Willow's Lament

The gangly man, a brunette with black wire-framed glasses perched atop the thin bridge of his nose, piloted the sedan that cruised down the lonely, winding road. It was hard for him to focus-- hard for him to keep the vehicle straight because he could not seem to pry his grey eyes away from her. It was like he was seeing her again for the first time. Sure, he had spent his time obsessing-- marveling at the sight of her over the course of their three year relationship. He had been scolded for his staring too, not that it had ever stopped him but, this time was different for him. He was seeing her in an entirely new light. For the first time, he truly saw her as his wife; although he had fantasized about it before. The idea had never seemed real to him until it had become, well... real. It had been less than day; exactly twenty hours and thirty two minutes he clarified in his mind, since the moment she had jubilantly given him her answer. Yet still, he could not believe that the beautiful blond who sat next to him in his car had actually agreed to marry him when in all fairness, it had never made sense for her to love him in the first place. They were polar opposites: she, a bright star, a flighty spirit that no man before him had ever been able to tame. Yet, somehow, she had fallen for his timid charm and gentle eyes. He himself had never been very adventurous but would do just about anything, no matter how insane he thought the activity was, to keep her happy and she appreciated how much he tried for her sake. She never realized before how badly she wanted to be the center of someone's universe until she found herself being the center of his, and although he did not grasp the concept in its totality, she loved him just as deeply as he loved her. There was nothing more endearing in her eyes than the way her aerospace engineer readjusted his glasses when he spoke of intricate topics such as quantum physics and his love for her. She was captivated by the fact that despite the vast expanse of knowledge in his mind, this man still found the time to incorporate the little things like cooking her dinner, planning for the children she wanted to have and funding her obsession with dogs. He was an average looking man and it was unlikely that he would ever be as well built or as breathtakingly handsome as the other men she had dated but his capacity for love and his patience with her many shortcomings overshadowed it all. Everything she did and all of who she was, is perfect in his mind. No one would love her more than he could. No one could make her happier. The man held onto her hand over the gearshift, his thumb occasionally brushing over the engagement ring. It was a beautiful throwback to the 1950's with an oval-shaped sapphire at the center; it had been his grandmother's. He had the woman of his dreams; more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen with her cascading golden waves and bright green eyes. Everything was perfect. This single moment, bathed in unadulterated bliss could not be disturbed. Nothing could diminish this feeling of total and complete contentment. Absolutely nothing... Until something did. Just then, there was a crackle of thunder followed by a flash of bright light. The pale blue sky above shimmered as if there were waves moving just behind the thin veil of the atmosphere and the man was forced to slam his foot against the brakes, the tires of the car squealing in protest as something collided with the hood from above. His fiancée screamed. Two men dressed entirely in black appeared, perched upon the hood of the car. Their black hair was short and cropped close to their ears. Two heads bearing identical expressions of malice and carnal curiosity snapped toward the front windshield. Those beedie, black eyes appraised the frozen couple until with an ear splitting screech, the two began to transform. Green veins pulsed under their translucent skin which had turned from a pale ivory to a mottled grey. The inky black color of their irises bled into their pupils until there was nothing but darkness in their sockets. Black, four inch talons on the ends of their fingers scraped against the metal frame of the vehicle as the things stretched forward, hissing and exposing a mouth full of shark like teeth. The monsters prepared for the attack, their muscles wound tight like springs. The couple could only stare on, horrified. "This is how it ends?" the man thought to himself. "Assaulted by inhuman creatures that fell from the sky?" In some twisted way it was a relief. How many years had he devoted to validating the existence of a world beyond what we could see and touch? How many friends had he lost to the idea? How many hours of sleep? He had all but taken a blowtorch to the idea when he first met the blonde who now cowered against his chest. He did not want to risk scaring her away with his outlandish theories. He had chosen to devote himself to her instead from the moment he laid eyes upon her but yet, he had been right all along. The sweetness of the moment was soured by the dark reality that crouched before him; his world and the inevitable end to it separated by glass only an inch thick. How cruel the world must be, he thought, to give him everything he had ever wanted -- the woman of his dreams, a future he had never thought plausible for a man like him and the knowledge that he had not been completely insane all this time-- and yet, present him with an end to it all in the same moment. Yes, how terrifyingly cruel this world was, but still the truth of it all was undoubtedly inescapable. The man wrapped his arms around