She’s dead. It’s silly to say it, well, it’s absolutely stupid to say it but I never thought it would actually happen, like. I never thought she would actually die. I could imagine myself doing it. The gleam of the knife. A secluded location. A rush of blood. Would she scream? Would she cry? She didn’t cry. Or scream. She couldn’t, I guess. But god there she is. She’s laying there. Blood still seeping, slower now than before. Pooling on the ground. On the grass. Spreading through her clothes like a bomb. Expanding in a circle eternally until everything is red. It’s all red. Her eyes are open. Looking at nothing. A perfectly black sky. A perfectly black world I imagine. No light. No thought. Not a single thought like the one that brought us to this moment will ever spoil her perfect mind again. It’s enviable, really. And here I am. There is a numbness, sure, but also some intense clarity. It’s not a numbness like when pain is dulled with drugs, it’s a numbness that comes from being more aware of everything than ever before. Such a rush of information, shadow from lamp light, cacophony of insects, rushing, wailing, screaming. It’s so much I might feel myself getting lost in it. Screaming like an insect, driven to connect with another at all costs. Life or death. God. Life and death. But why?

She was my best friend. I loved her more than anyone. More than any thing. It’s not possible to love anything more than I loved her. We were inseparable, well, that’s not true. She was inseparable from my mind. There was no getting rid of her. Every day, every hour. Her face, her voice, her smile, her frown, what she was doing today, right now, this second, what she was thinking, what could she be thinking right now? Such a brilliant mind, far sharper than mine. It was not an overstatement to say that almost every moment, even if I was not thinking directly of her, I was thinking of something that tied back to her, connected me to her, or separated me from her. Her beauty. Truly nothing could come between how I felt for her, how I still feel for her. She may have left me but I could not have left her, never would have even dreamed of it. Any distance, any amount of time, it was all nothing to her. She wormed her way into my thoughts inevitably, and God did I love having her there, keeping her there, turning her over in my head. A beautiful little doll, but real because she was real, she was real and she was out there, somewhere, maybe away from me, maybe near, and yet no matter that distance she was always with me. 

God I loved her. I love her so much. It’s almost, no, it’s painful. So much pain. So many years of pain, of torture, of torment, because I could not truly have her. I had her in my mind but I could not truly have her, truly hold her, truly even touch her, even if I touched her face with my own fingers there was no bridging that distance between us. A touch was not a touch, it was barely communication. Together in a room, together at a table, together in my mind, but it was nothing. It couldn’t be anything because she would not let it be anything, and why would she? I was nothing. I am still nothing. 

Maybe nothing to her, though I hope that’s not true. To be nothing in the eyes of all that is. It’s inconceivable right? One can’t simply be nothing to someone right? A human being to another human being is at least something, there is at least some tacit connection, maybe an energy shared, communication is possible as it is not with animals. I could communicate with her. I did it often, as much as I feasibly could. But in her eyes I truly felt less than an animal. Less than a cicada which rises from dirt after years of hibernation to scream briefly, and die. She never answered that screeching. That wailing. She could look me in the eyes, smile, a wonderful greeting, a laugh shared between the closest of friends. And yet I was not but an insect to the sun. I hated her. I hate her so much. She’s everything to me and yet I am nothing to her, and there is no possible way to bridge that distance. But now. My hands, stained with blood, with her blood. More red than anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s beautiful. It’s fresh and wet, and rapidly cooling but warm. I look at her own hands which she held to her neck to attempt to staunch the flow, to no avail of course, I see the same red hands. My hands. Her hands. They are the same hands. We share the same blood. We are the same now. And in this moment there could not be any greater love, I know it because this is the most clarity I have ever felt. No dullness of clumsy communication, speaking, words, gestures, expressions, nothing could connect us ever before and ever again like this one moment. The moment when I drove this knife into the front of her beautiful neck, and when her eyes went wide, fear like I’d never seen, gaping mouth, attempting a gasp, her hands attempting to stop it all. Hands attempting to provide some vital structure where I had just ripped it away. And my hands moving to her hands. Being covered with her blood as I held her hands, and her neck, and her life in my own. I have killed her, yes, and in the same moment I have killed myself. 

I’ve killed myself of course because I’m no mastermind. I don’t know how to hide a body, how to destroy evidence, how to remove doubt, perform for police, investigators, any of it. If our positions had been swapped, if I had been laying on that grass as she is now, God it’s beautiful to think about. If she had slain me with the very same weapon in the very same way, I could believe she could get away with it. A flawless act, a perfect plan. Not at all like my “plan”. Not a plan but a raw instinct, a drive to act. Not premeditated. I had thought about it before. Of course I had always thought about it. But I didn’t plan it. I didn’t expect this to happen. Not today, not ever. I didn’t expect I could do something like this. Never. It’s impossible. 

It’s literally impossible. Such that it didn’t happen. I did not hold the knife as it entered and left her neck. I did not lean over her beautiful body and smear my hands in her beautiful pooling blood. I did not think of planting a kiss on her perfect lips, draining of life, attempting with futility to bring in a saving breath of air. It was not me that did these things. It was her. She held the knife, she cut her own life down, and mine, as I watched her do it from eyes that could have been a million worlds away. I watched her do it, and I did not stop it, I did not try to help, I simply watched, and I knew when she did it she did it for me. Perhaps she did it for both of us. Because she knew that such pain as I had endured could not be endured for so long, and I had grown so tired. It was, quite possibly, the strongest act of love imaginable. I could hardly imagine it. And yet such a beautiful, clean, sharp, unobstructed, unfettered mind as hers could. Her brilliance could conceive of such a possibility, so distant from all others, and act upon it. It was her will, for she knew that this was true communication. This is true love. 

I’m at my apartment now. I just barely beat my roommate to the door. I had come in, set my things in their normal places, and went for a snack on the counter when she came in. I said to her “Oh you’re working late.” as I tried as hard as I could, fumbling with that damn apple cutter to fulfill its one single purpose in this world which is to properly cut a fucking apple into slices. Of course the apple was slightly too big. Maybe too dense? I had to, like, jump up to bring my full weight down on top of the apple. It cut in a little bit, of course. A little lopsided too. Not far in at all. Of course now the apple would be more difficult to dislodge from the apple cutter. Apple core-er. Right? Right when I had got a knife out ready to cut the apple the normal way she arrived. 

“Oh yeah. Sorry about that. Lol.” She kicked the door shut and flipped both locks; the knob lock and the dead bolt. “Been a stupid couple of days. That weird guy came in again and started something with Maggie and- ah blah blah I know you don’t want to hear about it again.” 

“I don’t mind. It’s no big deal.” I wasn’t looking at her. I had turned the apple upside down and was cutting the part that was not stuck in the apple core-er in half. And then another half. And then cutting across where the apple cutter thing was to separate it all. Then I could push out the little parts of the apple that were stuck in there. As I did this she put her keys in the key bowl on the dining table. After I had all the apple pieces in a way similar to how I desired when I set out for the endeavor I placed the knife and cutter-thing into the sink. Sophie flopped onto the couch, splaying out with her phone in hand. I brought over the plate and held it near her face, and she looked at the apple slices, for a brief second I could tell she was weighing the decision, then put her hand up to deny and said “No thanks.” She probably ate at the cafe. Long shift and everything. 

Which is good because more fucking apple slices for me.

Of course I washed my hands and everything. In the lake. I flung the knife as far as I possibly could into the lake also. More of a large pond really. I left the body there. Didn’t touch it much after... You know. I didn’t touch it after it was a body. I washed my hands in the sink when I got home too.