Manfred and Carlotta's Coastal Romance

The man stood there. His eyes were red and his hands were shaking, but he still stood there, in the center of the marketplace. People around him were staring at him and then looking away, afraid to get too close to a madman.

The sun was bright and hot, a dry heat that burned through your skin, but the man didn’t even notice. He felt numb, as if he had been drugged. As if his body was just running on autopilot while his mind was elsewhere, somewhere else. He heard a word in the corner of his mind but it was just a sound without meaning and he pushed it aside like an unwanted thought.

“Manfred?” said a voice behind him. It was Carlotta, his wife. He could feel her at his back but she couldn’t see his face. It was still buried in his hands as he trembled. Suddenly he felt her warm hand softly touch his shoulder and she leaned forward so her face was inches from his ear. “Manfred? What happened?”

*What happened?* Manfred thought to himself, *what do you think happened?* Immediately another voice broke through the fog of confusion and grief in his mind: *No! Don't think about that! You can't think about that! Not here! Not with all these people around!* The thought was so strong that Manfred physically recoiled from it. It had such force that he almost fell backwards onto the ground before Carlotta held him up.

Carlotta looked into Manfred's face with concern and confusion, "What is it?" she asked again, this time more urgently, "what's wrong?" As she asked this her gaze moved down to Manfred's hands which were still covering his face and she saw the dark stain on them that had spread out from beneath them onto the ground below him.

A moment passed as Carlotta stared at Manfred standing there covered in blood with his head bowed in shame before she suddenly realized what it meant: "Oh no!" she exclaimed as she took a step back and then saw her own hands covered in blood as well when she looked down at them, "Oh no no no no no no..." She started to cry silently as her head began to spin and then suddenly everything went black...

Carlotta awoke with a start several minutes later with Manfred grasping desperately at her shoulder trying to keep her from falling off their bed where she lay unconscious next to him. He quickly sat up next to her propping her head up on one arm while stroking her hair with the other. "Carlotta," he whispered urgently into her ear, "please wake up!" When she finally opened her eyes they both breathed sighs of relief before Carlotta suddenly remembered everything that had just happened: "Manfred!" She exclaimed suddenly sitting bolt upright staring mournfully at him as tears began rolling down her cheeks, "oh god Manfred I'm so sorry I don't know what happened I-" The rest of what she wanted to say was cut off by Manfred placing one finger on her lips and closing his own eyes for a moment before looking back at hers:

"It's ok," he said softly while reaching over to the table beside them for a handkerchief which he used to clean some of the blood from Carlotta's hands, "you didn't do anything." Carlotta nodded slowly before looking at herself and seeing that most of the blood wasn't hers and realizing for the first time exactly what kind of state Manfred must have been in when he arrived home earlier tonight: