“Get away from my house threatening me, right no—”
My next words were thrust back into my throat when he sidestepped me and wrapped his humongous gun around my throat. And by gun, I mean his big, raging muscular arm that was as hard as pure metal. I didn’t see it coming.
I struggled to free myself from his hold. His strength was that of a machine. The kind of dangerous machine that a person lost limbs in, once they got entangled in it. One could lose their life dealing with this type of machinery.
I swung around and a punch connected with his jaw. His big arms only wrapped tighter around me. No matter how many times I connected with his flesh, he would not let go. My punches weren’t affecting him, and I didn’t know what to do to save my life. I guessed this was it. I was going to join my Raven. It was suiting that it happened this way. I, in search of just a few more moments with her, clashed with a man who would choke me to death.
Just as I was about to pass out in his arms, I dropped to the ground in a loud thud. He kneeled down beside me and wrapped his hand around my neck as I gasped for air.
“When I say stay away from Alise, I’m not asking. Come near her again, and you won’t get another chance.” He walked over the threshold and back down my gravelly driveway to a still-running black F250 and hopped in.
Perched down in a squatted position, I steadied my legs so that I could make a dash to my gun inside the table in the foyer. I didn’t make it in time before he was out of my line of vision and pulling out onto the main road.
Bruiser had won this fight, but the winner of the battle was what mattered. She would be mine. Keeping me away from what my heart desired most was out of the question. No fucking way in hell would I stay away from her. Raven was mine, and so was Alise.
I grabbed the door but stopped before slamming it shut. Raven appeared before me, beguiling my sad mood into a much more jovial one. I smiled.
“Raven?”
“You are no match for him, you know?” she replied beratingly. “It sucks to be done that way… the way you did me.”
A sob escaped me. I didn’t even know it was in me to cry at that moment. With everything weighing on me, and now hearing Raven’s judgments, I let go. My emotions ran down my face and onto my shirt. It hurt so bad to be here in this big house…without her.
“Raven,” I said through whimpering and shaky lips. “Why are you doing me like this? All I want to do is love you.”
Her voice grew deeper, darker when she said, “Nevermore.”
“Go then! Just go!” I yelled. “You’re not even real. You can’t make me feel bad when you’ll be a husk of bones in just a few seconds,” I said in a gruff. I hated taunting her, the woman I made a ghost when all I really wanted to do was get another chance to love her again.
“That, I will be,” she said, accepting her fate. “But you will forever be a man who killed the woman you claimed to love. You did this to me. You did this to me. You did this to me.”
That sentence lingered in the air long after she disappeared, long after I slammed the door shut, leaving her husk on the other side of the threshold.
“It’s all in my head. Raven is dead. She’s not coming here for real. It’s all in my head.”
I was a logical human being who came from a long line of smart men. I owned an online marketing business. I made five figures a month from the luxury of my home. I had studied and mastered the art of selling online and worked my way up to bringing in fifty thousand a month. The other part of my wealth came when my grandparents gifted me a three million dollar piece of property with over three hundred acres. The last thing I should be doing was being bullied by a ghost.
I looked around the living room. An open window caused the curtains to move slowly. The flowing fabric resembled the long, lacy train of Raven’s wedding dress. She had been so beautiful that day. The most beautiful woman in the world.
My eyes found Raven’s picture, sitting lonely on the mantle. It spoke to me as if her soul was inside of the four corners of that frame.
“Nevermore.”
A deafening silence followed. There was no more fluttering of the curtains. Not a peep or a sound could be heard anywhere in the house. She was gone.
After a long soul-cleansing cry, I went back to my bedroom and fell asleep without looking out of my window, without tossing and turning, without thinking about anything at all.
?
I woke up early the next morning and headed to my desk. I turned on the computer and focused my mind on work. I hadn’t worked my business since I laid eyes on Alise. Bruiser was right about one thing. I had gone to her house to see her one more time. I parked down the street and watched her walk onto her porch. She was easy to find because she had a public phone line, and her address was attached to it. What Bruiser was wrong about was me staying away. Now that I had laid my eyes on her, stood in her space, and breathed her wonderful vanilla scent into my lungs, I was compelled to explore where things could go between us. Namely, her being my wife.
I pulled up Facebook and went to her page. She had posted some pictures from the event last night. I smiled. She looked beautiful, as always. Joy covered her face as she snapped shots with her friends. She also posted a link to her new song that was doing well on iTunes. “Love Me Again” was sitting at number six.
I downloaded a copy of it and pressed play. As I listened to the song, I went back to the song’s page and ordered a thousand more copies to use as giveaways for my email list. It was a heartfelt song that deserved more listeners, and I would use every drop of my influence to get it in more people’s headphones.
“That should help you hit number one, baby,” I said, thinking about how her radiant features would perk up into a smile when her sales spiked. “You deserve it.”
I smiled, but remembering Bruiser’s visit from last night quickly wiped that smile away. The way Bruiser lusted after what was mine made the vein in the middle of my forehead pulse. He dared to come to my house and threaten me. Something had to be done about him.