My Sweet Valentine (6 page)

Finally she was
able to get to her knees and stare into the messy lake of red blood
before her. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light coming through the
window of the front door and she saw Greg’s still body crumbled
beneath her. He had broken her fall.

Amber’s breath
hitched in her throat at that and her slick hands came up to cover
her mouth to prevent the shout of agony that was threatening to rip
from her throat. Greg’s eyes were unblinking, unseeing and starting
to glaze over. The wound on his throat was at an angle, starting
high on the right side, almost behind his ear and finishing so low
she was sure it would scrape against his left clavicle.

Amber noticed
with stark precision that the wound was almost three inches deep in
the middle of his throat and the edges were ragged. The skin around
it was blotted with red as was the front of his tan suit and white
dress shirt. There was a forming bruise under his left eye and his
knuckles were split. Amber took comfort in knowing that he had
fought back.

Something
crashed upstairs but Amber paid it no attention. She thought it was
important but could not remember why when she looked into her
husband’s dead eyes. She began crying then, thick tears sliding
down her face and making rivers through the blood there. She curled
in on herself and sobbed out her agony.

Then a thick
hand slammed down on her shoulder and something with too much
weight to it knocked her over the head. Amber felt her eyes roll
back into her head and knew that she would not wake up from this.
She fell into Greg’s still chest and closed her eyes knowing that
she would at least be with her husband soon.

Amber opened
her eyes to see her bathroom ceiling staring back at her. She
blinked in abject wonder at the simple fact that she had been able
to open her eyes. Heavy breathing came from beside her but for the
moment she did not want to turn her head.

Pain trailed
along her right side, sharp and immediate and she tried to push
through the haze of her mind to figure out what was causing this
pain. Her side throbbed and she let out a little moan but did not
close her eyes. Finally she turned her head to the right and saw
the stranger lying right beside her with a grin on his face. She
screamed and tried to roll away but an ache erupting along her side
stopped her still.

“
You’ll
pull out the stitches if you do that again,” the man whispered to
her and Amber noted that he had cleaned himself up.

“
Stitches?” She stuttered in confusion.

It was her head
that had been hit and there was no reason for her to have stitches
on her side. There was no reason for her not to be able to feel her
right arm. It should be squished under him but she did not feel the
pins and needles associated with it. The only thing she could feel
was pain that sung along every nerve on her right.

“
I sewed
us together so we can never be apart,” the man explained with a
grin.

Amber stared at
him for a long moment the implications of that statement settling
into her person. Her throat closed and her vision narrowed to two
little pinpricks of detail as her gaze shifted to stare at her own
body.

Bile rose
strong in her throat as she looked at the stump that used to be
where her right arm was. It was joined with thick black thread to
the stump were his left arm had been. The precise stitches
continued all the way down her side, joining him to her, her to him
until they stopped two inches above her obscenely pink panties. She
noted a small dot of blood where a needle had entered her flesh at
her stomach and realized that he had put her under.

“
Who,
why, oh God,” Amber tried to mutter out around the thick lump that
had settled in her throat.

“
My name
is Russell and I did this because I love you,” the man said with a
light chuckle and shifted to kiss her cheek.

Memories
flooded back over her. He was the stalker from high school. His
glaring looks as Greg protected her year after year. The shouts of
her ex boyfriends when they found Russell trailing behind them on
their dates. She coughed and tried to turn away again but only
managed to turn her head.

Bile poured out
of her mouth as she winced in pain from the stitches. The only good
thing about this was that she was in fact left handed. If she
remembered correctly, so was he. Amber saw with some absurd
lucidity that her right arm was lying along beside her. She almost
laughed but the smile turned into a sneer as she picked up the arm
and slammed it into Russell’s face.

He yelped at
her and tried to grab her own severed arm away from her but she was
driven by an animal passion that caused her to keep bringing the
limb down on him over and over again. Russell took the blows but
did not pass out. Amber realized the arm was not sturdy enough to
do the job and gave him a final whack across the eyes before
turning away from him the best she could.

“
Better
now? I hope so, you are wearing my necklace after all,” Russell
muttered after a moment.

“
What do
you mean?” Amber questioned without turning.

“
The
roses, the chocolates, the bear, the necklace, they were all from
me. You’re my sweet Valentine,” Russell’s words poured over her
like molasses.

A glint of
silver caught her attention and Amber noticed the knife he had
likely used to kill Greg sitting in her immediate vicinity. It was
still clutched in his left hand, attached to the arm he had severed
to join them. She noted another large knife a few feet away but
dismissed it. Amber’s left hand skittered along the floor as he was
still talking and she grabbed the deadened left hand of
Russell.

Peeling back
the fingers one handed was frustrating but Amber knew just where to
apply pressure to get the knife to release. It did not clatter to
the floor and it merely slid out of the now loosened grip of the
dead hand. Amber’s lips pulled back into a snarl. She howled in
fury as she turned with the knife in her hand.

Russell yelled
at her to stop but she brought it down hard into his eye. She was
not sure which eye it was but she did not care because she yanked
the knife out and slammed it into his other eye. His right hand
came up to grab her wrist and she slashed at it, the flesh oddly
malleable under the blade.

Blood poured
from the gash on his wrist and she pushed the knife through the
center of his right palm before jerking it free again and slamming
it into his forehead. He shuddered a few times and his right arm
fell weakly to one side. She did not noticed as she was too busy
pulling the knife from his forehead and pushing it into his throat
with a cry of rage.

The knife
separated flesh again and she tugged it free as blood sprayed her
in the face weakly. She made no notice to this and pounded the
knife through his sternum before pulling it free again and cutting
into his stomach four times.

