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Aubrey Skade lives in the Greater Cincinatti, Ohio area with her family and her canine companion, Storm, and feline companion, Killian. Her work has appeared in Flashing in the Gutters, and now here at Mouth Full of Bullets. She spends most of her time either reading and writing, hanging out with friends and listening to music, or surfing the net getting story ideas. A Rose From Rose by Aubrey Skade Rose threw the CD into the man's lap. "Put this in and play it."
She pointed toward the CD player with the Glock in her hand. The man moved slowly, following her orders and trying to put a name to the face. She knew he was trying to figure out who she was, and that he couldn't quite place her.
"Who are you?" the man asked with fear in his eyes as the gun in her hands followed his every move.
"Sit down, shut up, and listen. You'll remember in a minute," Rose said in a low voice.
The song on the CD began to play and the man froze. He paled and grabbed at his stomach like it pained him as the words of the song rang from the tinny speakers.
His mouth worked for a few seconds before he croaked out, "Rose?"
"Remember me now, you dick?" Rose laughed. "You should. This was our song."
The look of shock on his face made her stop laughing. "You played this song for me twelve years ago, remember? I can't stand this song––it makes my skin crawl to hear it..."
Rose leaned over the chair he sat in and stared him straight in the eyes, daring him to say something, to deny what he had done. When he only flinched back away from her, she felt strength flow through her as she continued on.
"...but I thought it was appropriate for the occasion."
He looked into her unforgiving, icy blue eyes, so like his own, and could only ask, "Why?"
She nudged him to his feet and walked him out the back door, toward the woods. As she moved him through the woods, she began to talk.
"I was moving on with my life," Rose started. "I grew up, left home, and finally found a man I could trust. I married him. We had a beautiful baby girl. I thought I'd finally started to forget you and what you had done."
They came to a clearing in the trees. Rose made him step down into the shallow hole that she had dug after she found out where he was living and had paid a visit when he wasn't home.
"Rose, please," he quietly begged.
She went on as if he hadn't said a word. "But then one day while I was driving my little girl home from pre-school, this song came on the radio. It made me so sick I had to pull off the road."
She knelt down on her knees in front of him.
"And I knew...I knew that I'd worry about my girl until you were gone."
"Knew what?"
"I knew that if you got the chance, you'd destroy her just like you did me."
Rose put the gun against his chest. "I thought maybe you'd have done yourself in by now with the drinking and drugs. But no, not you…"
"But you don't understand. Rose, please, I'd never––"
Before he could finish the sentence, she pulled the trigger and watched as the man looked down at the gaping hole in his chest, then up at her as he began to fall.
"...so I thought I would move things along on my own."
Rose stood and dusted the dirt from her knees, then took a rose and dropped it onto his still moving lips. She took her time pushing the dirt over him and then walked back through the house, pausing only long enough to take the CD from the player.
At the door, she turned and looked back into the small house. "Goodbye, Daddy."
THE END Aubrey Skade © 2007 |