Dante couldn’t create a more vicious Hell than this. It would have been better if she’d had her throat slit in front of me, the blood drenching me like the rain in a romance drama, but instead of her life ending she has ended mine. And all with three innocent syllables.
“I love Chris.”
All I can do is smile outwardly as my heart stops and starts, sinks in my chest and tries to fly out of my throat. Lunch had gone so well; she’d laughed when I pointed out the spot of mayonnaise at the corner of her mouth and told me to behave when I threatened to kiss it off her. Just a few hours later my world is turned upside down, fire to ice, and the shock is all that stops me from breaking down in tears.
Unrequited love. A hell more vicious than any other. Having gone our separate ways for the night I can it ripping at me, tearing my heart in two. I’ve only just sat down on the bus but I’ve already gone through the past few months dozens of times in my mind. This is a worse torture than anything man can think up. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t appear in any canto. Dante probably couldn’t bring himself to write it.
I nearly miss my stop. It’s only the fact that someone rang the bell and the momentary shock snapped me back to reality that I spotted the pub near my stop. A few hundred yards later and I’m standing on the street, wishing for a storm, thunder, lightning, even a spot of drizzle and a stern wind. But nature goes on without reference to my life, to my troubles. On any other day I’d think the gentle breeze and slightly overcast sky to be pleasant. “I love Chris.” Three words, ten letters, and I become so self-absorbed and lost that I don’t even realise that my legs (presumably unaware of my thoughts; the feet are furthest away from the brain) are taking me across the road, down my street, and up the drive to the entrance of my flat. Complete autopilot.
The next day, I hold my mobile in my hand. The text message screen was blank seconds before, but I wrote and sent something I’ll never be able to take back. To the woman I love. The only woman I have ever loved. Maybe by sending it to her I thought I was saying something to myself.
“I hate you.”
Three syllables. Three words. Eight letters. All it takes to ruin any chance for requited love.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Monday, 1 March 2010
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Alone
Alone.
He was used to being this way. As a boy he had had few friends, and by default fewer close ones. It was not that he could not make friends. It was more that he did not want to. He could fit in to any group of people he came across with comparative ease. There was nothing spectacular about his appearance. Short, light brown hair kept away from his ears, soft brown eyes with a dark mono-brow above them. Even his clothing was unspectacular, being more for comfort than show. It normally consisted of jeans, a t-shirt and a jacket. He had a varied taste in music, was fairly athletic and picked for many of the school sports teams from primary through into the end of his secondary education. Had he chosen to he could have been the life and soul of any party. But he chose not to go out with people he met. A good night for him was sitting alone in his room with his books, his music, his guitar or his computer games for company. When his family finally got the internet installed he started surfing the net as well, but seemed always to keep an almost clinical distance between himself and the plethora of people he met.
He did not open up to people, nor did he feel any need to. Anybody could, and he thought they all did, go to him with a problem and he would endeavour to help them solve it. To many onlookers he was a normal person whose main abnormality was not having any problems of his own.
He had, of his own admittance, a very keen mind. He had done well at school with minimal effort (more because it presented a challenge for him to do no work than anything else) and people often mistook him for someone at least twenty years older than he in actuality was. He could, and often did, find the heart of any problem and find its resolution before someone had finished explaining the problem to him. His father used to tell people “He won his first debate when he was four. I don’t think my brother was prepared for a four year old who could grasp basic economic theorem.”
Why was it then that he decided to keep so much to himself?
He had, after leaving university, begun a somewhat successful career as a writer. He was a multi-best selling author, his collections of short and children’s stories coming out every few years. He was regularly asked to give talks, and made a fair sum of money writing speeches for politicians, business leaders and, on more than one occasion, school headmasters. He was seen at many parties at first, talking with the rich and the famous and looking at no time to be out of place. Then, gradually as he went through his thirties and forties, he seemed to gradually ease himself out of the public eye. He was still writing and never once entertained the thought of using a pseudonym, but he gave fewer and fewer talks, wrote fewer speeches, and finally stopped going to dinners. Being as he was nothing spectacular or memorable to look at he would regularly go out to the post office to post another story or manuscript without being hounded by people who might recognise him. He would walk for hours at a time in the hills of the Peak District or north Wales, keeping always to himself and never exchanging more than minor pleasantries with anyone he happened to meet. His life, he thought to himself, was as uneventful as he wanted it to be. When he was in his sixties, he wrote a poem (which later appeared in the local paper under his middle names) where the last line was “And he was happy he had no friends or family.” This was how he thought of himself. He took one last look around the study where he had written countless stories and poems, speeches grand and humorous, and locked the door behind him.