With heaving
breaths, she stilled with the knife still embedded in his stomach.
Amber gulped a few times to curb the light-headedness threatening
to knock her unconscious. She did not want to die of blood loss
attached to the man who killed the love of her life. With that in
mind, Amber pulled free the knife for the last time and used it to
tug out the stitches.

Her body failed
her a few times and forced her to pass into unconsciousness but
each time she woke with a greater determination and larger anger to
hack away at the thick black stitches at her side. When the final
one snapped free she lay there for a moment, covered in blood and
sweat with her breath coming out in short gasps.

She flung the
knife away and heard it clatter against the wall somewhere to her
right. She could feel the blood leaking from her wounds but paid
them no attention. Instead, she turned onto her left side and
managed to sit up. Her hand skittered against the vanity until it
found a roll of gauze. This she wrapped awkwardly around her
abdomen, over her breasts and around the stump of her right
arm.

Partially
satisfied, she made it to her feet. The door kept tilting from side
to side but Amber paid it no mind. She all but fell out of the
bathroom and shuffled to stand before the staircase. Lying at the
bottom of the stairs in a messy pool of half-congealed blood was
Greg. She let out a grunt of determination and made her way down
the stairs.

They rose up to
meet her a heart beat later and she felt her tibula snap under the
pressure. She felt the bone push through her skin and almost
laughed. When she finally slammed against the floor for the second
time that day she let out a little breath of relief.

One armed, she
pulled herself closer towards Greg’s limp body. Amber ignored the
pain from the leaking wounds on her right side. She disregarded the
agony from her broken leg. She overlooked the ghost pain telling
her that her right arm was still attached to her body and could
help. She snubbed the throbbing in the back of her head that
threatened to take her under again. All she cared about was
reaching the body of the love of her life.

Finally she was
able to pull herself over him, draping herself over his motionless
broad chest. She imagined his arms coming around her and smiled.
She scowled a moment later as she remembered the necklace at her
throat. This she pulled off with a growl and tossed it somewhere in
the home. She did not care where it went because it was not a gift
she wanted to own or see again.

She settled
into Greg’s broad form with a sunny grin coming to her face. Amber
snuggled against him and closed her eyes. No movement came from the
house but in the distance she could hear police sirens. She vaguely
remembered her friend mentioning that people could cut security
wires and was in disbelief that it had only been a half hour.
Perhaps the neighbours had called when she was screaming. Perhaps
the wires being cut had not alerted the authorities until it was
too late.

Amber pushed
all these thoughts out of her head and snuggled deeper into Greg’s
dead body. She pictured the smile on his face when he saw her. She
could almost feel the gentle pressure of his arms around her waist.
She swore she heard his deep voice saying her name and beyond the
blood she could smell his cologne. As an ambulance and a police
cruiser pulled into her drive-way Amber let out a small breath and
knew no more.

###

Ending note:
Originally
My Sweet Valentine
was to be novella sized.
Obviously, that did not happen. At only a little over 14,000 words
it makes it into the novelette category. Part 5 (Valentine’s Day)
was unplanned besides me knowing I wanted to sew Amber and Russell
together. Amber was not supposed to retaliate as she did. She was
supposed to wake up after the sewing, listen to Russell speak again
then die. I’m not entirely sure where she got her strength from but
I’m glad it happened.

As promised I’m
getting back to you about whether or not I actually like this
story. I do, despite some awkward sentences and a slow start, I
really enjoyed writing this. I especially enjoyed the ending. Not
because it meant the story was over but because it was fun to
write. Yes I like writing morbid things.

As stated in
the inspiration section (which was really just me rambling again) I
am doing the 12in12 challenge and this was supposed to be my
novella for the second month. It bled into the third month and gave
me and extra 4,000 words. Maybe 5,000 depending how much more I
decide to add before sending this out into the World Wide Web.

Am I fretting
at being behind my goal for this month again? Nope. Daimin Van
Helgrove and his father Demek came through for me again last night
(February 6th) and I wrote a scene with them that spanned over
11,000 words. That brings my total to 15,000 or 16,000 and it’s
only the 6th.

The scene
was when Daimin finally realized how much of an arse he had been
over the first 20 years of his life and how much he needed to
change to win the love of his soul mate. The scene won’t see the
light of day until I write and publish the second book in the Van
Helgrove trilogy. That’s right, the
second
book. Have I written the first?
Nope.

As for
what I’m going to write to make up the other 4,000 to 5,000 words I
need to get this month’s quota, I have no idea. I do have a few
more fairy tale spoofs to finish for my
Fairy Tales Gone Wrong
anthology I’m planning to
put out in either March or April. Namely I have to make Sleeping
Beauty a witch, Rapunzel a crazy warrior, and turn Goldilocks into
bear poop.

I do find
it exceptionally funny that my
Little
Mermaid
spoof became a novella and
My Sweet Valentine
barely qualifies as a
novelette. It was supposed to be the other way around. Hell, I
could almost turn my version of the
Little
Mermaid
into a novel. But I won’t because then it
would take too long to edit it and I would never be able to release
it when I want to. Plus my Ariel had her say and is happy with her
ending. Eric, eh, not so much.

I congratulate
anyone who is actually reading this. And by this I mean this
‘ending note’. If you’re really that curious about me, I’m both
flattered and a little worried. Just don’t turn into a Russell,
okay?

As for
why I wrote this (the actually story and anything else I write), I
have no answer. That’s like asking why a bird flies or why a person
breaths. For me, writing is a necessity. It’s something I do almost
every day, or at least once a month because that’s just who I am.
As for why I wrote something so horrible happening on what’s
supposed to be a happy time of year, go check out
Have a Bloody Christmas
and get back
to me with that question again.