Eliora

Jan Reißer trudged up the stairs to his apartment with his head bowed. He knew that Charlotte would handle the news that Franz hadn't just rejected but had practically thrown him out badly. She'd cuss him out and wiggle her finger at him, telling him: "I told you so." And if Franz reported them, they'd be done for. Just a poor bunch of bastards auf'm Schafott (in the scaffold).

He stuck his key in the door, but it popped open without him having to unlock it. He swung it open-

And stopped in his tracks.

The door moved in slow motion; it smashed into the side of Charlotte's head with a loud crack, fracturing her skull.

Charlotte lay on the ground near the door. Her expression was slack, her neck awkwardly angled and on her face a painting of blood and ashes. Her nude body was sprawled out on the floor, bruised and slightly stiff. He could see the small pool of menstrual blood oozing from between her legs.

Reißer couldn't bring himself to yank the door back because if he did, he'd have to see the hole he'd just punctured into his wife's corpse, but if he didn't, any passerby climbing the stairs to their apartments would witness the scene.

He took a step back and then two steps forward. Without looking down at her, he gently pulled at the door, which came free with a sickening squelch. Then he softly shut it behind him.

The second the key turned in the lock and Jan Reißer could be sure he would remain undisturbed; he fell to his knees in front of his wife's dead body. "Oh Eliora!" My little Lotte," he felt as if his cheeks were wet and crawling with tears, but—at least for the moment, they remained dry. "What happened to you?" He whispered quietly. He picked her arm up—seeking comfort in holding her pale hand, but her cold and stiff fingers felt foreign to him. He dropped her hand as if burned, only to pick it up again. "Eliora." He wailed. He repeated her name over and over and over again. He didn't touch any part of her except for her hand. He could see how funnily her elbow was bent, and he couldn't bear to see the rest of her body follow in such crude angles.

Jan Reißer said her name one hundred and two times as he stared at her body and clutched her hand to his chest.

"My beautiful wife," he groaned. "My little Eliora." He finally let go of her hand and moved to her face. He traced the curve of her nose and her cheekbones. His fingertips lingered on her brow. The tears started to fall, and finally, his vision blurred. The comfort he'd expected from the way his body automatically shielded him from viewing her dead body never came. Instead, he felt a wave of guilt crush him. He frantically started to wipe his eyes with the back of his hands, desperately trying to clear his vision from the tears that wouldn't stop flowing.

Eventually, he sagged together on the floor. He lay sprawled out in front of her. His forehead rested against hers. The blood from the wound he'd inflicted when he'd knocked the door open settled in his hair.

"Eliora..."

The pain that clawed at his lungs and squeezed his heart knocked the breath from his body. He felt himself losing touch with reality. His arms tingled, and his face felt numb. He couldn't move. His breathing became shallower with every passing breath. His heart and lungs and the beast of sorrow inside his chest refused to supply his brain with enough oxygen. In a matter of minutes, his vision went black. The last sounds he heard before fainting were his ragged breaths and then the sound of Eliora's hand falling to the floor as he lost his grip.

Jan Reißer would spend the next sixteen hours on the floor next to his wife's corpse. Unmoving, constantly shifting in and out of consciousness.: his body refusing to leave the state of shock he'd been trapped in since opening the door to their home.