Word to the Masses: Til the End

A short love story by Leroy Elwood Mann

[She sat in the chair, her back against the wall, looking at him across the room.] The stress in his eyes made him look much older than his 35 years. His gaze was centered on her presence, and it was evidently clear what he was feeling for her.

The last time they spoke, he revealed that he had been in love with her since they were kids. She had no idea such an infatuation existed between them. They were just kids. How could he – or she for that matter – know the meaning of love at such a green stage in their lives? She had always liked him, but never considered any relations other than a platonic friendship.

Daleah Freeman shuffled in her seat. The discomforting thought of missing out on “Real Love” simply because she did not see herself as his type of girl, troubled her. She knew success in the highest occupational sense. But the success of having a true love and growing with a soul mate was far beyond her grasp. That is…until this very moment.

Her soul mate was mere feet away, yet his current circumstance made him untouchable. She felt a strong urge to stand up and proclaim the true love that had been hidden to her eyes. After all these years of a love lying dormant, she wanted every person in that room to know that this man – her man – was indeed the best man.

As the urge to love out loud grew within her being, she looked around the room. The looks of contempt, retribution, and hate on the faces surrounding her temporarily suppressed the urge to reveal what she could not admit to before this moment. Her stomach twisted in knots, “How can they feel this way about someone they don’t even know?” Her thoughts were so loud she subconsciously covered her mouth.

The man she loved was strapped to a gurney, standing upright. A microphone was pushed toward his mouth and without the least bit of hesitation; his heart spoke above the mutters of the execution witness room. “I love you, Lee-Lee.”

His dying words released the floodgates of her tears ducts. She felt a warm chill throughout her core as all eyes made the connection from his words to her seated presence. She could clearly see the ancestry of lynch mobs, grand dragons, and cross-bearing arsonists in their vitriolic glares. At this point, Lee-Lee was beyond being intimidated.

Before the man she loved was injected with the serum of inhumanity, she stood from her chair and spoke as if her words would kill the hate within the room, and shatter the transparent partition that separated her from the physicality of true love.

“An innocent man is about to die here! And, I love him to death!”

Is this the end?

100,

MannofStat