Everyone had watched him go under the water. Everyone had watched him die. Over the world, people rejoiced. They didn’t mourn the death of a serial killer. They didn’t care.

I cared.

The police pulled me into their interrogation room. “Where are they?” They asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” A lie.

“You lived with him. You saw nothing?”

“Yes. I saw nothing.”

“Did you know the girls?”

“No.”

“You had to have known something.”

“I know nothing.”

I was released and I walked to the cemetery. His grave wasn’t adorned with flowers. No one came to visit him. Who would want to remember the life of such a terrible man?

“You did it,” I whispered into the night air. “You made it out.”

I closed my eyes and remembered what we used to say. _“One day we’ll leave together, Rae. One day, we’ll be safe. One day, we’ll make it out.” _

__

__

He just didn’t make it out alive.

A tear slid down my cheek. “We were supposed to be together.” I choked out. “We were supposed to go together.”

I wasn’t just another one of his girl. I wasn’t another body he could dump. I was _his_ girl. I was _the_ girl. I was the one who hadn’t failed. I was the one who decided to stay after it was all over. I was the one who saw him for who he truly was. I saw past the crime and torture into the man who wanted love. I saw the boy who was abandoned. I saw the one who just needed someone to stay.

Favorite color? I had no idea. But his darkest secrets? Those I knew well.

I knew that his first kill was after his prom, when his date stood him up. A revenge kill. He had been a mere boy, a young man at most, but he had done it so well. He had killed perfectly.

His kills went on and on, hoping to find a lover. Every rejection was another body. It wasn’t anger. It was fear. It was a shaking, scared boy who just needed a little love.

I knew that he tried to kill me too, but I stabbed him instead. I saved myself and chose not to leave or turn him in. I stayed.

I gained the prize.

Now, I watch at his grave as his legacy fades to nothing.

I turned away and found myself walking in the pouring rain. Tears mingled and mixed with the sky’s. I sat in silence at the bus stop until a man sat down next to me. I could smell the intoxication in his breath as he pulled me closer.

His breath. My lover had always said that’s what you focus on when you kill someone. When the knife goes in and you draw the last breath from them, that’s what you steal. It’s what you cherish for the rest of your life. You carry their last breath of life, their last attachment to this world, with you forever.

I found out that night that he had been right.