Reality is the Mind

     His eyes fluttered open drearily. A smile touched at his lips remembering the events of last night. It had been amazing. She had been amazing. His eyes lit at the memory of feeling her love like that. It hadn't been the first night he'd spent with her, but probably one of the most memorable. He ran a tired hand through his tussled hair and rubbed his heavy eyes. The sun was just beginning to peak through the windows of the small wooden house. He rolled to one side and closed his eyes to kiss her good morning.     

      "Wake up, my love," he whispered before he kissed her lips. His eyes shot open in utter shock.     

      It was so cold. He had tasted something metallic on her lips, cold and unfeeling. Her sweet warm lips felt so foreign and strange. The moment he tasted it instead of her warm kiss he opened his eyes to a horror most unimaginable.     

     The first thing he saw was her eyes. They were grey and cold. There was no love, no life. Nothing. Her once beautiful and endless pale blue eyes were now a dead grey. The eyes he'd seen that day in the market were now gone. Her skin was hard and cold. When he touched it he felt ice beneath his finger tips. Her lips were slightly parted and blood tainted them. There were smears of blood across her now thin lips. Here black hair was fanned about her like a halo, and it was the only thing that looked untouched by death.     

     He jumped from the bed and staggered back from the grizzly scene. That couldn't be his Felicity; it couldn't be! She was alive. He'd held her just last night. Her thin beautiful frame had had a beating heart that beat against his only hours ago. His mouth and throat went dry as he tried and failed to pry his eyes away from her lifeless body.       

     Then he saw it: the wound. A large stain of crimson tainted her entire left side. The fabric around it was ripped and torn as if someone had run a knife down her side. Dark and bloody entrails could be seen from the gaping wound. She looked crude and disgusting like a piece of road kill.        

     He turned his back to the scene just as he threw up. Tears began falling quickly and heavily from his reddening eyes. She was gone. His perfect, beautiful Felicity was gone. A wail escaped his throat as the tears came down in streams. Why would anyone kill her? What kind of monster would kill something so pure? He threw his head back and screamed in the agony that was filling his soul. She was all he had, all he lived for. Her smile brightened his life, and when she sang the very angels got jealous.        

     He paced across the cold wooden floor of the small bedroom. What was he going to do without her? He looked at the mirror in front of him to a shocking sight. Instead of his figure flooding the reflective surface it was a dark shadow. A black silhouette of a man holding a sparkling knife looked back at him with no eyes. He looked with disbelief at the reflection and was anchored to the spot. The shadowed man began to speak in a dark voice that haunted the man.       

     "Fail to lock the door last night did you? She couldn't even scream, so easy."      

     The man ran for the mirror and punched a large crack in it. He cracked the mirror, screamed, and punched and threw the mirror off the wall. Shards landed around his feet and flew across the floor. The blood dripped from his hands where the glass had cut him, but at least the figure was gone.       

     "The blood will never leave you." He whirled around and gasped at the woman sitting on his bed. The bloody ghost of Felicity was gone, in her place sat his love. Her cheeks once again were rosy and her eyes full of life.    

     He ran for her, "Oh, my love, I knew you couldn't be gone." He wrapped his arms around her slight frame and pulled her close. Her heart was once again beating against his chest, and he sighed. Tears fell from his eyes in joy as he continued to hold her. "I was so sure I'd lost you."      

     "The blood will never leave you."      

     He furrowed his brow and pulled away from her, "What?" He dropped her body and jumped away from the bed. The body he'd been holding was not her. It was the shell. The eyes were still dead and the blood now stained his hands from where he'd held her side. Blood on his hands.       

     Could it be me? He asked himself. He curled up on the floor, head in his hands. It could be him. It could be. It could be anyone.       

     He had to get out. He jumped from the floor and ran to the door. He yanked it open and stormed out. The thin button down and pants he'd worn were little protection against the November air. He was so full of adrenaline he barely noticed the bite of the wind on his cheeks. His house lay on the outer edge of the village and he had to get away. He ran from the scent of death. Ran from the scent of loss.     

     He stumbled off of his front steps and his knees went out. He landed on his face in the dirt and scrambled to get up. He had to get away from the sight of her death. He ran.