The bride.

The light glinted off the polished chrome gun barrel belying its deadly nature. It almost looked beautiful, she thought, however its deadly design shattered any such fanciful notions in a hurry. As did the bleeding and crying man lying prone at her feet. She couldn't help but wonder on the rarity of such moments, especially in her life. Moments when it was a woman who was in complete control and it was a man who lay broken and bloodied, begging for an ounce of mercy that did not exist. Things had been so different thirty six hours ago she thought, everything seemed so alive and all things seemed possible. Now she felt only death and rage, anger and strangely enough, calm.

He was blubbering something about never doing it again. His mouth was writing cheques she knew his ass couldn't cover but that didn't seem to matter to him. Strange how everything else just vanished in the blink of an eye, when one's life might end in a blink. Of course such tenuous links between life and death always existed, but now it was real for him. The knowledge of this fact was the entirety of his reality to the exclusion of everything else. As his soiled pants could well atest. His blubbering and squealling pleas were like the buzz of some annoying insect in her ears. She wanted so badly to swat that bug, to end that infernal buzzing once and for all.

Strange that it should all end here, she thought as off in the distance cars could be heard making their way to the city. But here they were all alone, no one to bother them, no one to make a last ditch effort to save the miserable creature before her. She looked past the shimmering sands to the distant city, the city where they were to be married. She was struck by the realization that at that very moment she was to be walking down the aisle. His cries for mercy brought her back to the task at hand. The weight of the gun once again became a real thing in her hand. Her arm suddenly felt strained, her mind tired, her whole body exhausted. I just want to sleep she said to herself, just for a moment. Her eyes began to tear, her body to tremble, her hand began to shake.

"NO!" She screamed into the desert air. All at once the crushing weight of the past days events bared down upon her turning her trembling weakness into trembling rage, her tears of sorrow into tears of fierce resolve. All at once everything became still, everything crystalized into a moment of pure focus and clarity. Gone were the doubts, gone was the buzzing in her ears. It was all replaced with the sound of rushing blood boiling with rage, vengeance and murderous intent. She could still hear the echoes of her anguished scream fading into the distance when she drowned them out with the solitary blast from her gun. Everything remained still for what seemed like an eternity as she stared down at the twisted and ragged mess that used to be a human head. Then as suddenly as the moment came it left and all she thought about was how sweet sleep would be as her body collapsed to the ground.