“What would you do for love?” She asked me when we just sat and just talked on the bench outside on a sunny day and talked about our favourite seasons. I had just declared loudly how much I enjoyed the rainy season, how suddenly the thunderclaps, and how rarely it came without lightning. The afternoon heat forced me to acknowledge that the sweet petals of rain wouldn’t be returning for a few months. It would have been agony if she hadn’t been sitting next to me. When she asked me that question, I saw desire and passion like I had never seen before.
But before I could answer, she laughed and said she could picture me playing in the rain as I enjoy childish activities. Her statement snapped me back to reality because I understood that she was referring to the first day she had just met me and saw me chasing after a motorcycle- a day I had tried so hard to make her forget. It wasn’t simple to persuade her that chasing after a bike was not typical of me. She didn’t believe me.
Fifteen minutes before we met, a delivery man had cussed me out and sped away with my meal. While pursuing him down, I collided with her. She smiled then, in the coy way I learnt she does.
We talked for a few minutes before she had to leave. I mainly apologised for the collision I caused and searched for dirt on her red dress. I was awe-struck by her beauty. Now that I think about that, I see her beauty wasn’t the only thing that insistently kept her on my mind. It was the limp that became more visible in her walk. How her left-hand pressed against her thigh, her shoulders drooped, and her bright red dress looked against her dark complexion. These are all the thoughts that stayed with me moments after we parted ways. I feared for a while that I would not forget how she made the mundane and ordinary so perplexing. As she walked away from me that day, I stylishly observed her. I noted how she climbed inside the cab and how the slit in her dress gave way to tall, smooth legs. She was like an embodiment of my dreams if my dreams could conjure up anything so beautiful.
We met for the second time a month later in a park. When I saw her that day, my breath left me for a few seconds- and in my moments of breathlessness, nothing stopped me from believing that fate brought us together. Maybe that collision was serendipity, but I wouldn’t leave anything to be universe again- I was going to ask for her number.
She had the beautiful smile that I had fallen in love with since I first saw her. Her smile convinced me that it was the stars that aligned for this moment. I asked her to go out with me immediately, with none of the usual doubts in my mind.
Our first month together had flown by before I knew it. It went so smoothly. It was nothing like I was used to-the support, happiness, and comfort. She made me feel loved, and that love brought me to life as I had never been before. I thought I had lived but being loved by her made me realise I could live in a universe where simple touches felt electric, shared breaths felt like one, and time felt meaningless. I had loved before, but this month with her had shown me that we experienced people in different ways. In that, we became different versions of ourselves. The version of me with her was my favourite.
When we started growing distant, the lack of communication became unbearable as she would disappear for days without informing me of her location. It felt like I was in a relationship with a figment of my imagination. I started believing she might have been perhaps not been real, and the past month had been made up. That night after she came to my apartment after three days of no communication, she reached for my hand in the way she knew I liked to be held. But it was different. I could tell something was wrong, she didn’t stroke my fingers and her fingers didn’t linger in my palm absentmindedly, and she no longer reached for my hand or blew me a kiss at random. If that wasn’t enough to tell me something was wrong, her constant quivering and flinching at loud noises did.
Every time I asked her if she was okay, she would smile and reassure me. For a while, she convinced me because it was the same bright and lovely grin that had previously set my worries at ease. Sometimes, she would accompany the smile with the statement: “You are all I need to be okay.” But she didn’t realise that I knew of the shifts in movements of her eyes, how I noticed that her eyes didn’t settle on mine when she talked and how she no longer mindlessly talked and chatted- nowadays, she was more serious.
After a week of not hearing or seeing from her, I went to the police station to report her missing. The next day after the police filed the report and informed me that they would begin their investigation, she returned home unscathed and unphased. To her, it felt like she had just gone for an hour. “My friend was in a difficult situation and needed my help,” she said. She was unreachable because she wanted to devote all her attention to this friend. She told the same tale to the police, who gave me a dirty look for wasting their time.
She had tried to return things to the bliss we shared in our first month. But I couldn’t let her dismiss another thing. Eventually, I didn’t feel comfortable in the relationship.
She must have noticed my distance because she began asking questions.
“Why don’t you love like me you used to?”
“What are you avoiding me?”
One night- five days after her return- I expressed the rage that I didn’t know I had in return for her insistent and repetitive questions. And she immediately mirrored my anger and coupled it with violence.
Items that once served as sacred objects of our love were thrown at me, and words once used for desire and passion were now daggers thrown at me. We had to end this relationship. I was scared to experience the heartbreak, but I had already suffered so much pain from this love that it felt like heartbreak was nothing. When I picked up the last things from her apartment and left after slamming the door, I paused outside the apartment. I thought, ‘if I turn back now, we can talk this out. We don’t have to end this way.’ But when I heard the click of the door locks. I left and parted with my love in tears.
