And So He Ran.

CHAPTER THREE

Night came spilling ink that then hovered the sky, a cold quilt attached with glistening diamonds from a world beyond reach.

The crackle of the gift wrap is all I can hear behind me, she busies herself in opening them, saving the wrapper for "Next use." As she titles it.

"They bought us spoons, love!" she ran to my side showing the golden spoons with our initials. "Fancy isn't it?"

She sat on my lap as she cupped my face between her soft palms. Her black charcoal hair pools sideways, gliding from her paper-thin cardigan down to her rich breasts. Drugged like a drunkard, I savvy to explain the ecstasy she gave me just by moving her body in slow, moderate movements. The cold air turned into a hot breeze of breaths.

"You are one unpredictable woman."

"And you like it don't you, Elijah?" Her innocent voice sent a shiver down to my spine, her body enhanced, shaded by the candlelights.

"I do, but you know that naughty things do not go unpunished. Or maybe you are just one big trouble maker, aren't you?" A gasp escaped her lips when I wrapped my arms around her waist. 

"Elijah." She softly uttered with a dull stare in her eyes.

Pain, immense pain, flushed my body like a flash. And she was causing it, her hand buried deep in my heart, pulling, pulling, pulling. I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe until everything was unshunned dark.

Shaking my head as I entangle myself from a nightmare. I scoffed at the dream I had encountered moments ago. But where am I? Steadying myself, I walked towards the room at the end of the hall.

"Mother, I had a dream and, I'd like to know what it means. Where's Elane?" Looking around walls, were polished wood. At the corner are shelves of books and drinks varying from wines to rum I do not recognize.

"Elane is long gone, Elijah. 'Don't you remember how you drowned' in your blood?" Her body is frozen still, her eyes burned by her tears as she walks toward me. And somehow I still don't understand anything, I don't.

"Today is your funeral." You were found dying, laid down on a bed of red. And it wasn't a bed of roses yet, but a bed of your blood. She killed you, my son. She is a murderer and she loved you, only to die in her arms.

"End this joke, mother. I know how much you both like games." I smiled at her, but to my dismay, she wouldn't smile back. And in an instant, I feared that what she told me was everything but a dream.

She beckoned me to follow her through a narrow door. Outside was the garden, along with the casket my body got placed in.

"Why am I still here?" My spirit broke, the thought of dying the same day I got married, a sad tale that will leave history a mark. Behind me, my mother watched the pain that consumed me. Admitting how she couldn't bear the idea of losing her son that she suppressed my soul in this world, this world of damnation. "And you want me to retrieve my heart from her?" I asked. But as soon as I asked, I wished I could have just shut my mouth. And succumb to the darkness within.

She left me to tarry along with the mansion, and out of curiosity, I went to the room where Elane and I were last together. The room was smeared in drips of red, her belongings gone and, she left her ring on the nightstand shimmering in gold every time the sun grazes on it.

"I thought you wanted to be with me," I whispered to the empty bed as if I could see her appear out of thin air. To ask her where did I go wrong, if I hurt her or did something I didn't realize I did, dwelling on the image of fixing things with her. Because, whether she kills me or not. The truth is deep within me. My heart will always find a way to forgive her, to love her once more.

I am naive, with a mind of steel but a heart of butterfly wings. A fragile piece of lament that is slowly burning. I love her, even if I no longer want to.