I dreamed I was in love with a murderer.

We'd been in love for a while, not having slept together due to my wanting to wait until marriage, but having both recently told the other that we loved them.

I came to his house one day to find a woman murdered on his kitchen floor, blood pooling around her and him staring down at her solemnly, at least until I walked in. I must have had a key. In any case, he was shocked to see me, to say the least.

"It's not what it looks like," he said.

I hesitated. "....It looks like you killed the woman currently lying in a heap on your floor."

He paused, glanced down. Put his hand - splattered with blood - to his forehead. "Okay. So maybe it is what it looks like."

I didn't have much time to react to that fact. In an instant we were both on the ground, on the far side of the kitchen from the dead woman, having just been shoved there by two tall, beautiful, sexy women, who had burst through the door and thrust guns in our faces.

They greeted him like they knew him - said his name even (though I doubt in the dream it was of much importance, as I can't even remember it now) - and one, the blond one, dressed in a black suit and high heels, talked to us, while the other, the brunette, dressed similarly, rushed outside only to return moments later with a large tarp, which she began wrapping the deceased in.

The blond was talking to me, most specifically. Asking me if I actually knew what my boyfriend did while I wasn't around. I shook my head no. She laughed, a nasty, guttural sound, and proceeded to inform me that my boyfriend did, in fact, kill people. That it was something they - meaning she and the other woman - made him do for them quite frequently, and in the off chance that he failed to murder one of their targets, well... he'd lose another loved one. He'd already lost two, shortly after they approached him with the impossible-to-escape position, and in the end he felt he had no choice and had resorted to the killing of what he could only hope were NOT innocent people. Now that was my mind filling in blanks, of course. She told me that he lost loved ones if he didn't do as he was told, and had already lost two, but it was my hopes that filled the gaps, my hopes that held out a small glimmer of faith that he only did it because he thought he had no other choice and that he endured with the assumption that they were not innocent people.

I glanced over at him, and saw only supreme fear on his face.

"In any case," she continued, "we're finally done with you." She was speaking to him now. She shifted the gun that had been previously pointed at the ground to a direct spot facing his head.

"No!" I shouted, and I threw myself in front of him. He tried to shove me away, speechless. She grew a bewildered smirk. "Don't," I pleaded, tears threatening to fall from my eyes.

"Fine," she shrugged, lowering the gun. "I won't kill him. But on one condition."

"Name it," I murmured, glaring into her empty, soulless eyes.

She laughed. "Feisty!" she giggled. Her friend had since disappeared, having pulled the rather bulky tarp out the door, and returned to clean up the blood. Now though, she was gone, who knows where? "Right. Well. My one condition. I won't kill him," here she grinned devilishly, "but you'll die in his place. And he'll do it."

I glanced at him, his eyes wide with fear and agony. "No."  He said firmly.

She crouched down, perched on her ankles. "Listen, buddy. She knows too much. You can live - you've kept our secret this long, anyway - but she's gotta go. We can't have her around trying to call the cops or the like. Look, we'll leave you alone to do it," she said, reaching over to grab the bloody scalpel he'd dropped when I walked in, and prancing over to the sink to rinse it off, and finally handing it to him. "But if we find out that you didn't go through with it, that's it. Both of you, and your family - consider them all dead. If, however, you do go through with it, we never want to hear from you again. Disappear, if you have to. But if I ever see your ugly face" (personally I found his face quite attractive) "again, I'll kill you with my own two hands. Capiche?"

He glanced at me, looked back at her... and nodded. That's when the tears in my eyes actually began to fall, if slowly.

She grinned and nodded briefly, then turned and left.

His kitchen looked like I'd seen it before, spotless and neat, as if nothing here that I'd just seen had even happened. Could I have imagined it all? But no, there he was, holding that scalpel, staring at me with tears in his eyes.

I don't know what made me do it. Call it impulse, insanity... what you will. But I lay back on the cold, hateful kitchen floor and yanked my shirt up to expose my stomach. "Do it," I said. "You've done it before, just do it. All your problems will be over." Though I hoped he wouldn't, I knew it was true. All he had to do was kill me and his life could go back to normal, as normal as it could be after such an occurrence as this.

His tears were heavy as they fell on my stomach, which he was leaning over, scalpel poised above my abdomen in his clenched fist. He hesitated, knowing what he should do and what he shouldn't. He pulled the scalpel down and gently traced a circle around my belly button. "I can't," he sobbed.

"You have to," I said. What was I doing? Giving away my life willingly for a man I thought I loved, who turns out is a murderer? Who was I in this moment? Not myself, to say the least. But there I was, saying those words, practically begging him to stab me.

"I can't." he said more firmly, tossing to scalpel to the floor, where it slid under the refrigerator. "Not because I physically can't. I've done it before, ashamed as I am to admit." Here I let out a small sob. He seemed to tense up, and placed his hand on my still exposed stomach. He relaxed a little, with the warm comfort of my skin against the sweaty palm of his hand. "No, I can't because... because there is no way imaginable... that I could live without you."

A full burst of tears flew out of my eyes, sobs ripping through my chest like fireworks. "No, please don't cry," he said. "I don't want to hurt you. I've never wanted to hurt you. I love you, so much. And I can't imagine another day without you. If you don't love me anymore, I understand. Completely, I do. And I'll find a way to make it look like I killed you but you can walk out of this house very much alive." My sobbing faded, and the tears, while still falling, were much less heavy.

"But if," he continued, a single tear slipping its way past his lashes and down to his nose. "If there's any chance that you still love me... stay. Don't leave. Be here with me. Know me for who I am - a murderer. But also know that it's over. I don't have to do it anymore. Stay here with me and be happy for the future." He had also been sprawled on the floor like me, that having given him better access to my stomach, but he had curled his legs up against me and was now cupping my face with his hand.

I looked into his eyes. I couldn't look away, how could I look away from the pure emotion there? Nothing like the eyes of that awful woman, her eyes had been empty, completely vacant of all emotion... but his eyes, which I had grown to love in the past months... his eyes seemed to display every emotion I could even imagine. But one thing was for sure, this man was in love with me.

I took a deep breath. "I hate you for what you did to those people," I spat. Another tear escaped his eye, and he removed his hand from my face. And I knew when I realized I didn't want him to that I was still madly in love with this man. "But," I said, placing my own hands on his neck, "I'm in love with you for who you are when you're with me." Then he kissed me, and I let him.

I pulled him away from me. "But I swear, if you ever kill another human being in your life, we're through." He actually laughed a little. "I'm not kidding. Don't even think about it. Not even animals."

He stood up, lifting me up with him, and I draped my arms around his neck. "No problem," he smiled, so happy I could see it in his eyes, feel it in his touch, as he led me to the bedroom.