Love at Last Sight

It started on a chilly winter night in the small town of Witadon. December 23rd, to be exact. A boy, Noah, and a girl, Sophia. The scene was rather cliché, two teenagers sat in a car on Lover’s Lane, doing exactly what you would expect them to be doing. As the clock neared midnight, and their surroundings slowly became deserted, they made the decision to head home. This would be the decision that changed everything.

The road they drove down was narrow, flanked by dense woodlands on either side. In hindsight, they knew they should have realised something was wrong. It was an eerily silent night, too silent for the likes of their little town. But, being the naïve teenagers they were, they continued on without a care. Sophia would often glance at Noah as he drove, smiling slightly, the typical behaviours of a young girl in love. Little did she know, that would be one of the last times she would ever see him. Maybe, if she knew, she would have taken the time to admire him a little more.

Suddenly, the car came to a screeching halt. Noah had seen something in the road in front of him. Seemingly out of nowhere, a man had appeared. This wasn’t just any man you would expect to see in Witadon, this was an enormous man. He had to have been at least 6 and a half feet, and muscular too. Even in the dark, his silhouette emphasised his extremely athletic body. Noah and Sophia were quickly filled with dread, their minds envisioning the worst that could happen.

Click.

Sophia locked the doors as soon as she realised what was happening. She didn’t want to take any chances.

“Just go around him.” Sophia advised, to which she was met with a mocking tone from Noah, who pointed out the obvious: the path was narrow, it would be impossible to pass him without crashing their car. The suggestion of reversing back up the path seemed to be a sensible idea, but when Noah looked in his rear-view mirror, he saw another man, seemingly identical in stature, stood behind the car. They were trapped. Nowhere to go.

Another click, and the sound of the doors opening.

Noah had become impatient and had left the car before Sophia could stop him, closing the door behind him. Sophia couldn’t hear what Noah was saying to the men, she could only see his frustrated expression as he looked back and forth between them. Then, all at once, time seemed to slow down. Noah turned to face the second man, and the first one took that as an opportunity. He came sprinting towards the young boy.

“Noah!” Sophia’s scream from inside the car was audible throughout most of the woodland beside them. He was tackled to the ground by the man, who was running at an almost superhuman speed, given no time to defend himself. The connection made between Noah and the ground echoed throughout the trees, and time seemed to speed back up again as Sophia hopped quickly into action, locking the door and maneuvering herself over to the driver’s seat. She turned the engine on, and the car began to shake violently. Not from the engine, but from one of the men. He had stopped assaulting Noah and had begun to hit and shake the car, yelling at the young girl trapped inside. As her fight or flight instincts were activated, Sophia ignored the pained cries of her lover who lay beaten on the floor and slammed the accelerator down, the car speeding away from the horrific scene. Even as she drove, she could hear Noah’s screams, slowly becoming more and more frantic, before they stopped completely. Maybe, just maybe, Sophia would have the time to get help and save him. But she knew deep down what those silenced cries meant. She had abandoned Noah, and in doing so, sentenced him to death.

As the adrenaline quickly wore off, tears began streaming down Sophia’s face. Her thoughts began to race. What had just happened? Why did I leave him there? Is he dead? And two words that she whispered to herself over and over as she neared civilisation: ‘I’m sorry’.

A month later, a lot had changed. Noah’s body had been recovered after Sophia reported the incident to police. His body was beaten and mutilated almost beyond recognition. It was announced that the attack was random, and the perpetrators were two criminally insane men who had recently escaped imprisonment in the next town over. Noah’s funeral had already been arranged and carried out, and the majority of Witadon’s residents had all but recovered from the shock of the brutal murder. But not everyone had.

23rd January, exactly a month since Noah’s passing. It was dark, nearing midnight. Exactly like that one fateful night that almost everyone seemed to have already forgotten. Sophia should have been sound asleep, ready for the morning. Instead, she stood on the ledge of a bridge. The town’s lake was directly below her, pitch black. She swayed back and forth, in a trance-like state, as she gazed down towards the water. She took a deep breath, and all the thoughts of that night swirled around her brain. The last moments she spent with him before that man appeared, his cries of pain, the betrayal he must have felt as she sped off without him. She had abandoned the only person she had ever loved. The deafening sound of his final scream echoed in her mind as she closed her eyes and stepped off the ledge.

The freezing water hit her like a brick, and she sunk deeper and deeper, struggling slightly until she gave up. Then: darkness.