Inspired by “If I Would Have Known” by Kyle Hume and “Lovesucker” by Haiden Henderson.
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105Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjUCrixYlIG
I was walking home from another grueling day at the overlay factory. A nobody like me, assigning assignments, jobs, and victims to the assassins and mercenaries. I looked up, my eyes lingering on the side of a building. Your face. Always your face. Annalie Merloy. Annie, my Annie, or at least, was my Annie. We broke up three months ago, the pain still burning through me like a fresh gunshot. You had said my job went against what you stood for in the ranks of the peace leaders.
I turned away from the building before I could feel that pain tenfold. I walked for what felt like an eternity. I finally turned down the alley leading to my apartment building. I climbed the hundred stairs to my floor, and turned left. I opened the door to apartment 1313, my apartment. I could swear I heard her laugh. Annie, god, why’d you have to haunt me? I stagger into the apartment and close the door, exhausted. Your laugh still echoes around me, softer this time. I throw my bag on the small table in the ‘living room’, then I walk into the small kitchenette. I grab a packet of crackers and collapse onto the small bed in the corner below the window. I’m not actually hungry but I still need to eat something.
I can still feel your phantom curled up next to me, fake warmth emanating from your empty spot. I shiver and pull the blankets up, forgetting about the unopened packet of crackers. How could someone who strives for peace, for some unattainable utopia, haunt someone? My memories will never let me live in this apartment alone ever again. I still see her dancing around the small table, laughing on the loveseat, laying in my bed looking over at me. I can still smell her perfume, something slightly citric and herbal. I can still hear the rustle of books in the background, the faint sound of her melancholic music.
Why? Why couldn’t she see that there will never be a perfect utopia? Human nature will always prevail, anger will kill, sadness will debilitate, and joy will live. Then there will be those who were broken so many times without the time to heal, that become distant from their emotions, the ones who no longer feel. They are the most dangerous, because what are humans without emotions? They are mere animals, animals with a high intellect. They are capable of being monsters, killers devoid of empathy, guilt, and remorse. Monsters like me. I assign death to people I don’t know. I get paid to asses their weaknesses and find the mercenary or assassin who specializes in that skill. After a time you learn to see the people as just a name, a character in a story you’re writing that you have to kill off. And that dissociation from human to something other is what I hate most about myself.
I curl into the mountain of blankets on top of me. The crushing weight a familiar, comforting ache. I finally fall asleep then, my thoughts still racing each other on the track that is my mind.
ns216.73.216.13da2
and then Add to home screen.