With every stroke of his ink pen, he killed me again & again. A resounding message from words forgotten.
Now on the yellowed page of loved neat folds, the emotions have faded into a mechanical collective of syllables. And I yearn the hurt that remains only a hollow echo.
Like everyone else, I’ve made many attempts at shrinking myself. I know that there’s nothing I could have done to change our fate if the relationship wasn’t right. Just like I know how desperately I prayed for God to be wrong this time.
How could anyone love someone so wrong, so much? It’s in these times I wonder whether something is fundamentally wrong with me. And I want to take their advice to be ‘myself’, but there’s that nagging thought that maybe it’s in being myself that makes the ‘right’ person become ‘wrong’.
Sandy was startled awake. She rolled over in her bed, half expecting to see her little sis. Emma had moved into her bed before she had even turned an year old.
She was however met with the naked body of yet another man she had picked up at a bar. She couldn’t keep up with their names anymore. Still, it was going to be one of the many sleepless nights.
* * *
Clear as day, she remembered the day everything had changed. And if that hadn’t etched it into memory, Emma’s death had drilled it into place. It happened 10 years ago. They were supposed to bring home a bouncing baby boy. The nursery had been painted blue. A collection of toy animals had been dangled above the beautiful wooden crib, and even the little wardrobe had been stocked with tiny pieces of clothes. Sandy & Cleo loved sneaking into the room to play Puppets with the cute miniature socks.
It had taken much too long at the hospital and in the end, they still had no baby to bring back home. At 5yrs old, Cleo’s mind was still too fragile to accommodate the change that was coming. Mom didn’t come out of her room for weeks and Dad no longer kicked ball with Cleo in the backyard. 3 years later when Emma was born, it was known, however unspoken, that she was the compensation.
Losing the newborn had been a huge hit to the family but even worse to Sandy. She had additionally lost her mom, her best friend and confidant all in the same day! Then she gained Emma.
As an angel, she was probably seeing more love for her in the penthouse now, than she had experienced while she was alive. She had been too reserved and withdrawn for a little girl. She had spent most of her life sat on the topmost step, looking over into the ocean. It was the only opening of the beach front, which held in promise, her death.
“Was it calling out to her?”
Now Emma was gone too.
* * *
Sandy remembered wondering if she could she still leave, or if she owed it to Emma to stay. Besides, what about Cleo?
She had been surprised when Emma had asked her to stay. It was just one soft spoken plea. Her face had looked so broken. Sandy hadn’t known her to be this vulnerable. She had adapted to the state of affairs unflinchingly.
Sandy had stood there, feeling heartbroken. How did she not know? How could she not believe her? She had promised she would come back to get her, but Emma didn’t know. In a world of lone hearts, they had found each other. She was the world to Sandy, but she didn’t know.
Sandy remembered watching her little sis go over by the cliff to her spot.
Tipsy. With his rowdy gang of friends. He hit the golf ball & marked the beginning of the end.
The ball jammed into the jeep’s reverse gear, reversing it suddenly. It met Emma full on, driving her off the cliff’s edge to her death.
Sandy gave a shrill scream. Everything had happened so fast! By the time she had yanked off the ball & stopped the jeep, she had already felt it. The thud!
The boys were now almost here. One look at his sister and Cleo immediately sobered up. All that followed happened in a daze which was best left behind as agreed among all that were present.
“Please don’t leave” she had begged.
Sandy was more a mother to Emma than their mother had ever been. The casual sip of champagne had gone out of hand and she had been drunk most of her every waking hour for as long as Emma had been alive. The duffle bag had hurriedly been unpacked and the jeep returned to the garage.
The cops arrived to find a pair of kids huddled together on the sidewalk of the driveway. Closely following behind them were Marigold and Richard. Marie fell upon her eldest, shaking her as if it would make up for all the years of neglect.
“Where’s Emma? Tell me! Where’s my baby?”
Sandy was staring into space but for the brief moment she turned to gaze into her mother’s eyes. The sheer intensity of the gaze almost repelled her by its force alone. It was filled with hate & disgust. Marie shrank away.
The police had recovered Emma’s body by now. In all of her 17 years, Sandy had never heard her dad scream with such pain. Cleo had slinked to his side. He was motionless. Steely looking down at the corpse while mom flooded his tee with her face buried in the cleft of his shoulder.
She saw herself kissing him while his bloody hands murred the white of her robe where he caressed her. The bodies of her family lay cold on the floor, hacked into pieces by Damon. He had posed as an author needing an off-the-grid getaway to focus on his new book. Having exchanged several emails with Hailey, they had come to an agreement.
