The Day I Died

It was such a long time ago. So long ago that an individual thinking about it where it concerns them, wouldn't believe that it would affect them any longer. I certainly do. But the affecting factor is still there, still shaping the warped images that play before my eyes, and the disembodied sounds that scream in my head. I wonder sometimes, what would happen if people knew? What would happen if people saw? If people didn't just look and see what they wanted to see, but what was truly before them.

It's almost amusing the hope they allow themselves to feel when they look... Especially at the deceptive blue, threatening to steal away any doubts or concerns. That blue is the greatest of camouflages. So alluring and so inviting. If I could, I would laugh at it. At them.

They see the blue, but they do not see that it is dead. They do not see the death that was wrought upon it years ago. They see hope. They see a future. They see a lie.

When blue becomes mixed with red, it is no longer the pure innocence of the happy sky. It is the purple, majestic mountains that stand cold and hard in the distance, far off and unreachable. Unforgiving.

I seemed to have trailed off.

The memories are sometimes distant. Sometimes too far off to recollect. They come most vividly at night, when I can no longer block out the screams. When I can no longer pretend I don't see the red staining the gray skin. How many times did I attempt to shave off the skin, I wonder? How many times did I try to drive that red away and stain it with a red so much more deserving of being left there?

Their faces haunt me at night. They sneer and they reach for me with long paled hands with cold unforgiving fingers, unyielding and merciless. Sometimes I try to run... But mostly, I wait. I wait for the day when those hands will reach me. The day they will exact their vengeance upon me and take their divine retribution for the deeds I've committed.

The day I died, however, was not the day they died. My innocence of blood had been shed, but not my innocence of heart.

The mission, as explained to me, had been simple: To move in, neutralize the target and then neutralize his family. The erasing would begin after that.

The mission, as explained to me, did not happen.

Entering through the window after climbing up the gutter had been simple, a practiced and rehearsed routine gone through more times than counted. Slipping into the room, again easy. Assure that no one else was in the room and that it was secured? This is where it changed. The door moved aside as I stepped near, and blackness fell on me.

When I awoke, I could not feel my legs. Nothing below the waist. Until I tried to move. Agony, like I'd never felt before even through all the 'lessons' and 'instructions' could not compare. Only then did I notice the blood that was, for a change, my own. Only then did I see myself. He stepped through the door, wiping his knife clean as he looked me over, telling me that I had done well in distracting the target.

Then I knew what I had been sent for: another lesson.

The ride was long and silent, save for the occasional glance cast my way. I still couldn't feel a thing. But now, there was a new emptiness inside. Before, when it had been only blood I had been taking, it was bearable for the hope of the one thing I cherished more than anything at the time. The taking of something not wanted had broken that last care on the day I died.