Prologue
I Love her…
Frosty stillness suffocates the mountain noise. This moment is calm, honest, and peaceful. The winter storm that extended our romantic getaway had longed passed. The valley now was shrouded in a glistening white silence. Our beautiful snow-clad cabin and the lake reflect the coming morning glow. If it were not for the blood and the bodies, this would have been a soothing setting instead of something out of a horror novel.
“My Charming…” Kassidy would whisperer while falling asleep in one another’s arms after a blissful spell of lovemaking. Reminiscences and reality overlying each other. Moans of pleasure, mixed with the now fading pain of anguish…
The storm tried to bury secrets, but blood is hard to get out, even in memories. It pulls, calling out for attention, shimmering in the morning light.
Snow white is stained in a deep seething red. Heated tears fell the length of my face mixing with the blood and dirt. It was the only bit of warmth I could feel. “U-unforgivable…” the word struggles to fall from my lips; a white mist of exhaustion leaves instead.
A blanket of frost had settled perfectly still around me. My cold hands were a filthy mix of red, sweat, and brown. Kassidy, my beautiful darling wife, appears frozen as I look over at her sweet face, now stained in blood. Red, Kassidy moaning while lips suckle her neck.
She was not frozen by the chill whisper of the wind but by time. I wanted to refuse the truth; I encased Kass in a snow globe, but reality had done more than shake; it quaked from prolonged exposure to the harsh weather.
These lasting thoughts strobed with red and white like filters. White, Kassidy smiled in a heavenly glow while we stood at the altar holding hands, and she said, “I do.” Red, Kassidy, and I in the passion of our love. White, our cabin was the home away from home, rebuilt with wholesome memories giving any husband or father a sense of pride. Red, loud cries in the rain were now turning to icy echoes. White, Zion playing in Queens Lake without a care in the world. In his amazement when we discovered a white rose near the only neighboring building miles from these woods. An abandoned place where Kass would spin tales of witches, good and evil-red, deep thrust, Kassidy’s mouth uncontrollably screams as he buried himself deeper into her. The reality shook me, “I killed him… I killed him; I killed him.”
Kassidy “Jo” Lawton, My Heart. My Wife. My Queen. Her stare showed no peace or reset as the sticky red fluid pooled in the snow, further soiling its lush, pure beauty.
Sullivan Grey, though unscripted, played his part in all of this. Sullivan’s face was fixated on me with mismatched eyes of brown and blue. Heterochromia is a rare trait for this strange man; if only I saw through those dreadful eyes long ago for what they were, lethargic with self-satisfaction. Sullivan Salazar Grey was the man to disrupt all of this, to shatter our love for his needs, playing games with those lasting words still cracking what I desperately want to preserve.
“What does a liar do when he’s dead?”
What pleasure did he truly experience as the illustrator of this drawn-out novella of love and catastrophe? I gravely wanted to blame him, but it wouldn’t be the actuality, just me running from the truth again, right, Kass? This was long written in scarlet. Finally, we made it to the irrevocable end of it all, the closing curtain.
When I see her with fading life, I see our son; he inherited Kass’s brown eyes. Reflecting the truth, their silence answered louder than anything they could voice. The if onlys, maybes, and questions are ephemeral concepts now. Yet, I wanted to believe it could have been different. There was a part of me that wanted to have faith in that. The naïve part. The dreamer. “I could give you many excuses, but the truth is, we are victims of our vices.”
White, Kassidy was lying exhausted but smiling in a hospital bed, holding our sweet boy. Although this was the eventual end, for someone like me, the cold bloody winter backdrop with the cabin in the wood scene is all intended as the closing chapter, right, Claire? This was meant to happen from the moment we lost you; it was inevitable.
Forgive, never forget… but there are some things you merely cannot forgive nor forget. “You hurt me because I’ve hurt you, but why this?” Here I am, again, asking a question I knew the answer to or at the very least understood that I wrote it all. The Smith & Wesson MP gunmetal felt heavier than ever; no need to check… “Last one.”
How many times have I held the polymer of that Smith & Wesson M&P? How many hours at the range, practicing proficiently to protect my family, my home? Never did I imagine it would be used like this. Divorce was never a possibility, only death, a sin for a sin.
Red. I will suffer hell’s penance for the sin of killing the ones I love. A single 9-millimeter round is a final period as the thought crosses my mind.
Unforgivable. Unforgivable, it was all so damn “UNFORGIVABLE!” The December winds replied with a sudden swarm of snowflake white bees. White. Us. Red. Red. Them. RED. Black. Unforgivable. A hush, as the morning came, the muzzle of the Smith & Wesson flashed a brilliant white as it echoed with a final
“Bang.”
Sex With Luna 