What no one knew was that in the moments before they died, they’d become more. He had just proposed. He—Rick—had given her—Lily—a ring that he’d brought from home, one he’d bought with tips from his job at Jack Rack’s Pizza, where he’d worked every summer and three school nights a week to save up enough to study abroad for a year, and when he met the new girl in town, Lily—Lily, what a lovely, old-fashioned name—he fell madly in love, and knew he wanted her to be his wife. So he asked her to the movies, added two extra shifts a week, and after two rough years without much sleep, used that money to buy a small blood diamond—the best he could afford; beggars couldn’t be choosy about buying cheap blood diamonds versus the much more expensive conflict-free, ethically mined ones—and had been planning this special moment for two months.

Can you see it? He, homegrown Midwestern goodness, on his knees, pledging his eternal troth. She, a hand clapped over her mouth, face suffused with a pleasant blush, happily having the moment she’d long dreamed of, tearily shouting, “Yes, yes, yes!” Him, sliding the small blood diamond onto her finger, and leaning in to kiss her. Their future, set. A perfect moment, years in the making, but as the tableau unfolds, the camera pans back, and a shadow grows. There is a glint of a blade in the moonlight. You almost want to scream at them to watch out, to run, don’t you?

The killer stabbed the boy once in the kidney, forcing him to stumble forward in shock. The killer then ripped the knife across the neck of the girl, and pulled the ring from her finger as she fell. He waited for them to stop struggling, dispassionately.

Careful not to step in the blood, he swiped the top and edge of the ring box in the deepest spot of wet burgundy, wrapped it in plastic, and stashed it in his pocket, then arranged the students on the steps so Lily was on top, facedown, with her arms around her lover, her fiancée, and the moment that should have been the happiest for them both mingled with their spilled blood on the bone-white marble steps and they died that way, together.

It was quick, don’t worry. They didn’t suffer. They were too shocked by the blitzkrieg, and then too empty of blood to really know what had just happened. And if you think about it, it wasn’t a terrible way to go. At least they had happiness in the end, and each other.