I squeezed my hands tighter around her neck and I could feel the heat radiating from her face as it turned a brighter shade of crimson. She stared up at me, her eyes wide and bulging. She must be so stunned to realise it is me killing her. I can feel the slight bulge of the jugular under my index finger. I imagine the build up of blood on one side of the blockage I am forcing upon it. What would happen if that dam burst? It won’t burst. She will die. She has her hands on my wrists attempting to remove my grip. She always had such delicate hands; Beautiful hands. I take a moment to admire them as they claw at my arms attempting to gain purchase. I smile briefly at the irony of admiring beauty when there is nothing but carnage on my mind. She always complained that I sweat a lot. Now the dampness of my skin is preventing her from getting a good grip and removing my hands. She looks up at me, her eyes desperately pleading. I close mine. I can’t maintain eye contact with the woman I love as I kill her. Even I am not that monstrous. I hear her last breath escape in a strangled whisper, ‘Please.’ The word is lost on the wind as soon as it leaves her lips. The brain is panicking now. All oxygen has been cut off. I wonder what her brain looks like. I wonder what she looks like from the inside. I decide there and then that I will find out as soon as this is over. Her panic causes her arms to thrash around madly. She catches my face drawing four large trenches down my left cheek. I make a mental note to clean beneath her finger nails when I am done with her and before I disappear forever. The DNA from the flesh she will carry with her into death would lead back to me, to my guilt, to my capture and imprisonment. No. She is to vanish and I am to vanish. We’re both going to die today, just in different ways. My mind quickly turns to the life inside her, to the baby, to our child. As I choke the last life out of her I wonder how long the child will survive without the mother. I wonder if it is aware of anything yet. I wonder if the desperation of the mother is being passed into the unborn child. I wonder if the baby can cry.
Her hands are on my arms. I can feel them against my skin but the movement has stopped. I open my eyes. She is looking at me, her face a mask of terror. Her eyes wide but empty. Her life has gone. Our baby has gone. I am gone. I release my grip and she falls. I catch her and hold her to my chest. I kneel down taking her motionless body with me. I lay her down on the ground and run my fingers across her face closing her eyes. I cannot look at those eyes. I gently brush a strand of auburn hair from her face. She looks so peaceful, so beautiful, and so fragile. I place my hand against her lower stomach in the place where our child would be. Will he – yes, I am certain it is a boy – be dead now? I do not know how long a fetus can survive when the Mother has passed on. It can’t be long. I just hope my son did not suffer.
I stand up and look down at her. She looks alive and sleeping. The only way to tell that it is eternal sleep which grips her is through the lack of movement. The chest fails to rise and fails to fall. She is so perfectly still. She is so perfectly peaceful.
