• I’ve never been in love with someone as dishonest as myself. It’s so strange being attracted to such a person. He was truthful, a little arrogant, but his intentions were good.

    He told me he didn’t love me.

    I broke his neck.

    I can’t say I’m not shaken by the whole experience. Some things you just don’t expect. Then again it’s probably karma. How many times have I killed someone without a second thought?

    Probably not enough, I laugh.

    I feel ill. It shouldn’t be funny. The smell of blood should be repulsive, not a reminder that I need to buy soap.

    There is no hesitation in the kill. I haven’t been taught to wait. I’m not patient and I’m definitely not forgiving. He deserved it. And everyone who came before him. They’d all deserved it.

    Maybe it’s karma that I’m alive. I’m the one left to ponder these stupid questions. Why did I kill him? Did he truly deserve to die? Yes. That was justified. But why?

    Why, my mind screeches, he didn’t love you, isn’t that enough?

    There is hope. I want to argue, but I can’t. Too vain, no emotion, just quickly timed flexible responses. There is nothing human left in me. Not even physically, the metal has taken most of my skin.

    The piercings have cut through my very skin to my humanity. Mostly I just work on instinct now.

    Food and sex. It’s all I need to function.

    I’ve even given up on the nicotine. It’s too expensive now. Either that or it’s always been expensive but only now do I notice. I guess I’m not perceptive so it can happen. So much so that I don’t even notice the ringing of my new cell phone.

    I open the phone and put it to my ear.

    “Hello,” all I hear is the beeping of my ring tone. I’ll figure out how to change it later, for now I settle for pressing the green button.

    “Hello”.

    “Joanna,” Devellion sounded strained as ever, “I need the full details concerning Telford. We’ve lost him off the map”.

    “You sound like crap,” I restraining my laughter as he growls. There was nothing better than hearing Dev so pissed off.

    “It’s hard to sound good when you’ve lost one of your best agents,” he almost snarls and I imagine him glaring at the blank stretch of wall in front of his office.

    “I thought I was your best agent?”

    “You are when you do your bloody job,” Dev replies tartly, suspiciously adding, “and don’t ask questions”.

    “What sort’s of question?” I ask, still amused by his disgruntled tone, however intrigued by the last emphasis of the conversation, “Like where you sent him? I’m not sure I saw the name Telford on one of our databases”.

    “He’s one of you”.

    “So Bermuda Triangle?” I ask carefully, “Guess he must have disappeared off the face of the Earth”.

    “This isn’t funny!” he hisses.

    “I’m not being funny,” I hiss back, “I want you to shut up and listen. If he’s vanished, it means they understand this part of the plan. Tell him what they know now and ask if it’s what he intended”.

    “Human sacrifice isn’t his style,” Dev observes quietly and I laugh. In this new millennium nothing was sacred. Not even life. Before Dev could protest I found the off button.

    I had to act fast. Vincent’s death and Telford disappearance, it all spelt trouble for us. Reluctantly I dial the number.

    “Joanna,” Meru sneers, “The plan has been changed”.

    Changed. What could she mean? The plan had stayed the same for year, but now, on a whim it changed?

    “He seeks you,” Meru’s voice was drowned out by the dial tone as I threw the phone from me. He knew I had killed Vincent.

    Damnit!

    It wasn’t an act of vanity!

    It was an act of preservation. I could not live knowing he knew what I was. He understood better than anyone the complications of my life. The monster I had to become for a man, as we always referred to him as such, who ruled our lives.

    He couldn’t understand why we could sacrifice everything on a whim. And why, every night when I came home I scrubbed the blood from my hands so fiercely I drew more.

    But for all I did for him he didn’t love me.

    I guess it was reasonable. I killed, I cheated and I was everything he feared. Yet he chose me. But I killed him. I chose to.

    And yet he had nothing to do with the situation. Telford was missing and I was thinking of Vincent. He had infected my mind. I needed to focus on the Bermuda triangle.

    Thinking, I scolded myself.

    Realization hit.

    They hadn’t killed. They wanted to know more and yet after getting all the information from Vincent they turned to Telford. That’s why the plan had been changed.

    Or rather it remained the same. Only everyone, including me, had been told the lie. Only Meru had understood. Her and her stupid tarot cards. He had told her, not out of trust, but because she would have found out.

    The dilapidated sounds of my broken phone echoed in my ear as I grabbed it off the ground and jammed it to my ear.

    “They’ve killed Telford,” he says, “He didn’t tell them anything Vincent hadn’t already said”.

    “Devellion doesn’t know,” I state.

    “He doesn’t need to know”.

    “So they got the information out of Vincent before I rescued him,” I observe, “and of course Meru would know all this”.

    “And that Joanna would understand that they got the information from Vincent before she snapped his neck in two,” is the scathing reply in an amused tone, “you know I gave you a choice”.

    “He told me he didn’t love me,” is the frustrated responce, “You shouldn’t have given me a choice. I would have killed him anyway”.

    “It’s what we get for wanting humans,” he laughs, “Or in your case screwing humans”.

    Now I truly felt ill.