So came that fateful wintry day when Mom, Audrey, Whitney and Matt returned from the airport and with them, Damon. They were supposed to be halfway to New York but perhaps the blizzard had eventually caught up. Hence they were stuck here for New Year’s eve, not that there would be much celebrating by them now.
It surpassed every one of her senses but she wanted him still. She gazed through the round spectacles into his eyes, making the silent plea. Then came the knock just as he was about to take her in his arms and carry her into the sunset. Haley would have ignored it were it not for how Damon immaterialised into water right then and slipped through her fingers.
And as if the crudity of it all was finally dawning on her, she snapped to, realizing she was still soaking in her hot bath and had indulged her grim thoughts again. The knock came again. She put on her bathrobe and went to get the door.
It was Damon. Handsome and irresistible, with his round rimmed glasses.
All I ever wanted was you and now I don’t know how to want anything else. I’ve resigned myself to a loveless life and yet I still yearn the touch of a man. The elation on seeing him brighten up at me because I’m the sunshine of his world.
So I keep waiting because every man I encounter is not you. And the experience of their love will never be as all encompassing as it was with you, until I let you go. Tell me this though, but how do I let you go?…
When your face, that’s imprinted on my mind, is what gives me smiles every time I see it. I replay our entire interaction and it uplifts my soul. And it was a perfect fairy tale that began on the day I hung on your arm. When our friend joked that the guys should take advantage of our momentous segregation to get themselves a girl since the gentlemen outnumbered the ladies at the institution. But you suggested that it would be more proper for the ladies to choose.
Oh the turmoil within me! I would never have forgiven myself had I thrown dust over my expertly concealed and fast progressing crush on you. Then my quirky self came to my rescue, as it always does without fail. I said, I couldn’t choose among all great men but I’d go with you because you were most considerate of us ladies. The guys hollered for you and clapped your shoulder and I was my proudest to have actually made you so ‘successful’. You offered your arm and linking mine within yours, we walked hand in hand.
They that say fairy tales don’t exist, they are wrong. Your eyes, like your hands, held onto me when I slipped. I was yours wholly. At that very moment, you had really caught me.
And then it all comes crashing down! You’re gone and I’m lost, living in the memory of you. Maybe I will never let you go. Or maybe in 10 years I will wonder why I ever let you go.
All I ever wanted was you and now I don’t know how to want anything else, even if you’re probably with someone you think is your the one. I never wanted to know, and I never will know.
She had already crossed the river and was walking fast up the ridge on the other side, such that she was visible to them. They screamed, their vision blurred with the streaming tears, until they could no longer see her.
Their Grandma called to them again. That they better put some food into those bones before the lunch grew cold. Lexxie smeared Ned’s tears on his cheeks in an effort to wipe them away. She then took him on her back telling him not to cry anymore because Maman would be back later. Even as they both knew it wasn’t true, they made their way into Grandma’s compound, and to her hut.
They had all the sooner forgotten about the morning’s fiasco and joined in in their cousins’ playing when Ned returned home, finding a bottle of medicine in his mother’s kitchen. Evening was creeping in and Lexxie realized that her brother had been gone for a long time, so she went in search of him.
Lexxie was stunned into a trance on finding Ned, fallen just outside the hut, the tinted bottle slipped from his hand and foaming in his mouth. Snapping to, she automatically went to shaking him, initially with ernest but more frantically with every ticking second. Finally she stopped. She entered the hut and similarly drank from every medicine bottle she could find. Then laying beside Ned, she closed a hand over her baby brother’s torso, and curled up tightly against him.
It was indeed too late to save them. The previous night, the air had been filled with accusation between man and wife. This night, aside from the wailing, the air was pregnant with the silence of catastrophe.
With just one stroke, a life build on 7 years had been struck down into nothingness.
The winds whistled as they blew with vehemence. Danny held onto the statue for dear life, but the more he clung to it, the more he froze. The ocean raged on, thirsty for his life. The waves rose with a life of their own and thunderingly crashed into the rocks of the cliffs. Their magnetic pull was almost supernatural and Danny, numb from the cold, felt himself fall like a log into the Atlantic. The image of his daughter Malia, danced behind his eyes making him fight exuberantly to stay above the water. His was a losing battle, and with his last breath, he uttered the words;
“Daddy is sorry baby”
As he sank into the ocean, he was overcome with relief. He embraced the darkness with deep contentment, and even thought he could hear Aurelia’s voice. He looked around in the darkness and saw the obscure image of his wife.
“Honey, believe in the sea. It is the fountain of life” she said.
