<P>The apartment was silent, their merging completed. Peering out of the kitchen area, Justin caught a glimpse of movement from the bedroom to the bathroom. Running water chattered and sang. Justin entered the open area of the lounge in a single step, would enter the bathroom in two. By his second step, the water was silenced. He froze, saw only the doorway. He appeared. Stiffened in the briefest expression of surprise. The gun raised. Anger parted lips in preparation of demands. The hammer fell. Blood spattered the white wall-tiles.
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<P>She lay in his bed. Naked, but clothed in his sheets. The newly emergent sun poured gold through fogged windows. The air was close with post-coital humidity. He stood over her sleeping form, their scent everywhere. His dead eyes hung loosely on her face. He remembered. Early mornings, waking her at home in person. Joining her in bed. Her smile. Her eyes. He felt a giddying energy break from within, the gun swayed at his side. Blurriness. Her cheek was soft and warm still to his hand. She smiled, uttered another man's name.
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<P>Floor tiles hard against his knees. Body racked by sobs that were neither audible nor otherwise visible. His flesh burned like ice. Throat parched and cracked spontaneously. Bile bubbled in his stomach, clawed his throat. Even in her sleep, she split him in two. Darkness grew heavy behind his eyes, became a veil over his mind. It had been her outward beauty that had drawn him to her, and it was only her outward beauty that remained of what he knew of her. On his feet again, he hung the silenced muzzle below her cheekbone. A final kiss to that face. She stirred.
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<P>He pulled the trigger twice, two shots ripping through the soft skin of her mouth. One blasted bone and blood from her jaw, both shattered teeth but spared the tongue. He fell back as she writhed, curdling screams ringing against the cramped walls. As the bloodied sheets fell away, Justin registered purple smudges on her arms and flank, a long scar across her breast. The imprint of a sovereign ring over her breast bone. 
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<P>Their eyes met in a brief moment of stillness. Terror, pain and confusion atop understanding. Her beauty was still manifest despite the disconnected jaw, the blood soaked face, the bruises and cuts. Justin raised the pistol again, his eyes closed. Concern for hatred was washed away by a crimson tide washing over an orange tile shore.