Blood From the Heart

The shot rang true. She died like all the rest, a sudden slump and a pool of blood.

There was no romantic meeting of the eyes, no slowing of time. People described time slowing down all the time in the stories, but it never slowed for me, never stopped either. It just marched on at its usual pace. Every hour felt like an hour, every eternity like an eternity. Watching her die felt like four painful seconds, and the pain wasn't even mine.

Her hair had changed – she'd had it shaved, scarred her face. No one knows when the raping and the murder started, or who started it, but the very worst of either side had turned to it like sport, roving packs of animals with guns and machetes and rocks, torturing and using 'the enemy'. The enemy...we'd all drank wine together a few short months ago. Then the talk of gods came about, or was it wealth? Tribes? It hurt me to remember, to even think of it. Time went on for me, and it left the reasons behind.

Her eyes were still that burning brown I remembered – I didn't have the time to close them, and every moment I looked into them was a moment I wasn't looking for life. The image stuck with me, though. I saw her eyes in everyone. Brown over blue. Brown over green. Brown over black. I killed her three more times before I hit cover to reload, and the pain I felt was just the same – a recoil shudder and a locked door. I wouldn't feel this now, couldn't feel this now.

I remembered the hell I went through to even learn her name. She'd been kept under lock and key by that father of hers, a lion of a man with old attitudes and older prejudices. I'd yelled at him every day, worked at his shop, did everything I could to earn his trust. He denied me every time, until I stood beside him when my cousins set that shop aflame. I thought I'd gone through hell to see her.

I thought I'd gone to war.

She was dead now, and I didn't miss her. I missed myself far, far more.

Time never stops, nor waits, nor slows. It simply flows, like blood from the heart.