Pipeline

My eyes focus on the hand in front of me. Its long, callused fingers leave me entranced as they brush over my mouth, my chin, my jaw. The touch electrifies me, sends me to that Somewhere that I can only find with his help. I close my eyes, close my lips, allow his fingers to thumb over my bruised skin as I breathe in his scent. My hands tighten around the rusted pipes, painted grey, as he leans in for a kiss. I imagine that I can hear him whispering, welcoming me to reality. Funny. I’ve never felt so unhappy.1

His lips are rough, chapped, harsh against my own. He leans in, forehead cool against my own, and we stay there, like part of the pipeline that goes on forever, through others’ lives, never noticed but impossible to ignore. I try to cry. I really try.2

It’s amusing how easy it is to get inside someone’s head once you’ve known them long enough. I don’t mean annoy them – I mean, know them. Get in their head, know what they’re thinking, because you’re thinking the same thing.3

We were that compatible. That much in love.4

I can feel him smiling, feel his breath on my skin, feel that first tear form at the corner of his eye. I knew all this without seeing. They say faith is more important than actual knowledge. I had faith in his smile. I have faith in his tears.5

His hand leaves my face, and a great fear seizes me. It is confirmed when I feel the bitter shock of cold metal thrust in my hands. The only sound in the room is heavy, sharp breathing. I can’t tell whose it is.6

He steps back, away from me. I sway for a minute, unsure of where to stand, where to be, until I once again grasp the pipeline behind me. My knuckles grow white from my grip. I can feel it – if I let go now, I will fall.7

He is on the other side of the room, away from me and the device I now hold. He speaks, never looking at me, universes away, in that Somewhere I cannot enter without him.8

“There is time,” he says, his lips cracked and his eyes tired, “for some things. And for others, there are solutions. Compromises. There is a love, which has time. And there is a love which has a solution. One that everyone else can live with. And so we must compromise, for I cannot live with that solution. So I must not live. This is how it needs to be.”9

He looks at me, his face pale and sickly. I can feel my pulse beating, burning against the grey pipe, and wonder how it feels not to have a pulse. To freeze.10

“My Romeo,” he says, reminding me of my duty, my promise, my choice to love despite the lack of time. I look at my hand, already turning red in pity of my fate. Compared to the sleek, greased darkness of murder, his eyes are brighter than the world. And I realize, though it may be too late, that those eyes were the Somewhere I always found with him. 11

Who knew.12

He falters, waiting, and I lift my hand, already prepared to shoot. He is right. There is not time for all things, let alone love. Love of any kind – be it the endless love I feel for him, or the frightening love I felt for the future. For isn’t that what love is, simply uncertainty blanketed by a stronger feeling of faith? But I am now certain, for I know my duty towards him, and I will fulfill it. Perhaps this replaced my love, but it was replaced with something even greater, even greater. Death.13

It only takes a second, and in that second I see his eyes, widened in shock. I feel the pipe behind me, still supporting me as I slowly kill the one thing that made me happy. I hear the shot explode as it reaches its target.14

I feel my pulse on the pipe, the blood on my clothes, the breath in my body, as it all disappears.15

I killed the one thing that meant something to me.16

I killed our love.17

It takes one bullet before you are given that feeling of true love, and although I know I’m experiencing it, I can’t tell the difference, except for the lack of a pulse in my shapeless body as it clings to the pipe as I freeze in my one moment of true love. I freeze just as I reach that Somewhere, and this time I leave him behind for good.18