Her Atonement

PROLOGUE

You reap what you sow

I remember reading somewhere that there are only a few defining moments in your life.

Taylor once told me that killing another person will change you irrevocably, especially when you see the life drain from your victim"s eyes.

I squeeze her throat tighter applying ample pressure around her long neck. She gurgles and desperately tries to pry my hands away. Yet her eyes, her cold blue eyes remain lifeless like there is no life to drain from them. In this moment, I realise that they have always been this way. I only never saw it before because the look in them mirrored my own.

Her body is slowly turning limp in my arms but she still desperately tries to push my hands away. There is a pleading look on her face yet her facial muscles do not seem to move much. It is a weird almost alien sight to see but it doesn't surprise me. She always dreaded growing older; she was obsessive in maintaining a youthful appearance even if she had to resort to surgery to obtain it. It all doesn't matter now. Death never discriminates, and right now it is coming for her and it will be the final intimate moment that we will ever share.

I am supposed to feel some sadness about that fact; she was, after all, my most trusted and only friend. But I don"t feel any emotion even remotely close to grief or sadness. In fact slowly choking the life out of her is strangely cathartic. Like I am being set free from a life sentence.

It is ironic really she always told me that she made me, and I guess in many ways she did. She took the small monster that was living inside me and shaped and nurtured it to the monster it is today. A cold, callous, and remorseless entity. Right now, she is reaping the fruits of her labor.

Her breathing has turned into small choking gasps, her pupils dilate and the veins in her eyes are popping one by one. It won"t be long now before death takes her and I can finally be free of her forever.