The police swarmed the house and interrogated me for hours. I don’t know who would kill my husband but why did they have to torture him first? He had no face! Someone had taken a sander to it. The tool was still plugged in and laying at his head. His abdomen was splayed open with all the organs strung out across the room circling around him. The intestines swirled about him as if they were some kind of art form. Someone had cauterized every incision so that it would take longer for him to bleed to death. The intestines were sliced open with the contents removed. It looked like someone had tried to take the final passage of his intestines and make him eat it. WTF! They had cut off his fingers and toes at the joints and spaced them two inches apart like someone was trying to slowly dismember him but keep track of everything so they could put him back together afterwards. His eyes were found up his ass as if in some sort of cruel joke. I lost my lunch in the mess on the floor. How much of this was he conscious for? How much was he brutally tortured before he finally died. There was blood all over the living room and it flowed out into the hall and kitchen. The blood coated the walls and ceiling as if by a very bad painter imitating a jackson pollock but using only blood. He must have been tortured for hours. There are candles, animal bones, some ferrets and rabbits sacrificed in a similar manner. My cat was hung by the neck in my rubber tree. Poor kitty someone stuffed him with catnip before he was hung. The blood and dead animals coated everything I hold dear. My husband was a good man and a great contractor. Who would do such a thing to him? Why would someone do this to another human being? What is wrong with the world?
The black symbols burned into the walls and floor are alien to me. So much photographing is going on. So many people slowly moving about like little robots immune to the carnage. How can you ever become unseeing of such things? People keep asking me questions but I just can’t seem to hear them or answer through the tears. The world is moving as if in slow motion. A blanket is around my shoulders and someone is trying to lead me somewhere, but I can’t go. I can’t just leave him here. I don’t even know what kind of burial he wanted. He shouldn’t have died for at least sixty more years. His father and grandfather are like men of steel. His grandfather more so than his father with the replaced joints. They still have their hair and wits about them. These men are strong and break tools when they are not cautious of their own strength. I saw one of them get mad and punch a six inch diameter tree and break it clean. I was impressed and figured out quickly not to piss them off as that would be very bad for my health. He wasn’t just strong he was gentle too. He could handle tiny beads with precision and make beautiful jewelry for me. He didn’t believe in spending thousands to buy me jewelry he would have me pick out the colors and make me something instead. I always cherished each piece he made because he made them from the heart. I never needed a thousand dollar necklace to be happy. Ten dollars worth of beads and I could have something I would love. We didn’t have the most money in the world but we had enough to be happy. We lived comfortable lives free of debts. I will miss him as he was the only one who made my life worth living. I don’t know what to do without him. Who will I share my joys, hardships, challenges, and complaints at the world with? Where is his cat? Mine was a lover not a fighter. A cat that would come up to anyone and beg for attention. His cat only ever really trusted him. The cat would only let me pet it if he was mad at my husband. The kitty is probably hiding somewhere and won’t come out till everyone is long gone. But what will the cat do now? He is half wild and doesn’t even like me. He will grieve terribly. How do you console a grieving cat for the loss of his owner? He does love sardines so maybe I will need to leave a few cans of that out for a while and see if I can’t get the kitty back.
Sitting on the front porch staring past everything that is going on I try to make sense of my world. The past few weeks have scared me for life and I will never be able to make sense of it all let alone move on. How do you pick up the pieces from something like this? Where do I go from here? What will I do? My entire world just ended and I have nothing. Perhaps I should have him cremated as finding all the parts to put in a casket in some sort of order would take a very long time. I could have some of the ashes turned into a diamond so I can keep him with me forever, but he hated diamonds and all other gemstones for that matter. Blood stones he called them because of all the people who are tortured and killed over the mining of stones. He always believed that people should not die over pretty colored rocks. Well I have time yet to contemplate such things and should probably include his parents though separately as they do not get along. Two funerals might be required but who knows. Sometimes people can be very stubborn about coming together over such things. Which only makes times like these harder on all involved. Sometimes people are very selfish even when they do not see it themselves.
With all the blood and stink and death I can’t be inside anymore but I also can’t leave the porch. As though leaving would make this all final. Cementing that he will never return. Which is something I cannot face just yet. I wish to hang on to him a little longer. Hang on to the memory of him and the hope of his safe healthy return a little longer before facing the truth. The cold hard truth that he will never be whole again. That I will never hold him again. I will never again lay my head on his chest and melt into his arms. The world blurs a bit and I realize that I am crying. This is all so unfair. How could I lose someone so strong to someone so cruel? How will I find who did this? And how will I make them pay for what they have done!
They are taking the body out on a stretcher and I move yelling at them to stop. They can’t take him yet. Not yet! I can’t let him go just yet. Can’t he just stay a little while longer? People are holding me back angrily. I strike at them wildly, frantic to stay with him. People are very mad at me and I seem to have hurt someone. Good now maybe they will feel a bit of what I feel and let me keep him. I am sobbing over what I think his his chest. There is a sheet so I can’t see what is under and I don’t want to know. I try not to feel too closely as I want to imagine him whole again. I just want to hold him once more. Someone is yelling again but I don’t understand or care. I just want to hold him. To be with him once more. We argued before I left. He didn’t want me to go. He didn’t think the money was worth the trip to russia. We exchanged angry words. Words I can’t take back not now, not ever. Someone is pulling at me but I just shrug them off sobbing over his chest. Those things we said… None of them were true. I want to take them back. I want to take them all back. I try telling him this. Screaming at his body that I want to take back every mean thing I ever said to him. To tell him that I love him. To beg him for his forgiveness. Asking all the gods to just give him back to me. That I would never squander such a gift twice. Begging him to come back. But he doesn’t. The gods can truly be cruel if the want to be. I step back and look at those faces around me through my tearing eyes. Those faces once so cold, hard, and uncaring are all full of tears. Maybe they aren’t all machines after all. Maybe they do care about the loss of my love. If enough people beg the gods they might return him. That is my only hope at this point. But I want him whole again not some raised zombie that would never love again.
A hand is on my shoulder and it takes me to a car. Which ends up at the police station. The questions just go on and on, but I can’t answer them. They don’t matter. Nothing matters. My love is gone and my world has ended. Every time I try to speak I get so choked up that I can’t speak and start sobbing all over again. Eventually someone gives me a pen and some paper. The pages of my story are heavily tear stained but still readable. This makes the questions stop. Someone says that he died yesterday. This makes me start sobbing all over again. Someone checks with the airport and finds out that I wasn’t even in the county at the time so I couldn’t have done this. But they can’t let me go. Where would I go? How would I be safe? Someone could come after me too.
I am taken to a hotel and some cops keep me company. We order food and watch crap tv. No one says anything. This I am grateful for. I don’t want to talk to these nameless people who couldn’t save him. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. Today has been too horrible for words and I just want it to be over.
With the tv on I cry myself to sleep. And they watch me with their cold eyes. I pray that today was just a bad nightmare and that tomorrow I can hold him again.
I awaken to darkness. A quiet darkness that is too quiet. Something is wrong. Where are the cops? Why is the hotel room door open? I had slept in my clothes and put on my shoes. Looking around I don’t see anyone. Not even the guard at the door. Something is wrong. Very wrong.
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