Click

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:43:46 -0400

Click

I heard the car door. Just the door. If I had heard men, noise, the commotion they make when they are coming in to kill, I would have panicked. As it was, I thought, perhaps, a burglar or even a visitor, a friend seeking refuge or solace. I moved - oh how quietly I moved. I raised the thick sheet that covered our window.

Why were they being so quiet? Where was the ruckus, meant to fill us with fear before the real torture began? Were they so tired of their bloodlust that they hadn't the drive, the dangerous fire that drove them to rape and kill us, devising new ways to give us pain before they finished us?

Then I saw him, pacing and smoking his fat cigar. He had come for me at last. Like my own brother, the man beside whom I had once learned and worked. Until someone had decided that we were different enough to turn one on the other. Call me one name and he another and now he was a Commander and I am soon to be a memory, if anyone who will remember me is still alive.

I found my knife where I had left it under the bed. In older days, it had cut meat for meals.

I am glad, my friend, that it is you, I thought, for your hesitation is my opportunity.

I stood and walked, still maintaining my quiet, into the room of my eldest daughter. Why? I asked myself again, Why had my wife only borne girl children? When my wife was her age, we were already married. I want to wake her so I can see her, but I know that this would only make it harder to do what I have to do. I say nothing but, in my heart, I am crying out NO!

Don't be a coward. I hear my wife's voice. So like my daughter. I try to see her, the way they left her body. I try to see what they did to her. Would she want our daughter to suffer for hours? No.

I cannot look, but I place the knife on one side of her dark, perfectly smooth throat. My wife's skin was not so smooth, but her throat had known hours of screams before they cut it. For her. I drag the knife as hard and fast as I can. Don't look. But I do. Oh god! Oh god who surely cannot exist. She is so still. I am grateful for the power outages. I cannot see her clearly.

In the next room are her two sisters. Born together, I wonder of I can release them both at once. Then I hear it, the sound of the car pulling in. He was not waiting on his conscience, but on his boys. I call them boys, so many of them still are. However barely human for all they have done. Then comes the churning in my stomach and the rush, the feeling of battle. I have to finish before they come in. I have to save my girls.

The second slide of the knife is easier; I do it more quickly. She is still and I do not feel the need to look. I hear my own door now. With speed, I move to the other side of the bed.

She is looking at me. Did she see me with her sister? She is crying softly.

"Daddy?" Why did she speak? I stand and I cannot kill her.

"Daddy?" She says it again.

I hear them on the stairs.

"Shh, Baby. Close your eyes and sing for me."

They are closed and she takes a breath, pondering which song she should sing for me. Before she lets loose a note, I draw the knife and the sound that leaves her throat is a sigh.

The door to the bedroom slams open and I laugh as he raises his gun and points it at me.

"Now you will only get me." I smiled at the horror in his eyes. He has seen so much horror, that it pleases me to see his shock.

I hear the click of the gun.

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