Chapter 2.
Any man would've been annoyed by her behavior back there, but Richard just couldn't bring himself to feel that way, because even if Bridget could be irritating at times, he still loved her more than anything, especially since they had grown up together and shared so many memories that he couldn't imagine his life without her by his side.
Sure, she was quite popular amongst other guys, and yes, he had burned a hole in his pocket several times just to meet her needs and keep her happy, but at the end of the day, she had still chosen him over all those other options, and that meant something to him, something he wasn't willing to throw away over a single argument about money.
Feeling a bit moody after their fight, Richard decided to play a quick game to clear his head and shake off the lingering frustration that had settled into his bones.
"Once I'm done, I'll head downtown to collect the reward money," he said to himself as he put on his headphones, then loaded up his favorite game.
"Ten million dollars... who would've thought." He chuckled softly, because even now, with the ticket still sitting on his desk and the winning numbers burned into his memory, he found the whole situation a bit surreal, like something out of a movie rather than his actual life.
*****
Some time later, Richard took off his headphones and stretched his arms above his head, feeling considerably better than he had before, all it took was one game to make him forget about his real-world problems.
He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and made sure he had his apartment key before heading toward the door, already planning the route to the lottery office in his head.
Knock knock.
The sound came just as he reached for the doorknob, making him pause with his hand hovering in the air.
"I wonder who it could be," Richard raised a brow, because he wasn't expecting anyone at the moment, and visitors were rare enough in his modest life that an unexpected knock felt almost like an event.
"Is it Bridget?" He wondered aloud, and at the thought of her, a smile came to his face despite their earlier argument.
'Glad she's calmed down,' he chuckled to himself as he approached the door, his mood lifting with each step.
'Maybe I was a bit hard on her back there, I mean it wouldn't hurt to buy her just one bag, right?'
Richard opened the door with a welcoming expression already forming on his face, and his deduction was right on the money, because standing outside in the dimly lit corridor was his loving girlfriend, the same woman he had been thinking about just moments ago.
And yet, his expression couldn't help but turn pale at the sight of her, because something was terribly wrong.
Cough!
Richard spat out a mouthful of blood as he stumbled backwards, his hand shooting out to grab the door frame and support himself while his other hand instinctively clutched at the sudden, burning pain in his abdomen, a pain caused by the blade that Bridget had driven into his flesh the moment he had opened the door.
' What the hell is going on?!'
"Bridget– Cough! Cough!" Richard tried to speak, tried to ask her what she was doing.
His mind struggled to understand why the woman he loved was standing there with a knife in her hand, but the words wouldn't come out properly because he threw up even more blood when she pulled out the blade with a sickening sound and stabbed him once more, right in the same spot.
"Just shut up and die already..." She spoke through gnashed teeth, her eyes darting left and right as if she was worried someone would come down the corridor and see what she was doing, her whole demeanor anxious and jittery in a way he had never seen before.
"The hell is wrong with you!" Richard pushed her away with whatever strength he had left, and even though he had been stabbed twice now, she still couldn't match his natural physical strength, stumbling backwards until she hit the corridor wall with a thud.
' I need to get out of here... I need to head to the hospital.' Richard felt himself growing weaker by the second, his rapid blood loss causing his vision to slowly turn hazy.
"Damnit! Why can't you just die already!" She screamed at him, her voice taking on a hysterical edge that made his blood run cold.
"Just die and let me have the ticket!"
' The ticket?! That's what all this was about?!'
Richard's heart, which had already been shattered by the first stab, now cracked into even smaller pieces at her words, because this wasn't about anything he had done or said, it was about the money, he couldn't believe she'd actually attacked him like this, over money.
"You love me don't you?" She asked, glaring at him angrily. "So why are you being so darn unreasonable!"
She stood back up with her expression creased into something ugly and unfamiliar, something he didn't recognize at all, and then lunged at him again, knocking the already weak and bleeding Richard back into his own apartment where he collapsed onto the floor.
"Die! Die! Die! You goddarned bastard!" Bridget didn't give him a single moment to breathe or recover, because she was on top of him, using the same blade to stab him over and over and over again, each thrust more desperate and frenzied than the last.
To Richard, each stab brought its own unique flash of pain, yet none of them could compare to the pain he currently felt in his heart, one that had nothing to do with his physical wounds but everything to do with the brutal realization that the love of his life, the one woman he cherished more than anything in this world, the person he had been willing to forgive just minutes ago, had resorted to doing this to him, all for the sake of money.
That same unbearable pain accompanied Richard as his vision began to fade.
His body grew colder and heavier, as the sounds of Bridget's screaming and stabbing grew more distant, and that pain stayed with him until he took his very last breath, and even then, even after his eyes had gone glassy and his heart had stopped beating, she continued to stab at his corpse, because ten million dollars had turned his loving girlfriend into something that was no longer human at all.