Forty-Seven Seconds

When he heard me cry out, the gunman started his stopwatch before opening the door to our room.  
 
At the instant of the flash, my wife of seventeen years lunged forward slightly. The only sound from her was a short whimpered cry of surprise, not of pain. It was barely audible with the gunshot still ringing in my ears.  
 
I felt her fingers going limp and held tightly as a second flash filled the room. I was looking up at her and saw the violent jolt in her face before she fell limp on top of me. A small puff of smoke hung in the air where she had been.  
 
I hadn’t prepared for the biting smell of it. Air that had carried the familiar smell of her perfume was suddenly filled with the industrial stench of gunpowder and the hardness of steel and oil.  
 
I was still anchored to her. Instinct directed me to press in again and again mirroring the involuntary ejaculation that continued even after she folded limp over me.  
 
I’d never felt this way with any woman before. Her surrender was so complete that I couldn’t stop taking from what remained of her. In the lighted room, I looked down to see her face against my chest.  Her eyes were open but focused on nothing.  
 
My gunman stared down at us with what almost looked like compassion in his face. He waited silently until I stopped thrusting into my wife's body. I stayed inside of her not wanting to feel the emptiness of pulling out.  I could hear the echo of her whisper just minutes before. Now, the place where she'd formed words was only a vacant shell. I looked down at her face and said. “I wish it would never end."

But it had ended. It had all ended in those moments. I pulled out of my wife's lifeless body and felt cool air against my firm, wet nakedness.

“Are you sure?” he asked with his gun centered on my upper arm.  
 
“No,” I said, suddenly gripped with fear and regret. “Leave now. I'll deal with what I've done.”  
 
As the gunman landed in the busy street below, he pulled his phone paused his stopwatch. Blending into  a crowded street parade, his head spun with how to spend the $30,000 he’d made for forty-seven seconds of work.