Written for dangerouslove's Valentine Contest, "A Chapel Murder on Valentine's" was inspired by the quote "Love starts as a feeling, but to continue is a choice. And I find myself choosing you, more and more every day," by Justin Wench. With a word count of 1,625, this was a new kind of story for me - the darker kind. I hope you'll enjoy it. Thank you for this prompt - this opportunity!

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Blood dribbled down my white kid-gloves, dripping into a puddle beside my boots. My eyes glazed, I lifted my fingers to lick the little pearls of scarlet. Jason's blood had a metallic tang to it, as if his veins had once been filled with salt, blood and the gun-polish he'd always carried around everywhere.

The grey alleyway seems to expand as he took his last breath. I glanced down at his limp body as his eyes flickered to mine - and faded. He had blue doll's eyes. I remembered how much I had always loved gazing into them, and for a moment, my throat felt choked.

As teenagers, we'd stride into parties, me hanging off his arm. Giddy with the inertia of our excitement, we'd drop into a bar. "One shot of Irish whiskey and a purple hooter for the lady," he'd wink at me, eyes black - black as the night; black as the coffee he drank every morning.

Same procedure - every time. Even when the love started to dissolve and his heart turned to black.

This morning, he'd worn the same broad sleeves as we tumbled into the nearest bar down one murky avenue. "Where are we?" I'd asked. The excitement had long gone, replaced with murky dread.

"Some main street," Jason murmured. "I know the way. Trust me, love."

My heart would've melted if I could've believed a single word he said. His hands tugged at mine roughly, pulling me further. "I've chosen you over and over," I hissed, and this time I didn't try to hide what I thought; didn't know whose eyes gleamed blackest. The bar's doorway passed over us - a thin wooden beam. Inside, the lights glowed dimly like drowning stars. "You could at least make an effort."

"I love you, Jen - really do," he slurred, and I tugged at his greasy fingers. He pulled up short, then raised thick eyebrows. I'd painted them once in a secluded bathroom with a black pencil liner. The mirror had been murky, wonky, and we'd laughed at our distorted reflections. I blinked as my eyes latched back onto Jason's stout form.

I followed in the tracks of his lumbering gait, my eyes drilling into his nape. "My Dad just died. I feel like I'm drowning - and all you want is another whiskey, another laugh," I seethed. "Have you no compassion?"

"I'm a grown man. Emotions don't mean anything to me."

"You're disgusting." I couldn't stop myself from going further, "Every day, I've chosen you - when you needed me, when I told you not to do something, and you did it anyway. I've been tortured by love - forced myself into vulnerability, overcome fear!" I wasn't done, but Jason's chuckle brought me up short.

"Much good it did you," he laughed, and he sat himself down on a bar stool, his shoulders shaking with mirth.

Black teared at every corner of my chest. I heard Dad's voice - Dad's lost, dead voice, whispering to keep calm and carry on. He'd always told me to trust my instinct. But I'd thought Jason was right, and I'd been playing his game for too long. "Do you even know what day it is?" I whispered. "Valentine's."

"Another precious saint." Jason laughed even harder. My fingers closed around the glass of purple hooter he'd ordered for me. While he took a slog of his whiskey, I burned. Before I could stop myself, my drink had spilled out of my cup in a whirlwind of pink juice, vodka and ice cubes. They slapped against Jason's lapel in a burst of alcoholic scent. He gulped - and his laughter grew thunderous. Yet no-one looked in our direction.

My breath hissed between my teeth as I pulled Jason to his feet. "I've been waiting on you long enough," I muttered, more to myself than to anyone else.

Red swam before my eyes. A waiter shouted, "Hey, you haven't paid!" but I was too far gone to care. To hell with cash. To hell.

My feet took me into the nearest alleyway. I paused in front of a small chapel. In its wooden archway, I pushed Jason off me - away, against a wall of grey stone. "Are you ever going to care for me? Fulfil the promise you made me years ago?"

"Which promise?"

