A lover’s quarrel, or something like that
* 001 *
I don’t know where things went wrong.
She told me that she loved me, she told me that I was hers, and she was mine, forever we said, until death, and now here we are.
I had always suspected that it was too good to be true, that it was all a façade, a cruel jest.
There was no way I, me, Romeo, could ever find my Juliet.
She was a fantasy, and I was too old for fairytales, yet there we were.
Those first years were perfection, nothing but pure magic.
Our love was far deeper than anything Shakespeare could’ve ever written, if it had been by his pen, many would’ve have declared it too perfect, too marvelous, utterly unrealistic, higher than even the bounds of fiction.
Yet it was. With her, my dear Juliet, nothing was impossible.
Yet, the critics were also right. No matter how fantastical, it remained… fantasy.
It was on a dinner date, my Juliet clad in red, lipstick and dress, that it struck me… why, why me?
Of all that she could’ve had, she chose me, me.
I knew myself too much, too much to understand that I didn’t deserve her, I didn’t deserve her love, nor this fantasy.
I was not the Romeo of old, he who would sacrifice himself in the name of his beloved.
He who would stand up to his family, stand up to his mortality, all in the name of love, never.
I was a coward, a fool, naïve and blind, the perfect dupe to take the bait.
And my dear Juliet, she was the hook…
I’d always known I didn’t deserve her, always knew our love was too good to be true, yet my knowledge was like water to a fish. The fish swims in it, yet it does not notice it.
I needed new eyes, an awakening that would suddenly render it alive, the fish suddenly noticing that it was swimming in a pond, headed for bait.
The awakening was a process, little hints dropped there and there. First it was another’s hair, then another’s stench. Expensive cologne draped upon Juliet’s body; love bites etched on her neck. My heart shuttered as I noticed it, her smile cracking it into a thousand pieces.
I didn’t say anything at first, smiling back, terrified to lose what I had, terrified to awaken from the dream, the fantasy.
Yet I knew the end was nigh.
I needed answers, who was he, this other? And why, why did she betray me?
But why wouldn’t she? I never deserved her in the first place, at least with this other, she wasn’t condemned with having to deal with me, and only me. At least with this other, she could escape, find a paradise from my paradise.
I was dragging her down, with this other, she had a lifeline, an escape from my depths.
Upon contemplation, I was ready to let her go, free her, from me and my horridness.
Yet I needed to see him, I needed to know who it was that promised to liberate her, who it was that declared to be her real Romeo.
So, I trialed her, tailing her car, watching from my window as she entered his house, clad in a beige trench coat, her lips beaming red.
I could’ve stayed in, let my imagination put the pieces together, maybe after they were done, I’d see his face, see him bid her farewell, eagerly awaiting her return.
Yet my state was manic, I didn’t deserve her, yet I couldn’t bear losing her. I may have been a defective product, yet she still made the deal, we made a promise, she chose to love me, how could she then discard me. It wasn’t fair, even if I was never a fair deal in the first place.
Two wrongs didn’t make a right, so I exited my car, the heavens draped black and grey, crying as rains splattered onto the earth. I was going to confront her, going to face up to her sin and the one whose arms she committed it in.
Yet as I stood in front of the door, ready to enter, I froze, my heart struck with dread, fear and cowardice. Who was I to confront her, what would this resolve. If I turned back now, maybe I could salvage it, salvage our love. I could keep on pretending that everything was okay, even if she was with another at least she’d return to me.
I couldn’t let her go, not yet… not ever.
So, she gave me no choice, the door suddenly opening, my dear Juliet suddenly staring at me, tears in her eyes, her lover, the other, behind her.
All on Valentine’s Day too…
* 002 *
Before a single word could be uttered, I turned back, running, sprinting and leaping from sight.
I ran and ran and ran until there was nowhere to run.
The night was in decline, the streets empty, and myself walking in circles as my eyes turned to heaven, the skyscrapers twirling in my teary lens.