He had kept in touch with one person in his life, and it was to her that he wrote his final piece.
Dear Clair,
Thank you for keeping in touch with me over the years. I trust you and your husband are well. You should find with this letter two keys. The larger is to my front door, and the smaller to my study. They are the only copies.
I have decided to leave here and take up residence in a small cottage I purchased not too many years ago on the outskirts of a small village in the Midlands. I have kept it fairly well stocked and feel it would be a preferable place for my final years. I would like to thank you for your friendship, and wish you and your family a long and successful life.
Yours sincerely,
J
He died in his sleep, aged seventy three, on the same day his complete memoirs were published.
He was used to being this way. As a boy he had had few friends, and by default fewer close ones. It was not that he could not make friends. It was more that he did not want to. He could fit in to any group of people he came across with comparative ease. There was nothing spectacular about his appearance. Short, light brown hair kept away from his ears, soft brown eyes with a dark mono-brow above them. Even his clothing was unspectacular, being more for comfort than show. It normally consisted of jeans, a t-shirt and a jacket. He had a varied taste in music, was fairly athletic and picked for many of the school sports teams from primary through into the end of his secondary education. Had he chosen to he could have been the life and soul of any party. But he chose not to go out with people he met. A good night for him was sitting alone in his room with his books, his music, his guitar or his computer games for company. When his family finally got the internet installed he started surfing the net as well, but seemed always to keep an almost clinical distance between himself and the plethora of people he met.
He did not open up to people, nor did he feel any need to. Anybody could, and he thought they all did, go to him with a problem and he would endeavour to help them solve it. To many onlookers he was a normal person whose main abnormality was not having any problems of his own.
He had, of his own admittance, a very keen mind. He had done well at school with minimal effort (more because it presented a challenge for him to do no work than anything else) and people often mistook him for someone at least twenty years older than he in actuality was. He could, and often did, find the heart of any problem and find its resolution before someone had finished explaining the problem to him. His father used to tell people “He won his first debate when he was four. I don’t think my brother was prepared for a four year old who could grasp basic economic theorem.”
Why was it then that he decided to keep so much to himself?
He had, after leaving university, begun a somewhat successful career as a writer. He was a multi-best selling author, his collections of short and children’s stories coming out every few years. He was regularly asked to give talks, and made a fair sum of money writing speeches for politicians, business leaders and, on more than one occasion, school headmasters. He was seen at many parties at first, talking with the rich and the famous and looking at no time to be out of place. Then, gradually as he went through his thirties and forties, he seemed to gradually ease himself out of the public eye. He was still writing and never once entertained the thought of using a pseudonym, but he gave fewer and fewer talks, wrote fewer speeches, and finally stopped going to dinners. Being as he was nothing spectacular or memorable to look at he would regularly go out to the post office to post another story or manuscript without being hounded by people who might recognise him. He would walk for hours at a time in the hills of the Peak District or north Wales, keeping always to himself and never exchanging more than minor pleasantries with anyone he happened to meet. His life, he thought to himself, was as uneventful as he wanted it to be. When he was in his sixties, he wrote a poem (which later appeared in the local paper under his middle names) where the last line was “And he was happy he had no friends or family.” This was how he thought of himself. He took one last look around the study where he had written countless stories and poems, speeches grand and humorous, and locked the door behind him.
He had kept in touch with one person in his life, and it was to her that he wrote his final piece.
Dear Clair,
Thank you for keeping in touch with me over the years. I trust you and your husband are well. You should find with this letter two keys. The larger is to my front door, and the smaller to my study. They are the only copies.
I have decided to leave here and take up residence in a small cottage I purchased not too many years ago on the outskirts of a small village in the Midlands. I have kept it fairly well stocked and feel it would be a preferable place for my final years. I would like to thank you for your friendship, and wish you and your family a long and successful life.
Yours sincerely,
J
He died in his sleep, aged seventy three, on the same day his complete memoirs were published.
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