I am a young man in my mid-twenties, the typical kind. I had a girlfriend, until she was killed in her own room, thousands of miles from me. But I witnessed everything over Skype.
It was a late autumn afternoon. I sat down on the couch with my laptop, pressed Call on Skype. Me and my girl, we had been in this relationship for longer than most people would expect from a pair of millennials living on the opposite sides of the globe. This Skype thing, for us, was a kind of scheduled daily ritual that bridged the distance and sustained the love. A healthy habit.
The ringing tone stretched out into what sounded like millennia. I smiled, getting ready to greet her blissful face, always too close to the camera. That was what's so special about her, a certain clumsiness and innocence oozing out from every little thing she did. From the big brown sparkly eyes. From the unkempt baby hairs. From the killer smile, that...
My thoughts were violently interrupted when a masked figure appeared on the call window. I yelped, but the deep dark stare from behind the eye cutouts stayed undisturbed. It looked unapologetically at the camera, then slowly backed up, letting the whole scene to be captured. My heart tensed.
My girlfriend was lying on her bed, motionless. The masked thing grabbed and jerked her head up to look directly at me. Its finger pointed at the bloody mess that was once her throat, then moved up to its lips in a shushing gesture. The brutality of the scene paralysed me in my seat. I covered my mouth with my hands to stop myself from vomiting. My eyes stayed fixed and frozen on the surreal sight in front of me. A silent scream was lost amid a vortex of emotions inside my brain.
The masked killer dropped my girlfriend's head, winked at me, then quietly backed out of the room.
Silence.
I was left there staring at the corpse of the girl I loved, lying on a bed that turned crimson from her blood. A physical metaphor for the bed of roses I once promised her.
'You got what you deserve, you unfaithful b****!' I thought bitterly and pressed End Call. I sipped my coffee, satisfied, not letting my guilt to take over the pleasure. I gave myself a 10/10 for such a genius plan of hiring an assassin to murder my cheating girlfriend. All I needed to do now was to pick up the phone and called her local police station, and to play the role of a distraught witness, thousands of miles away.
The phone rang as I was reaching for it. Mildly perplexed, I took the call.
'Hey, it's me. It looks like someone is with her. A man. Probably her new, you know, guy. We have to postpone the surprise party today. Speak later', the distorted voice of the assassin I hired whispered down the line.
---
Credits
Comments