Seething

            Susan had been bound to her chair for three hours. Apprehension and dread churned and mixed within her, becoming the same emotion. Tears blurred her vision as she cast fearful glances at her captor. His name was Clark, and she had known him, once.

"He cant be the same man now...he didnt used to look like that, like it hurts him to breathe." she thought.

            Every thread of her being pulsed with rage at her situation, and grief for the man she had once loved. He sat on the other side of the room, with his back to the wall. The metal on the dagger flashed and shined in the torchlight. His dark eyes bore into the stone floor, and he was sobbing quietly. Susan wanted desperately to cry out to him, to plead with him, but she could find nothing to say that might console him. She knew that this was not Clark, knew that the man that had proposed marriage to her was not the same man who sat before her now.

            With nothing else reasonable to say, she quietly said "I still love you, Clark." He flinched as if he had been struck, and slowly raised his wet, dark eyes to hers. "I dont believe you. You're a goddamned liar." His voice was soft and delicate, but it did nothing to mask his disgust and rage. He shakily got to his feet, and Susan watched with dismay at what he had become. His broad, sturdy frame sagged, and the tears still ran over his high cheek bones. His blonde hair had become tangled and matted, as if the thought of washing hadn't occurred to him in days, maybe weeks. The dark eyes that had once filled her with love and admiration were now nothing more than windows to something painful and wretched.

            Without looking at her, Clark shambled over to the window, still clutching the dagger. While looking out into the dark city, he began to speak. 

"Do you know what love is, Susan?" He gave her time to reply, although she felt that she mustn't.

Love is Devotion...at least a good deal of it is. And what do you know of devotion?" Susan had to fight the quavering in her voice down before she spoke.

"It wasnt my fault Clark. I...I was just so confused. Your proposal...It came so suddenly...you didn't even give me time to conisder..." Clark spun around and faced her. His grip on the dagger had turned his knuckles white.

            "Confused!? You were confused Susan?!?" His eyes and voice seemed to pulse with his grief wrought rage. Suddenly, he seemed to catch himself, and resumed his soft, painful tone.

"Do you know what I did to that man, Susan? That..." He seemed to think for a moment, trying to find that right word...eventually he did.

"That Intruder you left me for? What was his name.Christopher?"  Now it was Susan who flinched violently. Her grief turned away from Clark and focused on Christopher. He had been a good man, regardless of what Clark's opinion of him was. Never once did he harbor any ill intentions. When Susan had denied the marriage proposal, with Clark breaking down and moving away from the Kingdom to live in exile, she had turned to Christopher for support.

"He never did anything Clark. When you left me...he was the only one who would help me, the only one who understood." As soon as she said this, she realized it for a mistake.

            Clarks eyes narrowed dangerously. "Ahh so I see Susan. You deny me, you break everything I am, you force me to move away from all that I love out of shame for myself, and you needed support?!?" He shook his head very slowly, as if agreeing with some secret voice, and resumed staring out the window. "But I never told you...you interrupted me. Upon coming back to the kingdom, I sought to make amends with you, to bridge the gap that you had caused between us. As I made my way through the market, Christopher approached me. He greeted me with vast cheerfulness, and news of his his marriage to you." The words were allowed to hang in the air for a moment, seeming to weigh heavily on the short, cold silence between them.

            Clark suddenly stopped, turned around, and faced Susan. His rage was temporarily gone, and silent tears rolled down his cheeks. "He said...He said that you had lain with him Susan. Was it...Was he telling the truth?" A shudder ran through Susan, and she hung her head in unwanted shame. Her long, blonde hair fell over her face. Very softly, she said "I was weak Clark. He...He supported me. I needed him."  Rage rushed back into Clark, and he nodded to himself again.

            "Then my actions were justified, regardless if I didn't know it at the time."

"After leaving the tavern, I told Christopher that the two of us should sit down with you, see if we could work things out." Clarks bitterness was audible now.  "He believed every word I spoke to him."

"He was naïve right until his bitter end. I led that intruding bastard into an alleyway, and proceeded to slit his throat." While saying this, he brandished the dagger at Susan. A slow smile spread over Clarks face, contrasting the torture in his eyes. "But not to worry my love, I would not end you with a tainted blade."

            Susans head was still down, and she made no attempt to hide her sobbing. Slowly and delicately, she pulled the knife from the back of her dress.

When Clark had first began to break down the door to Susans small household (shaking the wooden house with every dull thud against the door), she had been in the process of preparing dinner for her mother and father. They had not yet arrived home, and Susan was alone in the home. Not knowing what kind of danger she was going to be in, she had hid the knife within the folds of her dress.

