The sin of Love

Every stroke of the hand so important.  Perfection, nothing less than perfection.  Her hand, callused and worn was in perfect tandem with her breath as she moved it through the familiar motions. Clean.  Se very clean.  Her whole body ached.  Days of this, alone.  She yearned for the world to support her in her whims.  To bend as her tired body, to support her in her time of need, but she was so alone.  
Edgar had been gone for three weeks already and the stress of being alone was wearing away at her.  She missed him, more than she ever thought she would.  She sat and waited alone, she starred into nothing waiting for nothing and expecting nothing.  Little passed through her mind other than the incessant need for cleaning and company.  She only looked forward the letters he sent her.  She held the most recent one he sent close to her heart.  

Dear Annalise,
I can do nothing but think of you.  How have you been?  I would love to know what you are doing every minute of every day.  Annalise you are my star and I am searching for you in my dreams and I still fail to find you.  Being so far away kills me.  I am almost physically ailing, I long to see your face. You dressed in white on our wedding day a vision from my dreams.  I long to hold you like I did on the alter.  Please you are my angel write to me as many times as you can.  I love you.  
Love, Edgar

He pulled his pen off of the table.  You are mine.  He stuttered barely able to control himself.  I need you.  Black thoughts clouded his mind, of his wife lashing out leaving him.  Desperation followed him a shadow engraved into a soul conflicted.  His whole body hurt.  He could think of one thing only her, and how he owned her.  You are mine, he repeated again.  Unable to control his train of thought any longer.  She was truly the one and only to his mind, and every other piece of his being.  He Dropped the letter in out going mail, and prepared his tired body to wait.  

Dear Edgar,
Oh, I do miss you as much as you miss me.  I think of nothing but you and the need to make everything perfect for your return.  It has been so long these three weeks and I have been so lonely.  Only me and this lovely letter you sent me pressed to my heart.  I keep it on my night stand and read it before I got to bed at night.  Just because it reminds me that you still love me.  Please come home soon.  I am desperate to have you Home.  I am a bird in an empty nest.  A small helpless blue bird.  Come be my protector.  I hope you think of me every second.  

Love, Annalise


She ran her hand over the newly written letter.  So many emotions were held in such a small space, they had rained out of her body.  She did miss him, so very much.  She wanted to have him here as he always had been.  Nothing was normal except the daily chores she did.  Going through the movements.  That was all that was normal. She clutched theses tasks.  They were everything.  

Dear Annalise,
I cant wait to see you now that five weeks have gone by I feel like my soul has gone missing and I have no way to track it.  My soul is braving a jungle just as you are at home without me to watch over you.  I want to be near you, all the time.  I never want to leave your side.  Every second of every day I want to be near you.  Please tell me how you have been.  I want to know everything.  I want to be able to feel your life.  You are my everything.
Love, Edgar

His fist slammed down on the table that held the letter.  He had barely kept himself together while writing the letter.  She had failed to tell him what she had been doing.  The questions flashed through his mind.  What is she doing with her self?  Has she spoken to any others.... any men perhaps?  He could not bear it no longer.  The next letter he wrote would tell her how he felt.  The need to know everything.  At all times.  You are mine, he repeated again before standing up to move along to breakfast.  

Dear Edgar,
I am spending my time cleaning and Waiting.  I need something to do with myself.  Something to hold on to, all I have are these wash rags, and they account for so little.  So I am cleaning.  Perfection is not a myth I will achieve it.  The furniture will sparkle and look back at me with a soul.  As if it has eyes and knows what i'm going through, as if i am not alone.  I do not want to be alone any longer.  Alone is all i know six weeks is so long.  Too long.  

Love, Annalise

She leaned into the table, seeing burns and pain and blisters.  Clean.  Clean, Clean.  He needs it clean.  She had nothing but clean.  No one.  She stuttered, the words filled with the past.  The words filled with pain.  Pain and more pain.  And clean.  Tears stroked her cheeks like he would of.  And everything she had tried to forget was back.  Hot on her tongue.  More painful then the blisters that caked her hands.  She could feel the scream lodged in her throat.  I have nothing.  He's dead.  She stuttered.  Scrubbing with increased intensity.  Dead, the word was hot coals.  Burning flesh, new clean angelic flesh.  And she was not to blame.  


Dear Annalise,  
You are mine through thick and thin.  I watch for you every night in my dreams.  I picture you at home.  Perfection nothing but perfection.  You are my perfection, I refuse to share your beauty.  Mine all mine I tell myself.  How could one man be so lucky? To have a wife like you to be everything any man has always wanted.  Faith we are all about faith in this relationship.  I trust you with every fiber of my being.  I love you every second of every day.

