Allied with Madness
Collette’s mornings consist of the same three rituals. Lipstick, coffee and eggs, and bullet holes.
She still wears her lipstick as red as Dina liked; bright and matte. Her lips were desperate for the memory of the person they used to kiss. When she wakes early, it’s an easy thing to apply the rest of her makeup, too. But the mornings when her bones ache and her soul wants nothing more than to return to Dina, the lipstick is enough.
Collette still takes her coffee as bitter as Dina used to, even when she longs for a peppermint latte. She drinks it hot enough to burn, and when she slips the mug into the sink, there’s a bright red imprint of her lipstick left behind. A kiss for a departed lover.
A reminder to the one that stole her away. Let him think he’s won. Let him pretend Collette’s lips are his.
She still walks, but where once work was her only destination, now she starts at the range. Ten minutes from door to door. The pistol is familiar in her hand now, the daily routine making it as easy to wield as her curling iron. She could probably go back to acrylic nails now if she wanted to, but she doesn’t much see the point. Better to stick with what she knows. Better to keep one less memory of why he stole her away in the first place.
You chose, he had said. You’re the one that chose her over me. I only did what I had to for you. For us.
Thirty minutes later and it’s too easy to slip the gun into her purse and slip the manager three fifties with the promise that he’ll have it back tonight. He knows where it will be. When to retrieve it. Everything else is irrelevant. No guilt, no remorse, and he knows as well as she does that if this doesn’t go to plan he’s going to let her burn.
That’s fine. She’s already burning.
Work is the same numb sort of ease that she’s known for the last year and a half. Though underneath the numbness is the tingle of anticipation, the reminder of what’s waiting for her in her purse in her desk drawer. Collette smiles and nods and laughs at all the right times, but her heart is as cold as the metal of the weapon in her purse.
He’s waiting for her at the door at 5:15 just like he’d said he would be, eighteen months later. There’s no fear in his eyes, just the calm expression of a man that knows he’s won. He’d let her mourn as she’d asked, and now he’s here to collect his due.
She smiles at him, the picture of acceptance. There’s no threat in the line of her spine, only the fine, controlled tremble of her hand on the strap of her purse. His smile has too many teeth. She doesn’t mind. He opens the car door. She already knows how this will end.
He trusts. Takes her to the edges of town to his house. Gives her his back at the door. It’s all she needs.
Collette lets him breathe for the barest moment with the barrel of her gun pressed up beneath his jaw. The words she’d rehearsed a thousand times fail her. All she has is the truth of why she’s doing this.
“You killed her.”
His jaw shifts and she knows he’s smiling. “And I’d do it again if I knew it meant you’d hold me like this.”
It’s all the damnation Collette needs.
The gunshot only just overpowers the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. A second shot cuts the beat off completely. Two shots. One to avenge her. One to join her.
There’s no one left to miss her. There never was.
