The bright sun hung in the sky without shame today. It was something I could not do. I was like the sun when it hid behind a cloud, hoping nobody spotted it. But of course, they had, with their gaze like an eagle's and their mind as sharp as an owl’s.

The last few days had been uneventful, except for the whispers in my head, relentless and maddening.

I looked out onto the scarce street, wary. It was all in my head, I told myself. But wasn't.

In the blink of an eye, Eloise, someone I once knew as my wife, stepped onto the street, her eyes, slightly puffy from crying, locked on mine. In the corner of my eye, I spotted a revolver in her shaking hands.

“Eloise,” I said, conveying more than the actual word did.

“You knew…” she said, as if she were announcing it to the world. A relatively innocent world, compared to our actions.** “**You always knew…” She raised her shaking arms, the arms that held the revolver, and pointed the gun at my chest.

I shut my eyes, and before I could utter another word, the bullet was in my chest. I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my stomach, in my ribcage, an unbearable agony. A misery that made me wish for immediate death.

I looked down, and in the short time it took me to realize exactly what happened, I was lying in my pool of blood, with Eloise looking over me.

“May God have mercy on you,” was the last thing I heard before I blacked out, my head collapsing to the cement floor, the darkness enveloping me.