Beyond Good or Evil

Beyond Good and Evil

Erin Thorp

Author’s Notes: our homework
assignment in class was that we had to take something we had written for the
class and revise it, so I decided to take the nano
fiction ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ and turn it into a short fiction (500 words
instead of two-three sentences). Yes, I still plan on turning this idea into a
Gundam Wing fic.

First version:

          It was beyond
good or evil, he decided, he would do anything for him. He raked the silver
blade over his lover’s father’s throat, a man that called his son ‘baby’. In
the forest clearing, the two boys held hands and kissed sweetly.

Revised:

          It was beyond
good or evil, I would do anything for him. A crow cried in the distance and the
sun was setting, turning the grey clouds above us into a myriad of reds and
purples. There was no breeze, but though it was summer, the heat was bearable.
Sam liked the comfortable heat and though I preferred the cold, I was happy
that he was enjoying the slowly waning day.

          I had met Sam
in the third grade and we were now seniors in high school. Throughout the
entire time we had known each other, he had worn a sad, dark look on his pretty
face, even when we made love, but I could never help him until now. Looking
back to that summer day in the woods, I realized what true romance was. It was
not roses and chocolates in a hotel room with a heart shaped bed. Romance was
standing in weather that made you irritable, your allergies bothering you, to
watch your lover finish the final act of his closure on his childhood. They
would call it a crime in the newspaper three days later when they found the
body, but it wasn’t like that, really, I’m sure any boyfriend would do that for
the one he loved.

          His father had
called him ‘baby’. Not ‘son’ or ‘kiddo’ or anything that an appropriate father
should call his child, just ‘baby’ or the occasional ‘sweetie’ in a tone that
had always bothered me. I didn’t find out why he called him those things until
we were in the sixth grade and even then, I couldn’t help him. class=GramE>At least, not until now. It was fitting that in two months
we would be graduating and leaving behind everything from our childhoods,
everything but each other. It was fitting that on that day, he was burying
everything about his past that he hated about himself.

          I handed him
the folded barber’s razor, its ancient metal a gleaming,
beautiful silver in the fading light of day. The man tied to the tree in front
of us looked at his son with wide brown eyes as Sam flicked open the blade, a
soft, retrospective smile on his face. In that moment, the light lit up my
lover’s red hair into a glorious, fiery blaze of copper and gold and I was
almost overwhelmed for my love for him. I watched with pride as he raked the
blade over his father’s throat. I watched as blood, looking every bit as bright
and beautiful as his hair, dripped down the man’s pale neck and soaked his
white, ratty t-shirt. I wrapped my hand around Sam’s slightly smaller one and
kissed him. As I looked into his emerald eyes, for the first time, I saw the
child he was supposed to be smile. In the forest clearing, somewhere a gold
finch chirped and we held hands and kissed and reveled in the beginnings of a
new evening.