The Man who Loved

     The man was sitting in the living room of his house. This was a neat and well-lit living room; there were two couches and a big brown sofa, there also was a small wooden table that usually stood in front of the sofa. The light of the chandelier above, showed some pictures hanging of the walls of the living room. One of these pictures showed a young man hugging a beautiful red-headed girl in front of a big black church. This picture had to be old, because the man on it was younger and happier than the man sitting in the living room with his back resting on one of the walls.

     This man had been in love. He had loved a woman with all his heart and they had created a bond that only few people achieve to create when they meet their soul mate. He had lived as happy as any man in this world wishes to live.

     However; in this cloudy but not rainy night, things changed for good. The man’s heart was destroyed when he discovered a truth he wanted to erase, something he pretended to eliminate by just ignoring it. But, things do not usually work that way no matter how hard we want them to be like that.

     Gathering all the strength he could master, the man got up and walked towards the kitchen to drink, probably, his last glass of water in that house. Because he knew he had to run from that place that had given him the best years of his live, but that now was cursed. He entered the kitchen; it was a big kitchen full with all the appliances and commodities one could find in a house of a middle class couple of working professionals who owned their own house. Also, there was a nice and expensive collection of wines from different places of the world, along with a certificate of authenticity of those wines and their origin.

     In the middle of the kitchen there was a counter which was normally used by the woman he loved to prepare the food and to read the newspapers every morning as they were used to do. On this counter, there was a highly polished, brand new set of knives like the ones people see on TV commercials. The box displayed a big picture of the set of ten knives; however, in this moment they appear to be only nine.

     The man finished his glass of water and was about to go back into living room when he saw the telephone he had answered that morning when one of this friends had told him to go to an Italian restaurant downtown as soon as he could, just to find out that he could not longer ignore that the woman he loved had decided not to be only for him any longer.

    The man suppressed all his desires to yell, to cry, and to forget all he had given to her and all the moments that had made his life magical.

    He felt his life was worthless and he did not deserve to live another day in this world not even an hour. However, he knew he had to do something before he leaves that house forever.

     The man started to walk again towards the living room and when he entered, he moved the wooden table that used to be in front of the sofa. The same table the woman he loved had kicked when he confronted her about the things he had witnessed that morning at the Italian restaurant. Then, he grabbed a handkerchief to cover his face because the smell of blood was excruciating.

     The man took the blanket off the woman’s body and started to introduce the body into a big, black, plastic bag. Next, he took the missing knife and wrapped it in a towel to be disposed along with the woman’s inert body.

    The rain that was now pouring outside muffled the noises he made when he put her body inside the bag and dragged it to the basement of the house. After several minutes where he removed the wooden tiles from the basement’s wall and put them all back in their place again, he grabbed his raincoat and walked away from that cursed house without looking back, without soul, without mate.

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