Danny, giddy as a little boy, leapt forth to embrace the love of his life, but she was gone. In her place was a glittering crystal shell. He took it and holding it tight against his chest, he let open the flood gates that he had adamantly kept shut. He sobbed fervently for the loss of his best friend and soulmate. He knew that this was Aurelia’s way of reaching out to him. She was comforting him even from beyond.
“She always knew what to do” Danny thought as he gently caressed the shell like it was a delicate piece of rare gem.
His lungs hurt like charred carbon and his throat was on fire. As he sat up from the water that he had coughed up, he looked over to ocean, surprised at how calm it looked. It was a beautiful carpet of glass. He lay back, unconcerned about how long it had been since he had washed up onto the shore, and sank back into the reverie of beautiful Aurelia. For the first time in the last 6 months, Danny got a full night of dreamless slumber, under the star lit sky. He woke up and was amazed at the beauty that lay before him. It was as though he was looking at the world for the first time. He saw the statue of Percyden and remembered why he had come to Rome.
“My poor baby!” he lamented.
He picked up his pace as he stumbled along the beach. He couldn’t wait to get back home to his daughter. As he pulled into the driveway, Malia came breezing through the front door, shouting;
“Nanny, nanny! Daddy’s home!”
She flew right into her father’s embrace as Marissa followed studiously behind her.
“I imagine the trip was a success” she said, noticing the lift in the gloom that had befell him since Aurelia’s death.
Danny lifted his daughter onto his chest and was amazed at how strikingly she resembled her mother. Malia felt the warmth that had returned to her father once again and she lovingly nestled deep into his chest as he sank onto the couch. While Marissa fumbled around in the kitchen making dinner, he recounted to Malia the bedtime story that her mother had read to her each night.
‘In ancient Greek mythology, there lived Chronus – the god of destruction. He had three sons; Zeus – god of the heavens, Heides – god of the underworld and Percyden – god of the sea. The gods would come down to earth on occasion and take human forms. They were mystically handsome and would win the attention of any woman with whom they would mate with. Unlike his brothers, Percyden fell in love with an earthling who bore him a son, Percy Jackson, demigod of the sea. When Chronus called his sons to the heavens, revealing to them his plans of doing away with humans to create an immortal race, Percyden fled to earth and gathered an army of demigods to fight his father. Together with his son, they led the demigods in war and saved the human generation.” “And one last bit,” “Really, daddy?” Malia enquired. Danny warmly looked into his daughter’s bright eyes and presented her with the shell.
Dusk was just dawning & this would be the single major turning point in Peggy’s life. The events flashed through her mind as the complaints of her 16yr old Jessie droned on.
* * * *
The first time he caught her eye, it had been pouring heavily. She had run into the closest barn to await it to die down. It rained on into the night and she was beginning to fear that she would have to spend the night there. She had fought with her father yet again.
For as long as she had known, it had just been the two of them & he had always found a way to evade her questions about her mother. This time, it had unravelled into a full – blown exchange of screams and she was fed up! She was leaving for good!
She was startled awake by male voices in the night & she peeped to see two torches approaching. It was her dad and a young boy, only about 3 years older than her who introduced himself as Jason.
Jason’s family had lived in Wakefield for generations and knew the land well. So when Peggy’s dad filed a missing person’s report, the Sheriff asked of his family to let Jason lead the search party. They had been all over the woods, when Jason decided to lead Peggy’s dad to their abandoned barn.
This marked the beginning of their budding romance. Peggy was convinced she had found true love. Shortly afterwards, she found out she was pregnant and in spite of being so young, she was exhilarated! This was the final piece to complete her merry little world. Jason however did not take the news joyously. In fact, he was enraged!
“How could you get pregnant?! How could you possibly be so foolish! You thought I would marry you and we would sail off into the sunset? Wake up Peggy!” he told her.
Thereafter, Jason avoided Peggy like the plague. Peggy was inconsolable, and when she heard that Jason was messing around with the Lake house girl, like nothing had happened, she was filled with vengeance. She exercised patience until she had won the Lake house girl, Diane’s friendship. Consequently, Diane confided in her whenever Jason took her to the barn, like he did all other previous girls.
* * * *
Peggy remembered clearly, how calmly she doused the entire perimeter with petroleum as she listened to their moaning voices. She only felt pure hate for Jason and Diane was simply collateral damage. She took out the pocketed matchbox, removed a matchstick and confidently struck it alight and lit ablaze the barn. She strode to her bicycle, stood there and watched the barn go up in flames as the dreary screams died down. She caressed her slightly showing baby bump & realised she did not feel remorse.
“Mom I can’t take this anymore! I’ll stay over at pop – pops!” She faintly heard Jessie say before the door slammed shut.
HYLANDAH STORY 