifted to the heavens again, soaring like Icarrus on the wings of her love. So it was much worse this time when the words came again, stinging her, and driving her to even greater efforts to make him happy.

Then he hit her, and it was like her entire world had shattered from that single blow. Even after the harshest words, she had never believed him to be capable of this. Something happened then. Her spirit, which had been wilting away for so long came rushing back to the surface in a blaze of passion. She scratched his face, leaving deep red welts, and he roared in anger, and hit her again. She fell to the floor, broken and sobbing, her spirit extinguished.

He, however, was not finished. He went to the room where he kept the revolver. Wanting to scare her badly, he emptied the chamber of its lethal load and clicked it shut; the bullets fell to the floor, clinking as though someone was striking a tiny funeral bell five tiny clinks, and a sixth that would never come. Then he went to her, where she was still lying on the floor in a broken pile. Holding it in the air, asking if she wanted to play Russian roulette, spinning the chamber, cocking the hammer, pointing it at her. He pulled the trigger, nothing. She screamed as what he was doing sunk in, screamed for herself, and screamed for him as he put the gun to his own head, seeking to terrify her.

The gun rose, inch by inch, till it was level with his ear. He spun the chamber.

He pulled the trigger.

Five clinks he had heard, five tiny tolls of the bell.

Red, it was the color she saw, and it filled everything. Entering her vision and filling her mind with its dreadful finality.

They buried him on the fifth of August, on a balmy summer day that would have been their anniversary. She had wanted it that way. And as the coffin was lowered six feet into the ground, her sorrow dried up, and something else took its place. And it was small, and delicate, flickering, and uncertain. And it was hope.

The bell tolled five times.

And her spirit soared.

Here's something else I wrote. I'm mostly sticking to short (very much so) stories, as I don't know how I'd handle having to concentrate on one plotline for any length of time.