Goodbye

         
Goodbye

Standing there amid the trees, surrounded by the smell of evergreens and feeling the dampness underneath my feet, I sprinkled the lye. She had it coming, I thought. Don’t regret it, not for a moment. I looked around, ensuring I was alone. As I returned to my gruesome task of hasting the body of a one-time friend, my thoughts wandered. How had things gone so badly, so quickly? I’d been a good friend, always making time for her. I would not take the blame for this.

Honestly, how could anyone blame me? It was she who had lured me here, bringing me to this place, this shallow grave. For a moment, I feared for my own life. But I knew that look in her eye, this is what she had wanted, even planned for. She tried desperately to shove the dagger into my hands but I resisted. Realizing I would never play into her sick, twisted game, I stood there, shocked, as she plunged the dagger into her own heart. It was then that I realized the depraved, desperate depths she would go to. She would rather have killed an entire lifetime of happiness and promise rather than to be the better person I know she could’ve been and change.

The lye she had shoved into my hand before our quiet walk in the woods finally made sense. It was during that walk I could feel all that had been good between us drift away; she was already dead to me.

Part of me will miss her. Most of me won’t. But I will never miss the game.