Sans Requiem

I slipped out through the doorway, onto a white stone veranda with an arching stairway leading down toward the grounds. I shaded my eyes against the sun and felt it on my arms, and I began to sweat a bit as fatigue set in. I hadn’t slept in a day or so, and my headache wasn’t getting much better. There wasn’t anyone around, and I was glad for it. Most people don’t have much in the way of kind words for me, and I sure don’t have many for them. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all business. I’m never around long when there’s people around.

There’s too much trouble in the city for a criminal during hard times, but if you know where to hang around, there’s always some estate with enough money saved up so that it doesn’t matter whether there’s a war or peace or anything else. Of course, when you’ve got nothing it doesn’t matter much either, but that’s different. I was still doing the same thing I’d always done.

A few yards across the way there was another door on the other side of the stairs that looked just the same as mine, made from the same dark wood with the same dark iron hinges reaching across the grain. I started slowly toward it, walking toward the shade, when a bride came out through the door and out onto the veranda. A wedding! I made my way over to the estate after seeing more people coming and going than was usual, but it all made sense now. Why no one questioned me, walking around like I belonged. And seeing the bride there across from me, staring right back, I didn’t have time to even think. We were alone, and I was just doing the same thing I’d always done.

I grabbed for her necklace, thinking I could make a quick getaway with it. The bride screamed and began to run for the stairs, but I caught the shoulder of her dress and pulled myself toward her, shoving my hand over her mouth and pulling her close with the other arm to keep her from running off. She froze, stared at me wide, and I didn’t say a word. I went to grab for the necklace again, but she spun around and dashed for the stairs. As my other hand fell away, I grabbed the necklace from behind and pulled as hard as I could. The necklace snapped apart and sent pearls scattering across the ground, throwing the bride off balance. She began to fall. And I knew where she was headed, and I may have even tried to stop it, but before the thoughts even came through all the way, she fell down against the concrete planter by the stairway, and her head cracked hard against the side of it. I didn’t even have to look back as I ran off; I knew it. She was dead.

As soon as I heard the heavy wooden door open up again behind me I made for the bushes, trying to keep hidden and quiet. I looked up the stairway and saw the entire wedding party, led by the groom, walking out toward the bride and her blood-soaked dress. They all stopped and stared down at her, no one saying a word. After a long silence the groom knelt down and picked up his bride-to-have-been, lifting her up out of her own blood and into the sun. Her head lay lifeless to the side, revealing the fatal wound and the gruesome mark it had left on her young face. Without any hint of sorrow or remorse, he made his way down the stairs, with the rest of the party following close behind, until he was standing but a few inches away from my breathless face, completely oblivious to my presence. He cautiously laid her down at my feet, looked down at her one last time, and walked away, leading his wedding party away from the veranda and away from everything that had happened.

After much hesitation I looked down again at the remnants of my horrible deed, at the bride who had paid with her life for the pearls I clenched tightly in my sweaty, shaking hands. And as she faded away before my very eyes, I looked up at the man who was to have been her husband, and saw how fondly he looked at one of the bridesmaids, talking and smiling. They carried on as though nothing had happened! Perhaps it was a morbid curiosity, perhaps a sense of wanting to make things right, or perhaps a terrified disgust with the way they carried on without any concern for their deceased party member. But regardless of the reason, I followed them. They walked along, past the grove trees, down the main road, and back toward the town. I had to know where they intended to go, what they intended to do now. As I listened to their conversation, I thought I heard them speak of the bride. They spoke of how foolish she was, and how naïve she had been, and the bridesmaid and the groom began walking hand in hand as they spoke of their former friend. I could not understand... did none of them care?

As we entered the town, they took a side road along the older houses that had been in the area since the turn of the century. The town had grown tremendously in the face of industrialization, but it was still a small town, supported mainly by the estate. As we walked past the wide lay of an old ranch house, I saw the bride sitting out in front of it. But she was younger. She was alone and crying, as if she knew she’d be alone forever. I watched her and reached out to her with my gaze, but she didn’t look back. She just sat on her knees and cried. I turned away and continued walking, trying to shake the image from my mind. We passed by the next property, and I saw the bride again, this time standing by as her parents fought and yelled at one another. Just as the image faded away, I saw the father advance toward the daughter as if to hit her. I quickly turned away, toward yet another image of the bride, this time older, with the man she had intended to marry. But this time things were different. There was for once a look of happiness in her eyes. A look of hope, as if to say she intended to leave her past behind and begin a new life with a man she so obviously loved.

But this image faded away as well. I looked up, but the wedding party was gone, nowhere to be seen. It was as if they had vanished, along with the bride and the hope she so desperately harbored for a new life. And I was angry. Not because the bride had died. Not because she had struggled her entire life to become nothing more than a memory. Not because the groom and the bridesmaid had fled the scene together, as though the terrible thing I had done had been the answer to their prayers. It was because no one cared. Just as the bride herself faded away before my very eyes, moments after she fell and met her death, she was already fading away from memory. No one would remember her. No one would remember the girl who had lived through hell in hopes of finding a better life and a new beginning. No one cared.

No one fucking cared.

And I hated everyone for it.