Love, Edgar

His mind a confined animal.  I need freedom the animal shouted.  Free me of my cage.  He wanted to scream, scream to his past and everything that he was trying to forget.  And the pain he was trying to keep himself from reliving.  Breathing came in short shallow bursts.  Don't go.  The words used so many times.  Alone they stood in a sea of emotion.  My angel.  His voice now in tatters.  I can't let you go.  Ever.  You are no ones but mine.  You are mine.  You are mine.  You are mine.  His candle went out and his head hit the pillow.  


Dear Edgar,
Memories press harder than words wouldn't you agree.  Decide for your self what I really mean to you.  I want to say I love you so many times that I kiss your feet, my king.  My glorious king, you are shining.  I will watch for you, the perfect women at home bending to your whims.  I need someone.  Something.  Come home, you will not regret your coming.  

Love, Annalise

She cried.  The king.  The king of suffering, the king of pain. You are nothing.  She stuttered alone.  You want nothing.  And you feel nothing.  A monster in the shell of a man.  Do not look back she stuttered, because the life we have lived is not free of sin.  We are not clean.  There is no soul in sin.  She scrubbed the floor her eyes shown on its surface.  The soul that was missing in the world.  Stared hard back at her.  The eyes of a stranger, the eyes of the desperate.  Eyes that were not her own.  Eyes that were Edgar's.  The eyes that were pain.  The eyes that were desperation.  The eyes that followed.  The sheer fear.  Nothing but fear, and cleaning.  Cleaning.  






Dear Annalise,
I would be the one to know of memories they plague me.  Memories of you.  Some that I hold dear and others that are chilling my heart and leading me further and further from the love that I long to share with you.  You make me remember the past that I long to forget.  Choose how you feel about me.  But you know how I feel about you.  And you always will.  You know you are mine.  You know that you are only mine.  You learned that the hard way.  He is gone now you know as well as I do.  I will fail to shed a drop of emotion over his body.  Cold and unmoving in the ground.  Dead, gone.  That is all he is to me, and all he should be to you.  Faith, Annalise is all we have.  
Truly Yours, Edgar

He laughed.  Falling apart.  He was covering  the absence of happiness with his low husky laugh, that slowly removed itself from his mouth cloaking his surroundings in darkness.  The thoughts came to him now slow and cold.  Home.  He uttered.  She needs me at home.  His whole body lacked control.  The fear came back full force hitting, full of pain and fear of the past.  Fear.  He is dead.  All dead.  


Dear Annalise,
Sometimes the calling of home is full of power that you would not know.  My life has been put on a path before me, and who am I to ignore destiny.  I am no god.  I am the puppet of my life and the waves have changed and given me a hint that home, is where I belong.  Do not fear for me, my trip home will be easy.  On a boat down the river watching the white foam on the dark water, thinking of you.  Me covering you, forever and always.
Love, Edgar

Clean he wants clean and clean and more clean.  The cold heart full of dust.  The lack of love.  The love that he had never known.   The love that she knew.  Washing the sins from life.  Clean water and scrubbing and away lies and pain and suffering, scrubbing.  So much, there is only one way.  One way to clean it all away.  The water washed over her face, pure and clean.  
The click barely audible.  Her body was loaded with emotions.  She could feel the clean, the texture.  Such slight movements, so important, with every second.  She placed her hand on surface unfamiliar.  She braced herself for the cleaning of sins.  The water was washed away by thick dark blood.  That as she knew was no longer hers.

***

His hand pressed warm on the cold door nob to the house, the harsh presence looming over the home that never held any joy. The muscles in his hand tensed, and for a bleak second, you could see hesitation. A very human emotion. Fear plagued his every move as he pervaded a space that was no longer his. That was light. That was happiness that was clean and clean and clean. He was unclean. He became more aware with each passing second.
The door opened; air, crisp and unfamiliar, hit his body. Cold. So very cold. His eyes, a chilled dark blue of the time he stared into the ocean under a cold stormy sky. And found nothing. And there was nothing. Nothing but fear. He traced the room--a glint, against the hard wood floor. His heart leaped in his chest. He could almost hear the shot through the cold air of the house. Then her gasp, then gone. He touched her soft, pale skin. An angel. She was an angel. He pulled his hand back, conflicted. I am. "Oh my god," he whispered, "she's dead. Gone." the words barely loud enough to be heard by his own ears.
Her corpse was laden under his harsh gaze, being looked upon by blue eyes. The eyes of a killer.