A Woman With a Gun

Martin narrowed his brow as he recollected that day. He shook his head with all sincerity.

"No… Victoria… we met in the street that day, you were walking home and we met in the street, then we shared a cab home. I remember it well, it did turn into a romantic ride on the way, because it was just the two of us Victoria… just the two of us."

His words jarred her momentarily from her confident air of revenge. What was he trying to do? Couldn’t he just admit to it once for all now that it had come to this?

"Early last week… I woke up and heard you talking outside… I heard you, she was telling you she wouldn’t stand for anyone else in your life… you agreed with her and from the tone of your conversation I thought you would have killed me first. Then all the nights you came home late… your suspicious behavior… the perfume on your clothes…"

"Oh Victoria…"

His expression turned into one of foreboding despair. His eyes looked on her as one would look on a battered child.

"It’s happening again… Christina…" he said, his voice shading lighter with each word.

This hit her like a freight train, and her knees went suddenly weak. She looked at him with the same confused and desperate eyes that he had given her seconds earlier. It had been almost eleven months since she left the hospital, since the doctors pronounced her perfectly sane. Christina had been put to rest for good, she was only one person now, she was Victoria. She shook her head in disbelief.

"Your lying… your trying to get out of this… Christina is gone…"

"Apparently not… my poor Victoria… last week you were acting so strange. You took me out on the porch as if we had a baby sleeping inside that you didn’t want to wake. You began talking so possessively… I… I simply followed your lead, I played it out as I thought you wanted me to. Then you came running in here and tripped over that flower pot… then acted as if you hadn’t seen me all morning…"

His eyes trailed down and he gave a long sigh.

"No… it… it can’t be true… I’m sane… I’m no longer schizophrenic. I’m Victoria… I’m Victoria…"

Her eyes welled up with tears as she slowly realized that it made perfect sense. She had battled that demon for fourteen years, the last eight spent inside a mental institution. Christiana had destroyed every aspect of her life in the past, she pretended to be her and left Victoria to face the consequences of her malicious actions. But she had been cured, the doctors had said so, why did she have to resurface now when she was finally about to be happy?

Martin stepped to her slowly and gently took the gun from her grasp. Victoria slumped down on the sofa and buried her face in her hands. She wept in bitter agony.

"That’s right deary" said a womans voice above her.

Victoria blinked, stunned at the voice, and then slowly lifted her head. There was Martin pointing the gun dead at her, his eyes had changed, all sympathy was gone and replaced by a wicked glare.

"You are indeed Victoria… you tramp." he said in a woman’s voice.

Her skin broke out into gooseflesh to hear him speak in such an eerie tone, it was the same voice she had heard on the porch. Her eyes filled with stark terror as fate unfolded the ironic twist.

"Do it now Martin… now and you can call it self defense" he said in the feminine pitch.

"I… don’t think I can dear… I don’t know if I have it in me." he said in his normal voice.

"Fine… then I’ll have to handle your dirty work for you, you spineless jellyfish."

The last thing Victoria saw before the bullet entered her skull was the look on Martins face, the look of a man trapped in a relationship with a woman who had to be dominant. She became painfully aware the she had in fact been the other woman in this bizarre love triangle. Victoria now had only outlived Christina by barely a year.