World War 4: Sticks and Stones

Ben: Part Seven

A dry, cracked, dirty, smelly kiss. A dry, cracked, dirty, smelly, kiss full of passion, and an emotion I know all too well: hatred. How? How could it be that she hates me, but she is still choosing to kiss me? She instigated this kiss. SHE started this kiss, not me. But then I kissed her again. And again. I heard a cry from inside her chest. Something was trapped, scared, alone. Something was dying inside of her. The feeling I thought was hate radiating from her being was not hate at all, but anguish. It's odd how similar hate and anguished love are. But why was she anguished? Every part of me has spent my entire time in and out of the bunker swearing to protect her, to love her, to be everything for her, how could she be anguished in love, I have done everything for her, I will continue to do everything for her. My mind was racing, my head pounding, my ears aching, my heart became undeniably and unequivocally anguished. I tried to think of every possible reason why her love has turned to anguish. I couldn't think of anything. I kept her safe. I have kept Destiny safe. I have kept our humanity safe. But then I thought again of my dream: "I HAVE NEVER FELT SO DISTANCED." What if this was no dream? What if Eliza saw this; saw me put Bill out of his misery? What if she didn't understand why I had to? What if she didn't understand that this was the only way to protect Bill from everything that is coming? What if this is why she is anguished, but it's not the death of Bill, but rather the fact that she still loves me after I killed him? I stopped kissing her. I wanted to look in her eyes one last time.

"Eliza?" We thought upon that word for a moment. She answered. "Yes?" Again, silence. Then "do you ever wish nothing changed? That we could go back to five years old, living without fear, and life was just as beautiful as we made it to be?" A stunning answer: "no. If the war never happened, if those bombs were never dropped, we would never have met each other, I would never have had Destiny, life would just not be the same." But, the anguish? The anguish in her love? How could it be that she still would rather have lived in our bunker with me to find nothing, but anguish than live a full and happy and normal life? I looked deeply into her eyes one last time. She has the most beautiful eyes. Her hair shines like the sun. Her heart beats like a drum. I leaned onto her chest and listened for her heart beat one last time. It beats in sync with my heart. Truly I know that we are meant to be. But what is meant is rarely how something is understood. I grabbed a knife. I no longer was staring into her eyes, but rather into her soul. She shakes. I take the knife and jam it deeply into her heart. My eyes glaze over in a fury of tears and pain. As her heart breaks mine does. I feel every single miniscule moment of pain that she does. I scream. The world shatters around me. "Every time that I look at you, Eliza. All I feel is the defeat I witnessed in that bunker. We lost. I saw so much death and destruction and chaos. You are everything to me, you will always be everything to me, but as long you are everything, everything is you. Everything that I look at brings me back to that bunker when all I wanted to do was kill Peter. Every ounce of me wanted to rip out his heart and squish it between my fingers. That never changed. I hate this. I hate everything except for you. I love you Eliza. I always will. I believe, I truly believe that I always have. But as long as I want to kill Peter, I am nothing more than the enemy. I am Peter, Eliza. I had to kill you, as Peter had to torture you. I am saving you from whatever Peter himself would do." I started to break. My head started to pound harder and harder. My gaze became dizzied and dark. I waited for Eliza to speak, to just say something, but she just looked on with sad eyes. "Please, protect our Destiny. Peter doesn't matter. You don't understand. This was never about Peter for me. It was about us. It was about life. Ben, I love you more than you will ever know. All I hope for you is that you realize that you don't love me too. I hope that one day, one day you find real love. Someone that you would not murder in cold blood for what? Because you believe that you are nothing more than a killer? That is a lie! Your fate is sealed by you and you alone. You feel no remorse in your actions because your fate is made up! It's a figment, Ben! It's a construct! There is more to you than this fate. Love Destiny. Love her for real. Not in this fantasy way that you love me." Her tears fell like rain, I laid my head across her blood spattered chest to feel the slowing, pained, murmurous heartbeats fade her out of existence. Eliza was gone. Ben was gone. There was only Peter. There was only Destiny. There was only

Death.

I stood, I could not love Destiny. I did not deserve to love Destiny. I left her and walked. I had a fate. Whether I came up with it or not was irrelevant. Peter killed Eliza. Peter took everything from me. He needed to die. He needed to die a bloody death. He needed to understand the pain that I felt. He needed his limbs torn from his body bit by bit. He needed to vomit blood until he couldn't breath. He needed to feel the cuts and bruises that a knife and a shinbone could cause. He was going to suffer. I was going to make him suffer. He took Eliza. I didn't care if I killed her or not. I didn't care whether she thought I loved her or not. I wanted revenge. So I took food. I took weapons, my radio, and I took my fate. I would find Peter, and when anyone else did, they would find his head on a spike.

As days went by, I became dirtier, more splattered with bean juice dripping down my face and into my clothes. I thought of Eliza every single day. "How could she say I didn't love her. I am doing this for her. She's looking on at me and she is smiling. I see her. I know I do. I can feel her touching me. She's going to regret ever saying that I was not in love with her. Everything that I do is for her." I was directionless. I hoped to find maybe a bunker or some still-standing buildings, or maybe I could get out of the blast radius. I didn't know how I would find Peter, but it was my fate. I could not not find him. It had to happen. I was him. As long as I was Peter, and Peter was me, there was no way that I could lose him.

After a tenth year of wandering through the desolate land, I turned on my radio. My fate was finally sealed. I heard cries of fear and screaming that could only be described as that of Hell itself, then silence. I heard a gasp. It was a ten year old girl. "Daddy!" Then silence. They must have been back at the radio bunker. I grabbed my shinbone and I ran. I had no idea where I was headed, no clue where or how far this bunker could be. Then static. It was quiet, but as I ran, it got louder, then louder. A year passed, it was louder still, then another. Louder, still. The white noise was my Destiny. It was my fate. Peter must be there, so I must be there. I had no idea if he was even still there, but I knew in my heart that he must be, there was no way that he wasn't. Finally. I was there. A smile ran across my face. I saw him. I saw Peter. I expected to die immediately, but he was out of bullets. He had his gun, but it was just a blunt force weapon. I ran as fast as I could at him, but to my surprise, he ran away. I chased after him. On the way, I recognized some faces that I had seen before. But they were not faces from Peter's army, they were from my own. "Traitors!" I yelled this as I kept running. I trapped Peter against a wall. I swung my shinbone at him. He deflected it with his gun. In that instant, the shinbone was weakened. I took another blow. It hit him, but the bone fell immediately to pieces in my hand. "Dad!" My heart was racing. Was he no longer with me? Had I lost him forever? I fell to my knees gasping through my tears. I expected to receive a blow from Peter's gun, but it never came. Instead, what came was a hand. Instead of taking it, I burst into tears, but not tears of sorrow, tears of anger. If I couldn't kill Peter, my life was pointless. If Peter is a better man than me, then I killed Eliza for nothing. I could've raised Destiny. I could've saved humanity, but instead, I devoted my life to destroying it. A young girl ran to me. "Daddy!" she yelled. My heart sank to the depths of the sea. "Go away! Don't look at me!" "Father, all I want to do is look at you."

Peter died this day, but his name wasn't Peter.

It was Ben.