her, poised to embrace their fate... Then suddenly, in yet another unforeseen jerk of circumstance, the monsters stopped. Stopped advancing; stopping twitching with angst. Hell, to the man with the glasses, their breathing even seemed to cease their bodies frozen in the hunter's crouch as they looked toward the sky with flared nostrils. The heavens opened and deposited a single figure onto the mangled hood of the man's sedan. The vehicle shook with the force of the collision, only to reveal that 'it,' was a 'she.' A girl with bright red hair, braided at the nape of her neck and resting on the shoulder of her black coat crouched gracefully for an eighth of a second. A dagger flew from her pale fingers and struck one of the retreating figures in the back. It crumbled into a pile of ash a moment after with a final, agonized shriek. The second creature charged at her, spurred on by the sight of his fallen brother. This did not frighten the young girl, however. She took a single step forward in response, intense concentration on what was visible of the profile of the delicate features of her face. She matched each of the monster's calculated leaps in her direction with a single step in his, until with a final bound, his body lurched forward, leaping into the air only to be halted in that position. In the nano-second it took for his bare feet to leave the ground, the girl with auburn hair had pulled out a blade longer than her forearm and thrust it into the thing's chest. She appeared to be holding the creature above the ground for a moment, suspended on the edge of her sword by her own strength. Rather carelessly, she allowed her arm to fall to her side and the creature's body with it. Black liquid oozed from its thin lips and it convulsed around the part of the blade that pierced his chest. Baring no hint of remorse, she braced the heel of her boot against the creature's chest and pulled the blade out, sending its body sprawling across the asphalt where it burst into a flurry of fiery ash. She retrieved the smaller dagger from what was left of the other body soon after. By this time the woman was hyperventilating in the passenger's seat, gripping her fiancee's fingers as the girl turned to face their vehicle. "She's a teenager," the man thought. "No more than eighteen years old by the looks of it." His fiancee continued to shrink into his chest and he dare not to speak; he was too afraid that he might excite the anger of the hunter if he fixed his mouth to comfort his beloved. Instead the man found himself fixated with the girl's face; the stark beauty of her small, angular features. It was almost otherworldly. Well that's exactly what she must be: otherworldly. The girl with the auburn mane, opened their rear car door and climbed into the backseat; wiping her double-edged blades against the sleeves of her coat. The front of her coat fell open to reveal what she wore underneath; a black cotton turtleneck and black leather pants. "Look at me," she ordered, in a ringing, bell-like voice as she sheathed the dagger in a compartment on her wrist and concealed by the coat sleeve. The long blade was carefully pushed into an invisible sheath along her spine. The couple turned their heads slowly around to the face the murderess who sat only a few inches behind them. They stared into the face of the cherub with her piercing blue eyes and blood lust running through her veins. "I was never here," she spoke, placing one small hand against each of their throats. "You did not see me. I did not fall from the sky and nor did those creatures. I did not kill them." The man and his love nodded in unison, their eyes centered on the girl who spoke. They were not aware that what the mysterious girl said made no sense. She had done all those things which she now so vehemently denied. They had seen it with their own eyes but they were under the girl's spell now. They relaxed under her touch and allowed her words to shape their reality. "You too are married?" she asked, curious for the first time during her short-lived hunt. "Engaged," the man replied in a monotone. "We haven't picked a date yet." It was like he was volunteering information without actually consenting to do so. The words-- the truth at that, just seemed to flow from his lips on command. On her command. "Excellent," the redhead smiled. "Then you shall be happy together. You will have two dogs and two children with a house in the countryside. You will honor and remain true to your vows. You will love only each other and put your family first. Is that understood?" They nodded. "Good. I am going to get out of your car now and walk to the side of the road. You will not look for me. You will keep driving as you were meant to. You will not remember any of this. I do not exist." Her fingers left their skin and without even opening the door, she was gone. One moment she sat behind them and then the next, she was suddenly at the front of their vehicle. Where her fingertips pressed against the damaged metal, it remolded itself, flowing like water until it was as perfect as it was before the force of her weight and the other creature's weight had deformed it. The auburn haired girl glided into the tall grass at the edge of the street and the man started the engine once more. He turned to his love with a smile, grasping the wheel with the hand that was not wrapped around her fingers. They both stared ahead, their faces baring expressions of oblivious bliss. They did not look to the left. They did not see the girl disappear into the fields. To them, there was no one else here on this empty stretch of road. The girl with the red hair did not exist.