How could she after all we had?
How could she not after all I put her through with my cowardice.
How could I, if only I’d kept quiet, I’d still have her.
Eventually I returned home, entering an empty house, her presence completely gone, the only trace of her left being a note.
“I’m sorry Romeo, you’ll never have to see me again. Love, Juliet.”
I stared at that letter for what felt like an eternity, days, weeks and months merging into one — that note forever embedded into my mind.
She was gone, and I’d never see her again.
I’d never kiss her again…
Stare at her again…
See that smile, smell that perfume, hear that laugh…
Hear those words…
Reply and tell her that I loved her too…
All of it, gone, forever.
All because of me.Because I was too weak to remain weak, if only I’d kept quiet like I’d always done, then I’d still be in paradise.
Now what was left? She was gone, probably with her lover, andI was alone. Was this what liberation felt like?
If so, I preferred the chains.
At least she was happy, I supposed. She was finally free, free from me, in paradise with him, the other.
That was until the other showed at my doorstep, Juliet nowhere to be seen.
Romeo and the other Romeo.
* 003 *
Here he was, the reaper of my joy, killer of my love, stealer of my sweet Juliet.
He stared at me, perfect —nothing like I could’ve ever be.
If I was another, I’d have fought him, bled and battled him until I’d bested him.
Yet I was me, a coward, so I said nothing.
Instead, it was he that was angry, he that bled vengeance and swore death —Juliet’s death.
“Juliet Must Die!” he declared.
Shocked, confused and frightened, he then laid out evidence to bring me to my senses and understand him.
Understand why Juliet had to die.
Photographs were laid out on my table, pictures of Juliet… Juliet in the arms of others.
There were so many, more than enough to form a pattern or serial.
“This is her game,” he said.
“She uses us, makes us fall in love with her, then, when we are no longer useful to her, she leaves!”
I stared, both surprised, yet also grateful and validated.
It wasn’t me; it was her; it was her all along. I was merely her prey, a footnote in an anthology of other lovers.
‘’She’s a monster a maneater Romeo, and you and I, we need to stop her.”
It was so liberating, vindicating even, to be absolved.
I hadn’t ruined anything, for there was nothing to ruin. She never loved me anyway; she was only using me.
“We need to kill her, Romeo!”
Using me… what was she using me for?
What value did I bring her? if anything I was using her, I was the bad deal.
“I know it sounds extreme, but Romeo, she’s the extreme one. She’s been using you, preying on your weaknesses, exploiting them, manipulating you, don’t you want justice?”
But I loved her, and she loved me.
“She never loved you, don’t be a fool, c’mon you’re stronger than this, smarter. Aren’t you? Are you a coward or something?”
No, I’m not a coward.
“Yes, you are!”
I’m not!
“Then you need to kill her Romeo — you need to kill Juliet! She’s manipulating you; she used you, using your weaknesses against you. Only after she’s dead will you be free.”
He was right. We’d all been spited, played and discarded. Now it was time for us, time for me, to give her a taste of her own medicine.
It was time for me to kill Juliet!
* 004 *
We searched for her everywhere, country after country, capital after capital from Paris, to Milan, New York to New Delhi.
Her web was international, her victims global.
Romeos of all shapes and sizes, even a few Juliets in the mix.
She was a black widow who used love as her weapon, killing many a heart.
But why, was she using these others?
Why did she use me, what could she possibly gain from me?
“There’s no sense to her, it’s just madness, she is madness Romeo!”
So, what was the method to her madness?
I cross examined the victims — searching for clues, our hunt reaching ever closer as she was merely a hair’s length away.
She was in our sightsand my sights bore new patterns from her serial romances.
Her victims were powerful stars, soldiers and spies.
They were political, their influence as global as her reach.
She was a mistress of kings, and yet, I barely passed as a peasant.
I was the anomaly, the black sheep.
Even this other Romeo, the one who guided me on this hunt — he too was a spy, that’s the only reason why we could keep track of her.
