My lies sent her, the woman I loved, to an early grave.
She never told me that our relationship was over, but taking a job promotion in another city and not suggesting I go with her told me all I needed to know. My mother left me when I was a kid, and I was damned if I was going to let another female walk out on me, so I made the call.
I remember the night she came to my place, eyes filled with tears, telling me she had been fired. Telling me that someone had bad-mouthed her work in a call to her bosses. She told me she didn’t know what she was going to do, how she was going to live. When I suggested she move in with me, she told me she would think about it.
It was a neighbor who found her, wrists sliced in bathtub water turned crimson. The guilt began eating at me immediately, but that was not the worst of it, not by a long shot.
At her memorial service, I kneeled by her casket and whispered my confession, all while telling her it was done out of love. Her dead face remained impassive, but I felt something shift inside me.
Now, when I think of her, which I so often do, my mouth tastes as though it is filled with dirt. My stomach writhes, not from butterflies, but from worms that are eating me alive. When I look in the mirror, I see sunken eyes and hollow cheekbones.
She is stealing my every breath from beyond the grave. Soon enough, they will find me, too, buried alive above ground.
Compressed atmospheric horror.
Love it!