Short Story: Regret

“Love is the only thing that can cause immense affection, passion, and joy; yet also be the cause of pain and anger with raging intensity.” Robbie finishes the quote, he closes the book and looks up at his fiancé, proceeding to stare at her.

“What?” asks Anna, in her customary joyful tone.

“I was about to talk about the power of love-“ He pauses sheepishly, ”However, I was frozen by your immense beauty.”

“Have you noticed how I never freeze whilst talking to you?”

Robbie feigns a mortal wound while Anna is still laughing. It’s been two months since they got engaged and since the start, they have teased each other relentlessly. When they were fourteen, Robbie Colson courageously made a move on his long-time crush, Anna Lights, was rejected, pursued and finally was accepted six months later.

“Okay, now, Robbie, let’s be serious and get back to business. We really need to get this wedding planned.”

“Yeah, fair enough. How about we start with a nice basic starter, people.”

“That is not simple!”

“Yes, it is. Merely invite the people you like and don’t invite the people you don’t. Why would we waste money and time on people we don’t really like, instead of using it for a better honeymoon or saving for a house?”

“Because we may not like them but we should try to. For example; we should invite your parents so that you can reconnect with them.”

“No, we have already talked about me reconnecting with them, they don’t deserve it.” Robbie says, sternly.

With a loving, yet rigid tone, that only a partner can properly use, Anna replies,

“Come on, they’re your family Robbie, you have to at least try and forgive them.”

“They were never there for me. Why should I be the one to forgive them!”

“Because it is the right thing to do. Do you want to carry around this baggage for the rest of your life?”

“The right thing to do?! Don’t tell me what the right thing to do is when they left a young kid to fend for himself!”

“But this could rectif-”

“No!” he yells abruptly. “My childhood was a s***show because of them! Just because you had a perfect family doesn’t mean I have to, Miss High and Mighty. Stop trying to solve my problems!” He slams his palm on the dining table.

“I am trying to help you. We’re a couple, we work on things together. And my family is not perfect, my Dad came back from Afganistán with-”

Robbie jerks up from his chair, throwing it back and yelling, “MY DAD WASN’T IN MY LIFE AT ALL!!! SO DON’T TELL ME-” He takes a breath, then with a quiet voice seething with anger, continues, “I’m going for a drive, I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t call me and don’t text me, I won’t reply.”

Robbie storms out of their house, slamming the door and leaving Anna to weep alone at the table. He unlocks his fiery red mustang and plunges into the leather driver’s seat. The car roars alive as he twists the key, almost breaking the metal blade with furious strength. Tires squeal as the car sharply reverses out of the driveway and narrowly misses a letterbox. Light floods the dusk of the street and the loud thunderous engine roars out. Robbie chokes the steering wheel with his pale white knuckles and crunches through the gears as he plummets down his street. Hurling through back roads, then swerving through traffic on the multi-lane highway. He couldn’t get rid of the thick, black pit in his heart; full of guilt, fear, and years of hatred. He wasn’t gonna let it go. It was the only thing that got him to where he is. Why should he let it go? Hatred was his best motivator since the age of nine, he only had to hide it, only had to control it.

He flew off the highway onto long deserted mountain roads, with a hard wall of granite on his right and a sharp drop to a deep valley on his left. He knew these roads, these were the roads that knew his hatred, that knew his pain. Robbie’s eyebrows creased and his eyes hardened. An eighty sign flew past but he didn’t see it, he didn’t care for it. 120, 130, 140. Memories flared back, the beatings, the nights where all he could hear was the unmistakable voices of drug addicts fighting over the last hit. The only thing his parents knew was how to abuse drugs and how to rip a child’s life apart, that was it. Anna had no idea what she had done. He hadn’t thought about it for so long. Everything was flooding back. The more he tried to stop it, the faster it came. His eyes are blurry as tears pour down his broken face. He forgave them once, that was his biggest mistake. He quickly learned that hope cuts deep. Hope killed him once, not again.

