“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!?” she cried at him from across the room. Carter simply stared right back at her, his arms folded tight across his chest, his confident half-smile undeterred by her emotion. Malinda took another drink from the bottle of whiskey in her hand. It was not the first that night, but with the contents nearly gone it was soon to be her last. She staggered two steps towards him, her eyes never leaving his empty gaze. “You said you loved me: you said that I was yours, forever!” A tear dripped down her cheek, and she took another swig through the side of her mouth, still glaring at the object of her grief from the corner of her eye. He didn’t move an inch, just as he had done every time she saw him there the past few days. The bottle now was empty. There was no more salve to drown her sorrows, no fuel to feed her rage. Malinda screamed with all she could and threw the hollow casing toward her former lover’s frame, crushing the deathly papers clutched in her weaker hand. The bottle missed its mark, and smashed against the wall beside him. Again he did not flinch, nor could he. All that remained of him were soulless colors painted on a canvas shell.
Malinda looked down upon the crumpled pages still grasped within her palm. They were a messenger of dire news that she could never kill: Carter’s last will and testament signed a month before. She had looked through them many times, to further torment herself in her days of sorrow. The letters bore a crease from every time she read. Not content with her suffering, she scanned the passage once again:
To my darling Clarissa Haven: I leave you my fortune, my title, and my heart.
“You son of a bitch” she sobbed into the empty room. Carter told her she was just a friend. How could she not have seen it? He mentioned more about Clarissa than he ever said about herself, but she thought his feelings for her were beyond what words could ever tell. Perhaps she really did know deep inside, but was too afraid to see it. When Carter’s lawyer read that sentence only days ago, Clarissa was not around to hear it. She beat him to the afterlife just one week before.
“Do you remember that car, Carter?” She snapped at the portrait on the wall. “You said it reminded you of me, that its somber blue matched the color of my eyes. What part of it reminded you of her?” Again there was no response. Malinda stammered over to the table where the whisky bottle once stood. Two empty glasses surrounded a patch of dustless wood. “You never should have let her out on the road; I heard she had been drinking the night she died, you know.” Malinda said as she glanced back at the wall. “But of course you did. No doubt you shared a glass from the bottle you said was just for me, like so many other things that you had promised.”
Malinda touched a chocolate in the heart shaped box left open on the table. She saw that none were missing that shouldn’t be. “At least you cared enough to leave something you gave to me untouched, or were you too busy sharing something else?” She picked up the treat and spun it slowly in her hand, examining the smooth complexion of its casing, every swirl of its design. “I kept these around much longer than I should.” She said as she brushed a bit of dust off the candy’s shell. “I savored every one of them. I thought I had all the time in the world to finish these, but now I know I never will.” Malinda placed the chocolate back into the box, and her engagement ring crossed the path in front of her eyes. She hadn’t noticed it before: the gold around the edge had tarnished, and the inner sparkle of her diamond looked as though it faded long ago. She removed it from her finger and thrust it deep into the candy’s core.
“You could have told me, you know. You didn’t have to end it this way.” Melinda said lovingly as she staggered to the chest of drawers beside the portrait. On it was a stand which once held a revolver, and an old grainy picture of a young man in army uniform. “May it save your life, as it spared mine many times before” she read off the engraving at the base of the stand. “If your father only knew, you dumb bastard” she whispered in disgust. Melinda could no longer bear the sight of it. She reached for the first place she could hide the gun stand, and pulled open the top drawer. She froze when she caught sight of it: an open box of bullets, whose contents were stacked neatly into rows. Her eyes were fixed upon the single empty slot.
Melinda choked back sobs as she slammed the drawer shut. “Why do you always think of just yourself?” She yelled back at the portrait. “What of me, of my life, my feelings? Was I so loathsome you could not find comfort in my arms?” She stormed to the floor in front of Carter’s painting, and looked him coldly in the eyes. “My only regret is not killing you myself” She hissed. Melinda picked up a dagger of glass at the from among the bits beneath her feet, and stabbed the face upon the wall. It slid as she descended, cutting through the canvas as she fell weeping to her knees. The shards of a broken dream pierced the skin upon her shins, but of the pain outside her heart she did not care.