(heads up, a sforzando in music is when you accent and power through a note, but only for a moment, after which you drop the volume down. Or, at least, this is how I think of a sforzando.)
"Look. I don't want to hurt you. But you need to listen, I--"
"No. Shut up. You know what you did. You don't even deserve to live the life you were given... How could you?"
A long-since married couple was arguing, outside the door of a worn apartment complex. The street was mostly abandoned, it was downtown, snowing lightly, and the darkness seeped into their winter clothing.
"But, Jorge--"
He bellowed out in rage. "You know what you did!" His cold breath dusted a light cloud into the air. "Me, and you, and your 'other' know exactly, what you did." He paused, letting the rage leave him and for the meaning of his words to soak into her cowering figure. "You cheated on me." The woman cringed at this. "After such a long while together... and you abandon it, for someone... else." His true feelings escaped, as he sobbed dryly.
"She forced herself to regain her posture. "I... I'm... sorry."
Jorge gained a sudden new countenance, and his sobbing stopped. "Maybe, if you're so sorry now, you wouldn't have started this in the first place!" She refused to look him in the eye, they screamed murder. "It's too damn late. I can't just forgive you; I can't just forget about this." The woman, staring down, still refused to make eye contact.
Instead of retaliating, she forced herself to look up into his eyes. "I'll leave, then. You won't miss me," she said as she walked away. She did so with as much dignity as she could muster, which wasn't much.
Jorge started to come after her. "You leave me now? You gonna go back to that whore you've been cheating with?"
This was too far. She pivoted around, facing him, as he stopped mere inches from her face. Their cold breath fogged the air around them. His eyes seared into her skull. "Shut up. You have no right to say anything about him." She smelled alcohol on his breath.
"Oh, I see. After all we've been through... seven years of what we've been through... you sleep with a stranger and decide he's better for you? Is that how it works? Don't you have a goddamn soul? A conscience?"
The clouds, after his say, cried out tears of light water; onto the worn concrete. It coated the ground with a dark shade, melting a small portion of the snow.
She, once again, turned around, ignoring his fury. She stomped off, hoping to leave; to never come back to the nightmare she had endured the last few weeks.
"No... you are not going to leave me... not like this... not now..." Jorge seemed ready to break apart, he leaned over as if he was going to get on his knees. he stared at the ground as a sudden realization came to him. "No... no. If you're going to make me fall, you're coming with me, bitch. We stay together."
She decided, under bad judgement, that turning around would seem passive. So, she didn't.
Now, Jorge was, for the most part, screaming complete nonsense. It seemed like he had truly lost his mind. "No... not like this… now... not... so... many..." he continued screaming as he sprinted, full speed, toward her. His sobs grew exponentially as he came closer. She still ignored it.
He was nearly twenty feet away when he came to a final crescendo. He pulled out a long knife, similar to a machete, and he held it behind his back. "IF I CAN'T BE WITHOUT YOU, NO ONE ELSE WILL." And he was directly behind her.
She turned around, but it was far too late. he only saw his razed face before he jerked the knife through the back of his stomach, allowing to stick out his front and into her chest.
They fell, Jorge on top of the woman he used to love, dying. When he was at his last thread of life, he whispered softly. "Now... we'll never be alone." But she had been dead before that; it was nearly instant; her expression of shock forever imprinted. He let out a high-pitched giggle as he finally lay his head down. He had finished his final act; his final monologue; the sforzando. And now, all was quiet. All was unified.
And the snow continued, lightly coating the dead.