            Clark had resumed his silence for the time being, and Susan decided it was time for some kind of action. Though the position was awkward, she began sawing through the ropes that bound her hands. With a sigh, Clark turned from the window and strolled over in front of Susan. She almost cried out, thinking he had found out her razor sharp secret somehow; she had to bite her tongue to keep her mouth shut.

His crying had ceased for the time being, but his eyes still shown with wetness. "I want you to know SusanI didnt want it to come to this. Though it probably doesnt appear so now...I do still love you. I wish things could have been different...I didnt want...I wish I didnt have to hurt you." A low, guttural sob escaped his throat.

            "Do you know what I did Susan? Do you know what I did for you? I tried to bring an end to myself. Out in those woodsall by myself...I was going insane Susan. I hung myself from the rafters. How's that for appropriate?" A mad, sick kind of laugh came from the man that was once Clark. Susan began crying even harder upon hearing this, but her slow escape did not cease.

 "I did it to save you, Susan. Ahh but fate is a cruel and nonsensical master. The rafter broke, and I fell to the wooden floor and lay unconscious. And I dreamt Susan, I dreamt of you. Do you know what you were doing in my dreams? You were laughing Susan. Laughing at me! Laughing at my love, laughing at my lunacy, laughing because you knew Id never be happy again." "Thats when I decided...thats when I made the choice. I don't want this Susan," he brandished the shining dagger again, "But it is necessary."

            With a final jerk, Susan freed her hands. But she did not attack just yet...she didnt want to hurt him, didnt want to kill him. She wasn't lying when she said she still loved him. She cherished him with all of her heart; every day that he was gone from her was sheer torture. He was the man who had showed her the world, her first love. Susans mind reeled and spun with ways to change his mind, to show him that her death wasn't necessary. "Please Clark...Please dont do this. We can go back to how it used to be...we can wed this very night. I...we can have a child, Clark" She wasnt lying when she said this either, but Clark thought otherwise.

            His rage visibly increased, it appeared he had to visibly force himself to keep the dagger out of Susan. "Things will never be the same again Susan! They cant!" he spat onto the floor, hatefully. But then his voice lowered to its low, dangerous tone again. It was almost a whisper.

"Can you not see I'm sick Susan? Im no good for you now, even if you hadn't abandoned me. Cant you see I'm already dead?"

            With the tip of the dagger, he raised her head. Their eyes met, and he winced. Pain filled his voice until it sounded as if he were pleading with her. "Goodbye, my love." He brought the dagger closer to her, and she made the decision. Lightning fast, she struck. Clark caught sense of something a split second before, and reeled back, causing the knife to slightly miss its target. But the damage was done. The knife had slashed across the veins in his neck, the big ones, causing blood to pour out onto his tunic.

            The pain never left his eyes (not pain from his gushing neck, of course. This was the kind that was much worse, the kind that comes from the inside) as he stumbled back against the wall. Dropping the dagger, he slowly slipped down the wall. In a panic, she dropped her knife and burst out of the room. She ran down the hall with all her might, finally stopping around a corner to rest. She slumped down onto the floor and began weeping, well on her way to hysteria.

            But that was not the end of Clark. He wasnt done with his love yet.  He raised one hand to his throat, attempting to slow the blood loss as best he could. Tainted love and thoughts of vengeance filled his head as he picked up his knife with his free hand and began crawling down the hallway. He left a trail of blood behind him. His vision was beginning to blur, and it was a struggle not to drown in his own hot, coppery tasting blood. Though his breathing was forced and ragged, every few seconds he would croak "Susan"... in a voice that was not quite his own. Maybe it was all the blood pouring down his throat.

            In her own panic and grief, she never heard him coming. By the time he emerged around the corner, it was too late. Susans eyes bulged from her sockets at the sight of Clark. She tried to stand, thinking she could escape his slow, dying pace, but it was too late. With his last burst of strength, with his breathing becoming shallower by the minute, with blood covering his entire front, he thrust the dagger into her stomach.

            Both Clark and Susan lay in the hallway, their blood slowly leaking from them, forming a mutual pool of crimson. With both lovers crying, Clark crawled over and rested his head in Susans lap. She accepted him willingly. Yes, it was true that both were bleeding to death (Clark just a little faster than his better half), each the victim of the others steal death. And yes, Clark had kidnapped her from her home, tied her up and accused her of things...But her love for him did not falter. Could not falter; these two were perhaps the closest thing to soul mates to ever exist.

She took his hand and looked into his eyes. Whispering, she said "My love is not abated, my love". He had lost too much blood to reply, of course, but he didnt have to. All the hate and pain and vengeance had left his eyes; it was replaced with the love and happiness that had at one time wooed her to him. The pool of blood grew bigger by the minute, and the two lovers slowly died together.