“I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all.”

The sun has set, the clouds rolled and every light in the neighborhood has clicked off. They are sleeping, or awake, who was she to know. It was quiet, chilled and stilled. And she can see every star in the sky. That’s when the whispers started. She turns to the diaphanous couple behind her. Their pale figures harsh against the darkened room. She supposed if she had been sleeping, she wouldn’t have to listen to this conversation again.

She watches the ghostly man pace the room, the women stands trembling and terrified in a corner, with her wrists held behind her back and bleeding. There is no color to these people, they are shades of white and grey but she feels for the women just as she does the man. They had once been alive, breathing in this very room where the man killed the women and then himself.

Over and over and over again.

She watches every night, at the time the clock strikes twelve and the man barges into the room with a gun to the women hands and a panicked look deep in his eyes. Their chests heave, the women whimpers and yelps but the scene never changes and still the bullet flies from her head to the wall behind the bookshelf. Where the bullet hole still sits and the blood is still splattered underneath the new wallpaper. The man speaks again with desperation coating his every word.

“I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all. Every single fuckin thing. Our girls, our family, our home, my job, my dignity! Everything. But you-you! I refuse to let go.”

The woman falters, her tears fall heavy and she brings herself closer to the unraveling man. Her voice is soft, but her eyes are filled with fear. The ghostly women did not know that her last moments would be watched by another woman who has lost it all.

“Jo-Jonny, your not going to lose me. I’ve been right here next you the whole time. I just went to see my mother to get b-betha and carina’s things. I wanted, I wanted to know what their last days were like.”

“I don’t believe you! You were whispers and planning, don’t think I didn’t notice you packing more than you needed for a two day trip. You were trying to leave me!”

The man lunges a foot out at the women, raising the gun to her chest and forcing her to back up to the wall.

“And I refuse to lose you too.”

He whispers it as if it was a love confession, a bright shiny look enters his eyes, crazed and delirious, he smiles.

“BANG!”

The women falls, dead and gone before she can even blink. The man falls to his knees with a sob, watching the blood pool on the ground and traveling through the gaps between each wood panel. He cradles his wife’s head to his chest. Frantic and crying, he screams to the world.

She watches with sheened eyes, falls to her own knees and watches as the scene played again, watches the lifeless body hit the ground, watches the man pace around the room with the women blond on his shirt as he thinks of the next thing to do. He sits on the bed, staring at the gun in his hand and slowly brings it up to his head.

She can’t here the sound the man turns to look at but she knows why it was. He stares at his last living daughter in the door way and brings the gun to his head. And says his last word.

“I’m sorry- BANG!”

He slumps to the floor, his blood joining his wife’s. She’ll always remember this night, always remember as she watched her father kill her mother and then himself. Always remember herself that night as she cried in the door way and the look in his eyes as he turned to her.

Always remember her mother and father’s last words.

Sh watches it every night. Reminding herself never to fall in love. She walks from the room and it awaits for her to come again. Her voice is quiet, but heard just the same.

“You held many things in your hands, and you killed them all.”