We had eventually agreed to take a month off each other to ‘clear our heads’. During that time, I fed my heart with music and food and braced myself for what I thought would be the most challenging thing I had to go through. I was going to break up with her.
On the day I intended to end the relationship, she openly declared on the bench, “I have done too much for you to leave me.”
Then she looked me in the eyes, cleared her throat, and smiled. “I love you too much for you to leave me, ” she stated again. It wasn’t unusual she said things that I couldn’t understand, and I was often too absent-minded to ask. But this time, I asked her what she meant, she looked away, rubbing her thumb and middle fingers – her annoyance was unmistakable.
She hadn’t answered my question, and eventually when the silence between us became uncomfortable for the first time. I stood up to leave. “For love, I would lose myself.” That was what I heard her say before I went.
I saw her picture plastered on the news three weeks later on a humid day. Absent-minded, I stared at her lips, the contours of her jaws, the eyes, her skin. The yellow lines of police tape beside her skin complimented her well. Even in a mugshot, she was the most beautiful person. Her beautiful face was a juxtaposition to the news reporter who stared at me with all seriousness. Why was my love the prime suspect in a homicide?
I remained calm as I sat across from the woman I loved in a prison visiting room.
Her hands were chained together like a criminal awaiting murder trial.
Neither of us spoke for a while, and she didn’t respond to the questions my eyes had like she knew to do. She could hear them! Why was she waiting for my lips to say the words my eyes could better do?
“You are worth it. I couldn’t let you go.” It didn’t make sense, but when did she ever outrightly make sense. She had never made sense.
I quickly packed my things and stood up from the metal chair. Facing the glass that separated us, I decided that I did not want to be with her anymore, but I did not want to see her suffer this way.
“We will talk later.” I left.
On my walk back home, I was being followed. And that was the last I sensed till I felt a strong impact on the back of my head and saw nothing.
I was in a brightly coloured tiny room with rainbow-coloured furnishings. It was ugly enough to make me feel even more disoriented. A cigarette stub and ash were on a table. The dark drapes were intended to be an oxymoron to the childlike room.
It took a while to notice the sound of the piano being played. With my hands bound to the chair and my lips sealed- I couldn’t move my body in the direction of the music. I had to wait.
Another sound filled the room when the music stopped—a strong, sturdy step strolling in my direction. I eventually came face to face with this strange man who gently removed the tape from my lips.
“I know you.” His tone was gentle and silky. I would envision him as a lovely, bashful man if individuals were judged by their voices. But evidently, he was far from sweet.
My hoarse voice asked, “What do you mean?”
He didn’t bother responding to me. He shook his head and crossed the room to the floor-length window on the opposite side.
“I recall the day you two met. It was adorable. Her antics are usually hilarious and often jovial, but I sensed some seriousness in her that day you collided.”
“She stepped on your path, fell, and acted like you had caused the collision.” He continued, and I listened carefully.
“All of that after she had paid the delivery man to run off with your food.”
I had nothing to say to this man, but he seemed to lessen and solve the mysteries of my life for the past months.
“Her day had been a complete mess. She had just killed her previous lover.”
“You would think that in reverence to the love once shared, she would wait before finding another person- but it took her a strange hour to find herself in another love.”
“What do you want from me? Please let me go.” I cried. Why had he done this? Why were they doing this to me?
“I love her.”
“I used to be enough for her. When she decided that I was no longer enough for her is still unclear to me, but that did not discourage my pursuit.” He shook his head.
“I’ve had to destroy a few of her relationships, but that last one was the most difficult.”
“I told her lover every lie I could think of. Her infidelity, disdain for him, whatever I was sure would bring the relationship to an end. But he refused to let go.”
He cleared his throat and added. “He wasn’t good enough for her. But he was in love with her. That’s her poison; anyone who tastes becomes completely enamoured in her- it is impossible to stay away from her.”
“That was when I realised that she had to end the relationship- I began telling her of his infidelities- made up, of course, but it was effective in ending the relationship. What I didn’t expect was the day we killed him.”
“He was very pitiful. But I find it rather poetic to be killed by a jealous lover.”
“I think you were her favourite. She had stated that she intended to remain with you for the rest of her life. So I had no choice but to report her crimes to the police.”
The air was dense, and it wasn’t the tightness of the ropes on my ankles that made it hard to breathe.
“I feel she would go to great lengths to protect you. I knew that rumours of your infidelity would have no effect- so I did the best I could, and anyways- she must understand that she can’t go about killing people and expect nothing to happen to her.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” I said to him in a broken voice.
“I am about to frame you for his murder- I mean, what would you do for love?” He answered.
