• Because I loved her!
    I did it to save her from what evils my fellow men do! You say I didn't love her because of what I did... To save her! But of course I loved her, why would I not? She is... was the only thing not tainted by the evils of man, my pure and kind Catherin; her white uniform unmarred by the foul monsters she serves each day.
    Before I was a soldier in the war I never worried or fussed over her safety, noticed the darkly lustful looks of the patrons in the dinner. Oh, how those vile pigs stared at her greedily, wanting her and plotting, always plotting! Most of all though, I had paid no mind to her habit of arriving home each night, promptly at 7:30 with a bouquet of bloody red roses. From where did she retrieve these blooms to lay upon her piano, you ask? I knew not, but what thought did I pay it? I pondered not a moment on these thorny symbols till then! Surely I had not given the, for we barely had money to live on, let be buy roses! If only I had suspected then, I could have stopped them then... Why did I not act, and stop the daily arrival of those damned accursed roses!
    After the war those simple flowers, those perhaps one beautiful blooms I once inhaled while reclining near my Catherine as she played, became splatters of blood over the dark glassy surface of the piano. The dark bloody splashes of those men I faced in the war sprouting sharpened green barbed wire that twined round my reflection, choking me! The razor sharp finger-blades of those thrice accursed beings slicing my skin in their revenge, laughing at my tremors and shrieking in the night to disturb my rest; I thought they would go mad but they helped me in the end, those once dead enemies told me of the plans to kill her. The things they told me would chill your core as they did mine as I heard the plans against my love.
    At that moment I no longer saw the twins over just myself, I would see the dark vines, like hands, creeping over my lovely Catherine! The lustful sin in those thorns tarnishing and hurting her like irons from a fire! Oh how I dreaded to see those cutting thorns piercing my lovely white flower as they did myself.
    You ask when I knew to act, to stop such things from becoming?
    It was one of those moments where the wire bit at my throat, I saw her reflection beside me, suffering more than the solider she loved; I knew then that I had to save her.
    I waited until she came from work, her arms full of flowers and about her a glow that was only marred by those damned blooms.
    Laying each rose lovingly upon the top and entirely unaware of the evil before her she sat at the piano like she had so many times. The gun from my bedside table glittered under the haunting light as I removed it from its cage. Slowly I descended the stairs carrying her savior, then followed the sound of the light music wafting in from the far room. The gun shook in my hand as I approached her from behind, never had this happened in the war, but was I not then doing a kindness not the murder of war? The music swelled from inside the giant black beast, the notes whistling through my head and clinging to my memory. Oh, how it clings--!
    Quickly, as I had to not frighten her of salvation, I raised the gun to the back of her head. Then the music stopped. The silence rang out around the room as I looked at her.
    Why? Why was the silence louder then the composition?
    It had to be then, when the serene silence surrounded her, while her sweet music was still a fresh memory.
    Then in a familiar motion, my finger squeezed toward me and a ball of fire exploded from the barrel of the gun bringing back the smell of sulfur. The bullet, that small bronze reaper of deliverance flew through her head painlessly severing her bond to this putrid realm of man. In the echo of the blow Time slowed to a crawl, her body slumped forward; Once again I watched as red splotches covered the piano, this time free of the slicing wire.
    I watched her body lay onto the ethereally white keys, the dark scarlet roses spreading out from her paling body.
    I remembered smiling for the first time in months, knowing that finally my dear lovely Catherin was safe, safe from—
    But what was this?
    Her eyes wept crimson on the keys! She cries!
    I have saved her, delivered her soul from this evil plain but she wept! If there be any gift of reaction shown, should be happiness! Exultation at her escape from the dark, disdainful, dissent of this world by the hand of the one she loved!
    But she wept, I saved her in act of tender loving mercy, and still she wept!
    "Why, my sweet?" Here I cried, embracing her wilted countenance and cleaning her burgundy tears with my lucent own. "Why for do you weep? Your soul is free! Let not sorrow fill your body in soul's stead!"
    Thus I hoisted my love, with no intent other than to lay her to rest.
    But where? Where was hallowed enough that the likes of the purest pure may stow her self forever?
    Then a thought struck me. Glistening up at me were the silently leering bloody red roses of which this angel was so fond.
    "I shall lay you beyond the bonds of coiled razors; never will you be in danger there!"
    I exclaimed to her sagging soulless body, those smeared tears coating her lovely face. To the garden I traveled, carrying my cherished burden.
    Then I saw them; a great mass of spouting life-blood surrounded by their sharp razors growing darkly in near the hedges.
    Once more my heart lifted as I tucked in my love for her safer repose. My heart was almost as light as the softly lilting notes floating out the door to serenade…
    What? What trickery is this! There was no one within or with out that could play thus but my sweet Catherin who moments past I had laid to safeguarded rest!
    Here I ran indoors, the melody filling me with an unexplained terror opposite the merry harmony of the notes surrounding me and hastening my heart.
    Entering, the music grew certainly louder, near deafened I looked upon the scene in horror.
    The keys, those bone colored fixtures left empty and alone, yet played this tone of torture. The black surface, once glassy and elegant now lay smudged and splattered simply highlighting what dark omen lay upon it.
    Resting damningly on the dulled surface were the dozen roses my sweet Catherin had taken in this afternoon. And with all the seeming of a nightmare, the color seemed bled from them till they were far blacker than what ever magic filled the great monster of a piano with song. The black roses leered at me, denouncing my act of mercy as mere murder; a scarlet copy of my soldiers duty. A slaughter of what I loved to serve my own mind like the killing of a pig so not to have to share the ham. Lies!
    I had to stop it; the music, the glare of the damned accursed roses!
    "Silence! I demand— Silence!"
    I cried, smashing the great monster with the bench beside, wires snapping and wood cracking drowned out the music for a time. Then, as I thought my work done and my pulse had slowed…
    Music!
    Her music!
    Oh, how I came to loath it, screaming for want of simple noise to make it stop; even clawing my ears did nothing to stop it. Oh, how I longed it to end!
    Even now it floats about me as I tell you how I saved her, how I saved my sweet waitress Catherine.
    Of course I loved her; it was because I loved her I had to save her.
    You say I did not love her because of what I did for her;
    It was because I loved her that I could not let men like you and the world have her.