I stared down at the woman sensing the presence of an emotion rare to me. This woman shocked me.
First by being here waiting for me instead of running for her life, as I knew it was in her to do, and then by the few words she’d just spoken to me. She continued to drive her plea home by continuing to gaze into my eyes with an earnest hope that was unfazed in its intensity, even as the internally built in speakers situated in the glasses I wore buzzed off with grating intensity with the voices of those clamoring that I rape this woman.
On and on their instructions pinged into my consciousness with ever-increasing sordidness. Now they even wanted me to cut her head off when I was through with her. How crazed this woman had driven the powers that be, whom she had once served as a slave!
The eyes that looked back at me weren’t that of a slave’s though. This woman on the doorstep of death had the appearance of being gloriously free! How could this be?
Her words alone seemed to echo the strongest of all the requests that were being made of me. My hand lifted, as I brought my pistol up, until it was sighted upon her forehead.
Screams of, “No! Don’t kill her yet!” “We want her to suffer! I said for you to……” And on and on and on. I didn’t care.
I watched her lips move just before I pulled the trigger. The message of them was clear even through the shouting din of my overlord masters within my ear.
“Thank you. I forgive you.”
I pulled the trigger and the sound of the shot rang louder than the physical to the point it felt like it would blow my insides out just from the sheer echo of it. What had I done?
I stared through the smoke down at the bloody crumpled form of something priceless, which I had just shattered to the point of never being able to be put back together.
The voices raged on within my ear, until one rang out above the others, “Silence! It’s done and that’s what matters, but you, Victor! Don’t think we’re going to let such disobedience from you continue! You exist because we say that you do! You best believe it or I’ll decommission you from active status and sentence you to retraining and trust me Victor you don’t want that! Now cut her head off and bring it to us!”
In rage I tore the glasses off and holding them with one hand I shoved my gun back into its holster before then stooping to grasp a handful of the dead woman’s bloody hair. Pulling up what was left of her head I shoved close the glasses that acted as a remote viewing device so that my paymasters had an up close view of what irrevocable damage had been done to this woman.
I let her hair go and turning the glasses to view me I said, “You want her head! Then you get it! You want me then you know where to find me! I’m done talking! No more!!!” With that said I took hold of the glasses that cost more than most cars and crushed them to pieces with my bare hands.
Throwing the pieces aside I stared at my bloody hands. She’d forgiven me. How could anyone like me be forgiven of anything?
I’d have her blood and that of a 1000 others staining me crimson for all of eternity. I took off at a run, as the need to escape my own moral degeneration threatened to overwhelm me.
Where could I go though to be free from myself and what I had allowed others to make of me?