What I remember…I remember standing there and knowing what was going to happen next.

The realization hit me like a punch in the gut, and in that instant I just felt overwhelmed. I felt my heart rampantly overflowing with rage, sorrow and pain, and the weight of all these heinously sharp emotions just made my legs want to buckle. My knees hit the ground and the shattered mirror I’d tipped to the ground glared at me. I’d struck it hard before and through the spider-like cracks embedded in the silver surface I saw my own tear rimmed eyes. Red and lost. Dazed.  The emotions mercilessly tore at me, savagely ravaged me from the inside like angry, encaged monsters. They chilled me, burned me, gripped me and now, I realized with quiet resolution, they were about to kill me.

My red stained hands loosened and the gun slipped to the rug with a muffled clatter. Lamps had crashed to the ground, tables overturned, and family pictures stilettoed with bullet holes upon the wall. Shattered glass glistened across the room, drowning in the pools of blood that had begun to steadily grow and darken beneath the family of three.

And I know…I remember the couple died together.

Tight in an embrace that death only loosened, not broke. Dark there, praying fast between their shallow breaths.
I cocked my gun at an ‘amen’ and tried to take her out, but the husband deflected the bullet with his back. He drooped in her grip and she screamed loud enough to wake the child. I squeezed the trigger only after she showed me her eyes. I wanted myself in them.

The child…The child I had to search for.

Her screaming had given her away. I strode purposely through the small house, my resounding steps sending her voice into a pitch that only small, truly terrified children could achieve. Sobs racked her body as she huddled in the corner. Clutching at her bear as if she thought it could shield her from the bullets. She begged me wait, at least that’s what I could understand between her desperate weeping, profusely apologizing and asking me to wait.

To wait, she shrieked. Wait, wait. Please.

Who are you waiting for?

Daddy. Daddy. Her voice cracked and her lungs were going to burst from all the quivering intakes of air.

But your daddy is the reason I’m here.

And now, in the thick, drowning silence I faintly wished he could still hear it ringing in the air.

It was quiet.

My head drooped, tendrils of golden hair sweeping across my forehead like the familiar caress of my love.

My love.

My life.

“My heart,” I whispered in the middle of the room, pressing the cold ring of steel beneath my chin. I remember it.

And I remember…I remember pulling down the trigger and thinking it was over.