“Ahhhhhhh!” He yells as he squeezes the wheel tighter and drives faster. Destructive thoughts kept streaming through his head. Why does Anna have the right to tell me what to do? She has a perfect life, she has no idea. She thinks it will fix me, but when my parents cause more pain she’ll see. She’ll see. A sudden bright light and happy sound cut into the dark abyss of his thoughts. He glances at his phone, just below 8:44 was Anna’s name. He ignores her text just as he ignores her next three calls. She didn’t deserve to be guilt free, not yet, he was still furious. Only love, or the lack of it, could make a man furious like this for this long. Robbie drives as he has never driven before. His tires are hot after taking too many corners too fast. The tires cry out again as he takes another tight corner, marking the bitumen.

Robbie drives without stopping, he doesn’t know for how long.

His hair surges forward as he slams on his brakes. He jumps out of his car, the cold night air engulfing him as he pushes his hair back. His anger subsides, however it is still very present. He takes a long deep breath. He felt the cold rush down into his body, chilling him from the inside out. He knew, deep down, that Anna was right, she often was. Looking over the expansive valley full of lush vegetation, only visible by moonlight, his anger is replaced by a deep melancholy. But not for the first time that night, he cries. He cries away the sleepless nights hearing his parents fight, the nights not knowing if he would wake up the next morning, the weeks where there was no food to find and everything else a young child should never be exposed to. As he feels as if he can no longer cry, he looks up, toward the horizon. The silver moonlight brushes his sodden face. Robbie realises that the hatred he holds towards his parents was hurting him more than anyone else. He realises that the longer he holds it, the longer it would destroy him. He then does what he previously thought he couldn’t, he forgives his parents. It felt as if a sword had been pulled out of his chest, yet there was no wound, he realised that he had held the pain for so long that it was he hurting himself, not his parents.

Robbie hastily drives back home, feeling a deep sense of pride that he had overcome an immense obstacle in his life, however, accompanying it was a sense of regret that he had made Anna feel so forlorn when she had his best interests at heart. He wasn’t aware that this regret would just keep growing for a long time to come.

Driving much more rationally now, he turns off the highway and cruises through the streets he had been hurtling down not hours before. He turns into his street and fear clutches his heart. Police cars clutter his driveway and barrier tape blocks the street. Robbie shoots forward, again driving without a thought for his safety. His tires screech as he hastily stops near his driveway. He flies out of his car and barges through the barrier tape. Police officers fill his doorway, yet he gives no notice. With adrenaline coursing through his being, he charges through the police officers, feeling the coarse uniform attempting to hold him; but he isn’t going to be stopped. Knocking over the police officers trying to hold him back as a tsunami topples buildings. Tears streaming down his face and screaming Anna’s name, he makes it to the living room, only to drop to his knees with his mind plummeting down a dark, cold and endless catacomb. Robbie’s hands clutch the teary, wet and bloody carpet as he continues to weep. His entire world is shattered into many slicing pieces of glass. That cold black pit inside him returns with only pain and sorrow. He feels the once soft and beautiful skin, now cold and hard. There she is, lying with a ghastly knife erupting from her chest. Anna is dead. His loving fiancé, the only one who cared to listen to his pain. His last words to her had been only hatred. Now he had no way of apologising, no way of ever assuring her he still adored her. The life they had planned together was ripped from his last remaining speck of hope.

Police are yelling to get him out of the room, but he hears nothing. Before he collapses under the violent emotions, he witnesses what he would later regret the most. He reads the police report lying on the floor. Words he would never forget. “The murder occurred at 8:47 pm.” Three minutes after she had called him repeatedly. Three minutes before her world stopped she had called him. Yet he hadn’t answered. That realisation sinks in as he blacks out.

Neither he nor anyone else would ever know the last words she would ever say. The last words she uttered before getting brutally murdered over cheap jewelry. The final act of the woman named Anna Lights would go forever caged in the darkness of the dead. Some chose to believe she prayed and others believed she merely screamed. But my good friend Robbie Colson, always believed her last words were addressed to him. He believed they were simple, yet enough. He believed her last words were; “I love you.”