Alma Katsu - The Taker

“What’s past is past,” he repeated before draining the bottle. He stared into the darkness, careful not to stare at me. “I’m so tired of this, Lanny. I can’t continue on this treadmill anymore, this never-ending succession of day after day… I’ve tried everything I could think of to carry on.”

“Please, Jonathan, you’re drunk. And tired…”

The wine bottle sank in the soft earth as Jonathan leaned forward on it. “I know what I’m saying. That’s why I asked you to come with me. You’re the only one who can help me.”

I knew where this was leading: life was circular and even the worst parts of it were guaranteed to come around a second time, begging at your heels. It was the argument we’d had every night for months-years?-before he finally left. He’d hectored, pleaded, threatened. That was the real reason he’d left, it wasn’t because he couldn’t help disappointing me-it was because I wouldn’t give him the only thing he wanted. His one desire would hang in the air between us, the only way for him to escape from everything he wanted to forget: abandoned responsibility, a dead child, betrayal by the person who loved him the most. Only one thing could make it go away.

“You can’t ask me to do this. We both agreed it was too terrible a thing to ask of me. You can’t leave me all alone with-that.”

“Don’t you think I deserve release, Lanny? You must help me.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Do you want me to say that you owe it to me?” That stung because he had never, ever said that to me before. Somehow he had managed never to fling those words in my face, words that I fully deserved. You owe me this because you did this to me. You put this curse on my head.

“How can you say that”-I wailed, intent on striking back, intent on making him feel as terrible as he had made me feel-“when you walked out and left me to wonder, all those years?”

“But you weren’t alone. I was still with you, in a way. No matter where you were, you knew I was there, too, somewhere in the world.” Jonathan struggled upright, weary. “Things have changed for me. I have something to tell you. I didn’t want to, Lanny. I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to understand why I’m asking you again. Why it’s important to me now.” He took a deep breath. “You see, I fell in love.”

He waited, expecting me to react badly to news of the best thing that had ever happened to him. I opened my mouth to congratulate him but, of course, no words came out.

“A Czech woman, a nurse. We met in the camps. She worked for another aid organization. One day, she was called to Nairobi by her home office for a meeting. I got the news over the radio out in the bush that she’d been killed in a car accident in the city. It took me a day to be helicoptered out to recover her body. We’d only been together a few years. I couldn’t believe the injustice-here I’d waited so long, lifetimes, to find the one I was meant to be with and we had just a short time together.” He spoke quietly, without too much grief, to spare me, I think. Nevertheless, as I listened my insides twisted tighter and tighter.

“Do you see now? I can’t go on anymore.”

I shook my head, determined to be tough, steely, in the face of his pain.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “And I know you know the pain I am going through. Do you want me to tell you how wonderful she was? How I couldn’t help but love her? How impossible it is to go on without her?”

“People do it every day,” I managed to say. “Time passes, you forget. It gets easier.”

“Don’t. Not to me. I know better. So do you.” Maybe he hated me at that moment. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t bear her loss; I can’t accept that there is nothing, nothing I can do to make this pain stop. I will go insane, insane and trapped forever inside this body. You can’t condemn me to that. I resisted for as long as I could because I know- I know -it is a terrible thing to ask. I didn’t mean to ask you like this. I didn’t mean to tell you about her, so abruptly. But you forced my hand, and now that I’ve told you… we can’t go back. Here it is, you know what I need from you. You must help me.”

He reached out and struck the wine bottle against a rock. The cascade of notes, high and harsh, went through and around us. He clutched the neck and shoulder of the bottle in his fist, serrated peaks of green glass, held in his hand like a bouquet. It was the only weapon at hand; it was crude and violent, and he wanted me to use it on him. He wanted to bleed to death.

You can’t leave me all alone, by myself, without you.

I wanted to say that to him, but I couldn’t. He had brought me an inarguable reason: he had lost his love and couldn’t go on. The time had finally come to let him go.

I couldn’t speak and only knew I was crying from the cold ignited on my cheeks by the wind, cold like biting fire. He reached up and touched my tears. “Forgive me, Lanny. Forgive me that it’s come to this. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted. I tried-you don’t know how badly I wanted to make you happy, but I couldn’t make it work. You deserve to be loved in the way you have always hoped for. I pray that you will find that love.”

Slowly, I took the broken bottle from him. Jonathan took his shirt off and offered himself, and I looked from my hand to that pale chest, glowing blue in the moonlight.

We should have had a life of great love.

I couldn’t look at him; I simply pushed against him, knowing the edge of the glass would do the rest. The teeth of green sank into his flesh, a perfect circle of a bite, soft and yielding. The broken bottle sank deep and Jonathan’s blood welled up to my fingers. He let the quietest gasp escape.

And then a swipe of my hand, and three lines were drawn across the white blankness of his skin. Deep, the wounds split open, letting more blood escape. Jonathan crumpled, falling on his chest and then rolling on his back, hands held limply against the wound, blood gurgling out of him. What stood out to me was that the flesh had given way so easily. I kept expecting the edges of the wound to knit back together but they didn’t. I must’ve said the words “by my hand and intent” in my head. There was no denying that deed had been done by my hand, but surely this was not my intent. I had made a mistake-this had not been my intent. Wake up , I heard my own voice say from far away; I must wake up .

And then I did, waking up in the woods with the one I loved rocking, convulsing, in the dirt before me, choking and sputtering, but smiling. His chest rose and fell with deliberation, and I realized I’d seen Jonathan do this once already, in Daughtery’s barn. And in an instant I was next to him, pressing his shirt against the wounds, foolishly trying to hold back the flow of blood. And Jonathan shook his head and tried to push the shirt from my hands. In the end, all I could do was hold him.

That was when it hit me, what I had lost. Jonathan had always been there, even during the years when we were apart, and the resonant hum had always been in the back of my mind, a comfort. Now all I had was a great, sucking void. I had lost the only important thing in my life. I had nothing, I was alone, the weight of the world crushing down on me with no one to help me. I’d made a mistake. I wanted Jonathan back. Better to be selfish. Better for him to resent me to the end of time than to feel like this. To feel like this and have no way to make it right or make it go away.

I held his body a very long time, until the blood had gone cold and I was covered with a film of wet slickness. I don’t remember letting go of Jonathan. I don’t remember leaving the body and running through the woods, screaming to the heavens to take pity on me and let me die. Let it be over for me, too. I could not go on without him. I don’t remember ending up at the highway, limping along the logging road to be found by the sheriff and his deputy. It wasn’t until I’d been locked in the car with my hands cuffed that it all came back to me, that I realized all I wanted was to be back in the woods with him, to die with him so we could stay together forever.