I hadn’t shared my findings with him, afraid of how he might react.He was so hellbent on one thing and one thing only.
‘’Juliet must die!”
He hunted her, like she’d hunted him. Like she’d hunted all of us.
Yet I remained perplexed — all her victims promised her something, they gave her leverage and power.
Yet me, what did I give her?
“It doesn’t matter, all that matters is she betrayed you Romeo, don’t lose sight of the mission, Juliet must die!”
And so, Juliet had to die.
We eventually found her in a familiar place.
The place where all the magic happened, the place where I first fell in love with her, the café where we first met ordering matching drinks, our favorite drinks.
The drinks of love we’d joked, our love portion.
We had been sentimental about it — visiting the café every anniversary, ordering the same drink.
We visited every Valentine’s Day too.
The day that I’d discovered her treachery, we’d just had dinner at our café. It was there, at that dinner, she clad red, lips and dress, that I accepted that she was with another.
We’d returned home from that café, rested together and in the dead of night on the celebration day of our love she slipped out, headed for the other Romeo.
Yet I was right behind her, following her then.
Just as I had followed her now, as she was back at that same place — our place.
The café where we first met.
She was seated outside, under the night sky, the table had been our table, we’d always cross our fingers and hope it remained empty, reserved for us.
Each and every time, we always found it.
Except for that last dinner, a last supper if you will. That was the first omen I suppose.
This time, she was sitting at our table, dining alone, and the other Romeo gave me a gun, silenced.
‘’Its time, Juliet must die, and you have to kill her!”
* 005 *
From the distance I was at, I could’ve killed her if I’d pulled the trigger.
The other Romeo didn’t care how it went. As long as I did it, that’s all that mattered.
Instead of using the gun, I chose to stay true to tradition, honoring Shakespeare himself. I knew I wouldn’t be able to kill her if I had to stare her down, gun in hand. I put in an order, an order for our favorite drink, our love portions.
With some sleight of hand from the other Romeo, I managed to spike the drink right before the waiter delivered it to Juliet’s table. When she took a sip, she would ingest the vengeance of my love, poison!
The waiter served her the love portion, courtesy of her former lover, poison flowing as she gulped it down, succumbing to my trigger as it laced her body, waiting to suddenly strike at once, killing her instantly.
But there was still some time before ingestion and elimination.
The weight of her death not having hit as I contemplated the fact that I had killed her or was about to. I wondered why the other Romeo hadn’t been the one to end her, dodging me of the responsibility.
I’d assumed the other Romeo just didn’t want his hands dirty, yet he believed I deserved the pleasure.
“I’m a spy you see, I’ve killed many foes before, for king and country! If I was to kill her, she’d just be another drop in a red sea of evil. You, however, Romeo, you are innocent, and she preyed on you regardless. If you kill her, it means more than if I did. The first kill, that first blood, its sacred, and your vengeance Romeo, our vengeance is even more righteous!”
What he said was madness, twisted logic that frightened me, but I was in too deep and there was no turning back now.
I’d become chained to the pursuit of vengeance, and it could only end in Juliet’s death.
She had betrayed me after all, I had been slighted. Was I not merely returning the blow?
Upon investigating Juliet’s pattern, I’d also realized another modus operandi.
She’d killed all her victims.
Each and every other Romeo had been slain by his Juliet, my Juliet.
Yet therein lies the problem.
Why had I been spared, why had she not slain me too?
What of this other Romeo? He was still standing too.
I didn’t ask too many questions, judging by his obsessive zeal for her death and his twisted ramblings about the logic of killing. My cowardice protected me from making myself an enemy of his. That would’ve been a bet I was sure to lose.
Like I should’ve done then, I kept quiet.
My cowardice had also allowed me to land Juliet the killing blow.
I still wanted answers,so even though she was about to die, I demanded I get a final word with her before the poison took effect.
“Closure doesn’t exist, but after all your service, and all she’s done to you, to us, I’ll let you give her her final rites. It’s the least I can do.”
