The Critical Soul

She called him at midnight again, screaming that he had killed her soul, again he hung up. How dare he trash her novel, it was her soul she put into it, and he killed it with the stroke of a pen. Twice she had seriously thought of shooting him from the church bell tower where she sat everynight with her sniper rifle. She thought to use a red lazer scope to give him a moment of panic, to know how she felt when she saw his words, but the more she came to hate him the more she just wanted his life to be over. Tonight she didn’t take the shot, she leaned back, took her finger off of the trigger, and lit up her cigarello. Maybe her nightly 3am call to him would give her some relief, maybe he would agree that he killed her soul, if he would just say he did, she would end the phone calls. Those four words would change her life forever, it would mean that at some point in her fucked up life she did have a soul once, before the hatred and the pain and the disappointment crept in.
She looks at her watch even though the church added a clock to the tower, she could hear every movement of the minute hand, tick tick tick, more moments of life lost to her forever. It is almost a quarter to 3, she leans forward, rifle in hand, a cell phone in the other, and waits for the next call.
.
.
He answers the 3a phone call as he always does, this time she isn’t screaming. “Don’t you see that you killed my soul, does it bother you at all?’ she pleads to him.
“Lady, you killed your own soul along time ago, I can see it in every word you write” he says in hushed tones.
“Thankyou” she says and hangs up the phone. She puts the sniper rifle down, and pulls the handgun from her pocket. He was right, about everything, every word he crucified her with was right. She puts the gun to her head and pulls the trigger.
(2010)