Emperor of Mayhem

s i x t y - s i x

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HEART ON THE MOVE
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I truly felt nothing.

For an excruciatingly hot minute, I felt nothing other than the wild way my heart kept plummeting my ribcage like a hummingbird's wings. I felt nothing but the aggressive way my blood moved through every cell and every stream. I felt nothing but the sweat that came like they had been given a blanket invitation, seeping through every pore of my skin and drenching me whole.

I couldn't grasp anything, both physical and emotional as I sat there frozen, gun still held tightly in my hand. My thoughts were broken in chains and going in many dimensions unknown, my vision was nothing to rely on. And there was a ticking sound in my head, like a clock running backward, perhaps to turn back the hands of time.

"Azania."

My name reached my ears in such a way it felt like it had come a thousand miles away from me. As if it had journeyed with the wind through the deep of the ocean just to reach out to me.

"Malyshka."

Another one came in the same distant rhythm but cracked halfway through like a radio station that was struggling to hold up a signal and ended up creating a weird ringing sound instead.

"Hey, snap out of it." 

I felt a familiar warm sensation against my skin then what felt like a pair of lips pressing against the hollow of my neck. Slowly, I slipped out of the space I was stuck in and began to see clearly again. I could hear clearly, the loud jazz pop coming from an invisible speaker in the walls. I could smell clearly, the stench of booze, cigarettes of unknown origin. Then I caught a strong and gut-wrenching whiff of it; the smell of something akin to rust. Something metallic, like copper.

Something like blood. 

Fresh human blood.

As my heart jumped in my chest, so did I, to a standing position when my eyes fell on the body on the floor again, a gaping hole carved masterfully by the bullet of my gun on the person's chest. The hole was directly over the opened mouth of the roaring tiger tattooed on his chest. This could have been oddly humorous if this wasn't a matter of death and I wasn't the killer.

It wasn't an illusion. The backward running clock in my head wasn't trying to turn back the hands of time. It was fate teasing me with the thing it knew I would desire the most right now; to go back in time and never come to the party in the first place. But I came anyway, to lure Mikhail back home but ended up killing a human being.

The sordid reality came back to hit me again like a heavy brick and a  loud shrill was suddenly heard over the thunderous, deafening music. The cry hit the four vibrating walls and came right back to choke me in the gut.  It took a burning sensation in my throat for me to realise that I was the one that screamed

"Oh my God." I choked out, my steps faltering as I staggered backward, unable to believe what I just did or drink in the scene at all. 

"Oh my God." I whispered through a hoarse, choked voice, the tears flowing like a river while within the next second, I found myself next to the lifeless body, lifting his right arm only for it to fall limply by his side.

No, no, no. This couldn't be happening, right? This was a prank, right? A dream. A horrible dream that I needed to wake up from fast before I would lose my mind.

"No, please, don't. Please, open your eyes." I begged, wiping my nose hastily before cradling his face in my hand. A tear slid down my cheek only to fall directly into his lifeless eye that he had opened widely, staring at nothingness, or maybe the journey ahead of him.