His Lady Loves

Blood. Well, splatters of it, droplets really, they’re smeared across the face of her palm. Squinting her eyes, she tries to count them out in the faint yellow light leaking out of the lone street lamp. When suddenly, she feels a hand grab a fistful of her hair. Now, this pain she knows. Well, has gotten acquainted fairly well for the past half an hour or was it for the past six months, really? Who’s to tell?

He stomps in the wet grass, puny feet trying to play pretend the giant’s game. All of his might goes into just dragging her along his whim. He’s always had difficulty you see. Comes as a peril of being only and only attracted to strong-willed women since he was a 14-year-old teenager. Even then, he’d try to bend those wills to his command. Almost got his nose broken once, by the first ‘lady love’ as he affectionately calls them.

Of course, she suffered blunt trauma to her head, as will this one, he’s decided. She wriggles around in the mud, the hem of her dress catching the charcoal-coloured mud. He liked that dress, well, of course, he did on account of buying it for her, and the several hers before her. It was always the same. Summer dress, green in colour with mustard coloured flowers on it. Puffed sleeves, with a princess neck that would almost look as if it was chosen specifically to show off the slashed victim’s neck.

That cut, was always so pristine, just like his mother’s when she cut onions to make chicken curry. It was all in the knife, she’d say, you have to hold it just at the right angle. And, there are no second chances in this, one swish and the onion would be sliced into two clean halves. He was pretty careful as to not cut the neck like that though, lest it falls away from the body.

No, that kind of disrespect to his lady love would just not be allowed. She ought to be whole, always whole with a broken left shoe sole. He'd chuckle as he would say that out loud in a singsong voice. This one lady though, was particularly strong as was evidenced by the blackish-blue bruise on his arm.

He was impressed by her strength, quite a lot in a lustful way as well. She had tried to match the swing of his arm that had connected to her jaw with the full intention of breaking it, albeit unsuccessfully. Her jaw was still in place, he noticed with increasing sadness.

One, two, ten hits had still not done the job yet and the sky was slowly developing streaks of deep pink, just like the grass on which she lay. This one was his last lady, the last conquest, he promised. He’d wonder later on, what goes on in a criminal’s mind really? Was his Mommy a criminal too? Would that be proven by the welts and deep-cut marks on his lower back?

He was not a criminal! He breathed a sigh of relief as he took one last swing at her with the shovel. Her eyes, shining so bright always, widened and slowly lost their shine as she breathed her last. The first rays of the sun were almost about to kiss her olive skin. He had much to do. Positioning her as if she was sitting, against the back of a tree, he began to change into a new set of clothes.

Then, he stuffed his old, torn clothes into a garbage bag, rolled it up, put it in his laptop bag, and walked away. His feet were back to being puny as he slowly placed them one after the other, walking towards the hospital. It was just about dawn, when he gently pushed open the door, as the old lady in her late 60s stirred awake. ‘Good morning, my lady love!’ he smiled.