The red spots cleared from my sight. I saw only a lumberjack, too dumb to remember how much he'd once cared - how we'd danced on the beach; how he'd played my heartstrings with his sweet and thoughtful gaze. "We'll live together," he'd said, painting a scene before me, his fragile doll. "You'll have everything you need, and when we're retired, we'll take naps together under blue skies."

"And I'll be a good wife to you."

"Of course." He'd grinned, a savvy man with an honest heart. Yet, even now - six years later - he hadn't proposed. How he'd changed with every visit to the local bars - with every new flirt to the young nineteen-year-olds. They always loved his attention.

Now, I contemplated the man in front of me, his wide-pupiled gaze devoid of love, of care. With one swift movement, I drew a pocket knife out of my coat. Its blade shone in the dim moonlight, the edges glinting. When he recognised the danger, it was too late. I sliced a clean line across his wrist. The blood welled up, faster and faster, as he slumped. His skin blanched. His mouth opened in a croak of a scream. But I just felt numb. For a second, I watched. I tasted the blood on my fingers - and then I left him at the chapel's entrance.

My feet pounded as I sprinted away and deposited the gloves into the nearest dustbin. There they sank into the rank leftovers of half-eaten hamburgers and were burnt by the butts of smouldering cigarettes. My head began to reel with what I'd done. I collapsed by a gutter, and my hands rubbed against each other in frantic circles.

Death. It was all around me - in Dad, in Jason. How could I ever escape? I glanced over my shoulder, but no alarm had sounded yet. Jason hadn't been found. I wheezed; calmed down; listened to my own shaky breathing. Dead.

Finally, I pushed myself back onto my feet. Beyond this day, I would be free. Jason no longer taunted me; no longer existed to make bad his promise - to mock my judgement. I would never again wake up to the howl of the dog, his back newly raw from the hit of Jason's whip. I would never wake up every day, trying to remember the man I'd loved. He was gone, and I'd long said goodbye.

Dad's voice whispered in my head, How could you kill him? Where did your inner peace go? Where's my Jenny?

My breath shuddered and I bent over, my stomach hurting as much as if I'd taken a bullet wound. There was no future in the horizon - no future beyond murder. Jason had taken everything from me - like a magpie that steals a shiny cog out of a clock-in-progress. The clock would never function again - I would never function again.

The ghosts of Jason's hands alit on my hips, and I fell back into our old memories. I remembered the way we'd danced around campfires with friends, and I wanted to run back to his corpse, take it all back. No going back. Death is final.

Above, the sky screamed with a clap of thunder as I took the knife back up from where it had fallen - on the cobbled road beside me. Before the blade came down, I floated back to the April of five years ago. On a blanket outside in the garden, Jason and I had been like Jasmine and Aladdin, staring off into a new world – the world of love. Pink tainted the budding daises. Jason picked one up and I felt him thread its stem into my canopy of wild hair. I braced myself to kiss him on the lips, softly, gently. His right hand moved to cup the back of my head. Smiling a lazy smile, he whispered against my lips, "Thank you."

"For?" I teased.

"For trying to overcome your fear. For kissing me in front of your parents and holding my hand in public - even though it's hard. My strong little woman."

"Yours truly," I'd winked before settling my head into the crook of his neck. It was only years later I'd insist he brought me with him to his new nightly haunts – his alcoholic escapades. And again, a few years before I would sit beside this ditch, listening to the rain water sloshing inside the underground pipes.

Now, the red army knife felt smooth beneath my fingers. I smelt metal and sweat – not the odour I'd have expected to smell in my last minutes of life. For the last time, I lifted my eyes to the stars. They peeked at me from behind bunny clouds, bleak-faced, as I whispered, "I never wanted to kill. Please forgive me."

Tears, salt-crusted, gushed down my cheeks. I tasted their salty tang as they slipped over my lips. Beautiful, plump lips, Jason had called them.

And with that thought in mind, I drew the knife's blade across my own wrist, watching as the blood welled up and my life slipped away. My anger was gone. Soon, the memory of black, torture-filled years would be gone, too. There would be no fear - no hurt - in oblivion. And yet it was a stupid way to go – to waste the gift my parents had given me. I wondered how Mum would cry when she'd find out, and then I was gone.