I wrote Agnes a letter that day, knowing I would never meet her again to tell her how much I regretted that day. Hoping – against all ration – she already knew what lay in my heart, how many sleepless nights I had spent thinking of her.
Or maybe I just wanted to feel less guilty.
Was the pain ever going to end?
Dear Agnes,
Have you ever felt the pain of a dagger cutting your flesh and embedding itself into your bone? I have. The perks of being a paid assassin I guess. I don't know why I'm writing this letter now, as I lie here, bruised, and battered.
I tried my best to take my mind off the ditch I lay in, biting the inside of my cheeks whenever something unknown wormed onto me.
It didn't help that I was standing in complete darkness either, the stars having gone on a vacation for the evening. In their place, dark clouds, black as tar, rumbled by and watched a tiny human from afar, laughing at its grim destiny.
Laughing at me.
Felix's boys have finally caught up to me. They know. They caught me, my love.
At the beginning I thought it was some sick joke, a prank the boys played on me. They made me drink with them, tell them jokes and snigger at every woman with a mini-skirt and a crop top. Then we left. It happened in the parking lot, right by the vending machine I once kicked for you.
Thunder passed overhead and I hid myself into my coat. Not that it would do any help. The dagger had left a deep wound inside my flesh and now it smarted against the hard ground, reminding me it had become infected as I was thrown inside the ditch.
When the dagger pierced my skin I realized it was real. The pain made it all too real.
My eyes closed of their own accord, when my muscle memory whirred to life and made me relive every cut the dagger had carved into my flesh.
I had always believed the screams in movies over-dramatic, the attempt of an actor to earn his pay.
I had been wrong.
I don't know why they didn't kill me from the beginning. They had every right to. I killed their father, didn't I? Marco said my job was unethical, that no one should be rewarded when they kill. Maybe they just wanted me to suffer, despite the fact that I made their father's death painless.
It wasn't until I felt the stench of revenge, yours, and theirs, that I came to grips with reality and admitted to them, myself, and any God out there looking upon me, that what I did was by no means an act of bravery, mercy or even heroism. Felix might have been a murderer, but that didn't give me the right to punish him. His punishment would have come much later, in Dante's Purgatory.
But it would have come, nonetheless.
There is no courage in killing someone in their sleep. I should have let him live his own death instead of interrupting his slumber so blatantly.
Death is supposed to be a part of life, isn't it? That's what my mom taught me when we cried by my father's coffin all those years ago.
My vision blurred with the uncertainty of speaking the truth. If I told her, I was doomed. If I remained silent, I was damned.
I have never been particularly good with decision-making.
I'm a coward, my love. Now I know that I have always been this way, from the moment my mom held me at her chest, and I kept crying no matter what she did. Was I yelping in anticipation of future pain? Or was I just hungry to experience life?
I have never found the meaning of life.
After all, I spent most of it utter darkness, rather than allowing the light to touch my shriveling skin. Even now, I have remained he who slinks into your house in the middle of the night, when the great clock strikes the witch's hour, only so that he can cut your throat and get paid. I'm the harbinger of death and suffering, not life and light. Or, at least, I thought I was. Light has shown me how little I know, both of the world outside of me and of the world inside.
God has not existed to me for years now. He has left me to my bleak activities, knowing I do not deserve the love he embodies. I didn't understand, so I cursed and cried. I turned my back on him, like a child throwing a tantrum. I guess, in contrast to God, we all are petulant children, needing to be taught a lesson.
In my pride, I reckoned myself the parent, not the child.
And yet, in my hour of need, as I sweat here in this damp hole, certain I will die, a part of me prays to him, bones yapping with the fear he might not answer. What am I praying for, you ask? That I do not know.
A second chance? To die with you by my side? To see even a sliver of that light everyone is so fond of, even they who are as blind as I am? These are dreams which cannot be. I made sure that they're not possible a long time ago.
My hand trembled on the sodden piece of paper.
I lied to you, Agnes. I'm sorry about that. You deserved better. Everyone deserves better.
Except me. My mother taught me that as well.
Cold seeped through my coat, torn from many years of use until my blood mingled with another's. We became one. Death unites people in a way life cannot.
I am still wearing the shabby coat you gave me.
The coat I used to wear wherever we went, cinema, restaurant, or date.
The coat I wore the day you died.
The day I killed you.
I closed my eyes, seeing her amber hair flying in the wind as she fell in the pit I pushed her into, a silent scream evading her clenched throat.
I loved you, Agnes. You were my weakness. And for that, you had to die.
I didn't sign my name. It was futile.