* 006 *
I then approached Juliet, the gun I’d been given sheathed and silenced just in case she wanted to go out with a fight.
The other Romeo trialed me too, seating on a table a few breaths away from where Juliet sat as she gave him her back. He sat there ready to watch it all collapse and revel in Juliet’s death.
I walked up to her, suddenly sitting across from her at our table as she stared at me, allowing me to join her —my heart pounding out of my chest.
The love portion was still warm, simmering, yet she had already taken a sip and that was more than enough.
We hadn’t seen each other for almost a year, no words being uttered.
So much to say, yet my tongue remained bitten.
Anticipating doom.
I couldn’t believe she was here, seated right across from me all this time. Here she was again.
I thought I’dlost her forever.
Then I remembered, just like before that I was now about to lose her again.
This time, I was the one who’d killed her.
Juliet, after all needed to die, Juliet was going to die, Juliet was already dead, it was only a matter of time now.
What was it that she could say to this, after all she’d done?“I’m sorry Romeo, I promised you that you’d never see me again.”
“I’m sorry Romeo, truly, I love you!”
Love me?
If you loved me, how could you abandon me, how could you betray me, how could you hurt me like this!
“It was never supposed to go this way, I’m so sorry, Romeo. The truth is, I was not honest with you. I should’ve told you the truth, but I could do it. I couldn’t no matter how desperately I wanted to – ‘’
Of course she couldn’t. All those lovers, all those murders — who were you even?
“I’m a spy Romeo, an assassin. I could’ve never told you, if I did that, I’d have to kill you. It’s the ultimatum of my service; all must be kept in the shadows. Loving you was already a breach in my creed, but I loved you too much – ‘’
Loved me too much? She betrayed me, used me.
“This is why I couldn’t tell you. You were never my target Romeo, you were my love, the love of my life. Everyone else, the other lovers, they were nothing, assignments, jobs, targets on a list that I had to eliminate.The closest way to my enemy was through his heart.”
Yet I wasn’t her enemy. That’s why I was still alive, why I was the anomaly.
“I couldn’t tell you the truth, not only because I’d be putting your life at risk, but also – also because I didn’t want you to see me, see me in that way. I am not my work Romeo; I’m more than just an assassin. I do this not because I want to, but because I must. I’m a slave, an orphan that was kidnapped and raised by teachers of death. They made me this way and gave me no way out – no way out except through the bullet!”
This is why she killed all those others…
“My teachers promised me freedom if I served them well enough, yet if I betrayed them, they’d rid of me through my own bullets. I had to kill for freedom or be killed and finally be eternally freed. That’s why I did it, why I became their Black Widow, their Maneater and their assassin spy.”
But what of me, what did she gain from me…
“You were my love, Romeo. You were the light in the darkness of my life andwith you I got to love and be loved.”
No. I didn’t deserve her. I was a coward and a fool.
“Don’t mistake your innocence for cowardice, it’s that innocence, that naïve wonder that made me fall in love with you Romeo. You’re everything that I wasn’t , everything that my life wasn’t. I loved you, not because I needed to in pursuit of some other goal, but because I wanted to. You were the goal!”
I couldn’t believe her. I didn’t deserve her, nor her love. She had still betrayed me…
“I did, and there’s nothing I can do about it, I can’t take it back, I can’t rewrite the past. But what I can do is try and make tomorrow right. I love you Romeo, and I want to be with you, that’s why I came here, to our spot, where we first met.”
She’d learned of myself and the other Romeo’s quest against her. Our hunt, noticing we were fast on her trail.
“The truth is, I never left you Romeo. I was with you, but from a distance. After you found out about my other life, I needed to get away from you. I couldn’t let my teachers know that my cover had been blown. Tolerating my love with you was already vexing, yet if they found out you knew who I was, they’d want your head — and they’d want me to pull the trigger. This is their logic. Sick and twisted, death is sacred with them.The one who pulls the trigger is a matter of great importance. I couldn’t do it. I would never do it, so I ran away from you to protect you. But I never left you and watched you from afar.”
