Time To Die

It does not take a significant amount of emotion to dredge up the memories of the initial occasion I made contact with the eyes of my executioner. I recall them, clearer than daylight: incomprehensible unforgiving grey-blue pools of eternity, framed solidly by matching lines of golden brown eyelashes that, in any other situation would conflicted and clashed in the presence of my own eyes. However in this instance, they seemed to fit together like pieces of some overly-eccentric puzzle, as though in some warped way, the contrasting colour combination was lazily premeditated. And of course, within conforming to the archetypal stereotype; his skin was riddled with a maze of freckles, forming mysterious constellations that foretold a future riddled with the threat (or could that be promise) of no specific pathway or direction. They say that the eyes are the window to the soul: in this instance, his soul was equivocal, suppressing any intrusion from outward influence. It was as if he didn’t want to let anyone in. Those were the only aesthetics that I remember to begin with. If anything, they are the only aesthetics that truly matter.

Our first meeting had been ritual: the typical exchange of introductory greetings, and then, with a response that sealed my destiny, a simple sentence formulated from my own curious subconscious desires. The question. He laughed, shrugged it off; his face revealing the nonchalant dismissive frame of mind that I have become so used to these days. Nothing more than the ghost of a smile began to curl the corner of his lips, breaking apart his previously jaded expression. Simultaneous to this remark, those eyes casually grazed my dark silhouette as I retaliated: taking in my smart, yet conventional appearance so carefully chosen to conceal any form of individuality a person was to possess. Factoring appearance alone, I was a lone sheep in the midst of a herd. Nonetheless, every herd has its black sheep, and it was clear from the beginning that my fate was different from the others n this cited position.

There it was.

The beginning.

Time passes in the prison. The flutter of a butterfly’s wings could have been lengthier for all I was aware of, or indeed, concerned about. As days melted seamlessly into weeks, he steadily infiltrated my time spent in confinement by stealing whatever chance he could get to find conversation. Inevitably, by this constant desire for dialogue, we drew ever closer, the lines binding us to our once frangible lives becoming less defined and more interweaved the nearer we ventured towards the penultimate pages of our ‘ever-so-troubled’ tragic... solitary stories. The date was set for the end – I would even endeavour warily to say that I had anticipated from that first moment what was to happen. Like a grotesque clichéd tragedy, the future was damned even before it had begun. He would bring about the end of this era.

Time passed in the prison. The date tip-toed ever nearer: its enticing possibilities seeping effortlessly into the cracks in my selectively private existence. I had a troubled past, and knew that this was almost solely the factor behind the inevitable future that I was destined to face. My thoughts once more returning to him (as they so often did these days), I could deduce that from the stories he’d recounted to me as I sat in my virtual cell, our lives were mirrored in the ways that we had both surmounted (or so at that point, I wanted to pretend) our own demons. So similar in fact, that he mused the information himself, with the same arrogant smile playing on the corner of his rough-looking face.

That face. You could call it beautiful in an almost twisted way. My favourite facet of his multifarious existence was the way those eyes peered out from under a velvety waterfall of auburn hair whilst concentrating intently on any form of trivial activity – I studied avidly from the side of my ever-nearing prison walls at the way he deliberated the unblemished surfaces of snooker balls on the smooth velvet table in front of us. We played Snooker: a simplistic coincidental allegory to the game that was beginning to enslave any conscious thoughts in the tortured chambers of my own mind.

On the night we knew it was to happen – death – the termination of my angst-ridden existence, my heart resembled that of a hummingbird’s: beating out an over-exaggerated rhythm against the concrete walls of my heaving chest. My body felt like it was finally breaking free of the bonds that had restrained it for so long – there was almost a sense of sickness and nausea present in my voice, let alone my head.

I had almost wanted to be in some mindless form of stupor as he made it happen, and I had no trouble in achieving this, considering the copious amounts of... yes, mind-numbing substances shall we say? I had wanted the end to be instantaneous and clear-cut, and there was nothing more I could have done to ensure this. He willingly accepted my request, and my thirst was satisfied – I was assuming that he too had wanted the end to be particularly swift on his part. The emotional attachment that we had built up over these past few weeks was finally working up to my advantage.

It could have easily been the sound of the blood pounding in my ears, but I could hear the faint drum beats resonating around my head as I seized those fateful steps towards the end. Away from the only forms of safety and security that I had ever had the fortune of knowing. Away even, from him. For the moment anyway. I had known deep inside my unfathomable soul that he was pursuing me – even when I ran, he followed, and there was nothing I could have ever attempted to escape his muscular arms. I was caught, and pulled back to the place where I was fated to be.

Falling. Falling as a result of the gyrating mess that my head had become: a head that was now comfortably resting on the rich earthy ground. The dark soil below me had smeared itself on my face as I lay there and awaited his presence for an indefinite amount of time, not quite knowing at this point where this would take me. Almost in two distinguishable personae – the so-called ‘sober; girl inside: careful and prudent, and her reckless counterpart that the presence of alcohol had so easily procured – I waited.

He was next to me. I could sense his hot sticky breath encountering the skin on my neck, casually feathering down the back of my dark hood – so close to my own shivering figure. For once, this proximity was physical in addition to emotional, given that I had never before let anyone venture this close in my meagre short existence. Looking back, I’d gather that this was possibly one of the reasons I had walked so easily into the trap. I listened to his voice for a blurred interlude. He explained himself. Words that, even in my state of intoxication, I understood. And then... the three words. Interpreted loosely as “Time to die.”

That was the moment.

The moment.

Our Moment.

All in those few seconds, everything that my life had been directed towards ever since that fateful day back when, in trepidation, I first condemned my fate with that frank question was finally beginning to happen. A prospect I had repeatedly imagined, yet never really conceded as truth.

I flicked my eyes up and for a brief few milliseconds, the two pairs synchronised for the first time. In the dusky light of a half moon, they were nothing but two reflections of a distant fire that was burning behind us. But it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see the very colour of perfection I knew they hid, and as he leaned in closer to deliver the final swift move that signified the end, I closed my own eyes in anticipation: it was almost too perfect, almost too typical of the moment. There was a pause: a brief hiatus in which neither of us spoke a single utterance, and all I could feel was the scarlet heat of the blood coursing through my head in the face of impending doom; the cool damp dirt against my flushed visage. And then...

And then he pressed his soft warm lips to mine, meeting them at the exact moment any threads connecting either of us to another individual on this earth were severed. Nothing mattered in the world other than him for those few beautiful moments that I could use to forget everything I realised that I would one day have to return to. Consumed by an ecstasy of temporary amnesia... bliss.

My fate. Sealed with Love’s first fatal kiss. And I would come quietly.