The Alliance – Prologue

Monday, April 5

Love is a fickle bitch. That’s right. I said it. Someone had to.

It’s not that I have anything against love, per se. I just…It’s complicated. Suffice it to say that she and I have met and parted ways. A few times. Each time, she sucker punched me then kicked me while I was down.

In retrospect, all those little things I took for granted pop into crystal focus. All those tiny details I didn’t care enough to see at the time reveal themselves to me as what they really were: pivotal moments. These are the insignificant pieces of life – picking up dry cleaning, smiling at a stranger in the coffee shop, answering the phone.

But here’s the thing…Life and death don’t bow down to a simple trip to the cleaners. The fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance of a ringing phone.

Actually, that’s a lie. Answering that one phone call a few weeks ago set a chain of events into motion that I could no more avoid than I could possibly hope to stop. Sending that call to voicemail would save my life.

The choice I made to answer it is what killed me. I know that now.

Answering that call killed the one I love most in the world, even if I didn’t know it at the time…

Despite it all, I can’t blame love for this. I’m the fool who ran blindly into that bank, thinking my eyes were open because I could see. Unfortunately, love chose this unique moment in time to restart our turbulent affair. Now things are…difficult, to say the least. Getting the love I’ve waited a lifetime for right now is cruel. How long did I get to revel in it? A few days?

Fickle bitch.

Does love realize that dying now is an unfathomable fate? Three weeks ago, I could be standing in this bank, staring down the barrel of his gun, and I wouldn’t so much have blinked. The end of my life was little more than the bitter matching bookend to what started this whole mess those years ago. But now…

Now I have so much to lose. I have everything to lose.

Funny, I always thought my life would flash in front of my eyes during my last moments, not a contemplation on the nature of love. There’s something ironic about that. Or is it something else? I never paid much attention to all those grammar lessons back in school.

Too late to figure it out now. He’s done grandstanding. He’s pulling the trigger.

Well, love, I guess I’ll meet you in Hell…

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