I started to think about others that saw death in this twisted way. Others cared about who pulled the trigger — the other Romeo.
“The man you saw me with, is also a student of my teachers. An assassin spy. He took a liking to me, tried to use me for his own gain. He believed himself far stronger and greater than you, my love with you was an insult to him for he wanted me all to himself. It was him that refused me to be with you, that’s why you caught me with him, I thought if I could give him what he wanted, he could let me have what I wanted, you.”
But she left him.“Once you found out, I thought I’d lost you. Not only was I afraid for your death, but I also thought you would never want me again, never forgive me. I wouldn’t blame you; I wouldn’t want myself either. I was a coward, I should’ve told you the truth, walked away from all this, but I was too weak, too afraid, afraid to lose you, lose you to them, my teachers and their pet.”
I was about to lose her though, for he wanted me to kill her. I’d already killed her and it was only a matter of time now.
“After I left you, this pet thought he could now have me, though you had to find out eventually, I’m certain he tried to speed up this discovery trying to sabotage my love with you by revealing to you the ugly nature of my work. I don’t deserve your sympathy Romeo, but I don’t deserve his wrath either, he’s angry with me because I don’t want him. Even after I’d left you, he now thought he had me, but he forgot that you were his leverage, without you I had nothing – thus I now had nothing to lose. That’s why his using you against me, he knows you’re all I have, yet if he can’t have me, no one can, including you.”
He had now made me kill her so no one could have her just like he’d intended…
“He is sadistic, they all are, and I’ve had enough of their lunacy. I want out, Romeo. I want out with you —I love you!”
It was at that moment that the poison took effect, her body jolting into a sudden freeze as her eyes looked upon mine — shattering like breaking glass. Immediately the poison released as she fell on her face kissing the table, the drink spilling as our love portion wet the tablecloth — laced with poison.
Julietwas dead.
* 007 *
The café looked on in confusion as waiters attended to her lifeless body, her blood still warm. While mania spread, I remained seated, shocked andfrozen as my eyes locked in on the other Romeo. He had sat behind Juliet and when she fell face first, she gave way to his sight as I stared him down — a devilish grin slipping across his face.
He’d used me, manipulated me, turning my weakness,cowardice and heartbreak into his weapon. Aweapon he now used against me.
He made me kill my love, my one and only love.
I almost had her — it was almost perfect — and he took it from me. Took her from me.
No, I had nothing, there was nothing left to live for and he looked at me — laughing and reveling in my suffering.
He’d won. She was dead and I was alone. He was the last man standing, the best man.
All that was left now was for me to surrender.
Juliet’s death would be pinned on me. It would be a murder of passion and I’d do the time — likely my whole life, while the other Romeo walked free, destroying more lives.
All I had to do was accept it, take it, keep quiet and be a coward like I’d always been. I always took flight, always.
Yet with Juliet gone, I was now going to fight.
So, I fought.
Armed with the gun he’d given me, I reached into my jacket, pulling it out, only for him to swiftly respond — blasting his own gun as a procession of rounds tore into my chest and left me dead. My face fell onto the dinner table right next to Juliet’s.
I hadn’t even gotten a shot off, the gun slipping from my hands as I slowly drifted away.
In my final breaths, the love portion slipped into my mouth — its deathly delight sinking into my tongue as I tasted my own poison.
I could hear the sirens ring, footsteps stomping as screams and clattering tables and chairs screeched.
My face then gave a smile as I thought to myself how blessed I was to receive such a death. I’d finally redeemed myself, dying on my feet all in the name of love.
The story was complete, and I’d done Shakespeare proud — dying with my love.
Romeo and Juliet, slain together all in the name of love.
All on a Valentine’s Day too.
FIN
This story was originally published in Volume 24, Issue 6 on February 6, 2025
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