Headline news

No Regrets?!

Friday 15 th May 2015

No regrets - moon

This is a narrative I wrote last year for my English class. Hope you like it! - Yasmin

Days, months, years had passed since it happened. Yet I still live in that very moment, or rather that, this moment, lives on in me, with me, off me. I would be mendacious if I said I had forgotten or if it had forgotten me. How could it, how could I, after all that we've been through. My safe, my saviour, my equal, yet it is the source of so, so much pain and anguish. 

Like a shadow, it -

stalks...me.

Like a shield, it GUA me RDS.

And -

like a dagger, it kills. Me.

The very weight dragging... dragging life on, which like a heavy chain, lengthens behind with many links of pain.

"I must overcome. It. Must be laid to. Rest. In peace. It will be done. Now."

    It was a dark, cold, February evening when I decided to set off. The moon, riding high above the clouds, was surely leading the way. By the time I had arrived, nightfall had well and truly fallen, unlike the lagging hours of the day, going by like windless clouds over a tender sky.

    I was greeted by the door, or what was left of it, though this was far from the usual unapologetically "warm welcome" that one is accustomed to. Nevertheless, I expected nothing more. Taking in deep breaths, breathing out all the fear and worry instilled in me, I lunged myself inside.

It was exactly how I left it, how we left it, after it happened.

    I could hear the screams, feel them passing through my lips and booming like thunder, around the house. They seemed to be coming from along the hallway to my right, at the far end, but I just couldn't tell. I carefully made my away along the corridor, the sound of my shallow breathe echoing, just as much as our screams. The corridor split into three rooms, the living room, bathroom and kitchen. Tentatively, I looked inside, my heart racing like a runaway train, getting faster and faster. I could hardly tell the rooms apart; everything, from the kitchen worktop to the old, ebony rocking chair had been reduced to the ruins and the avenging ashes that they are. It all happened so long ago, yet it seems like only yesterday.

    The screams grew louder and stronger as I approached it, like a siren in the heart of the night, pounding at your eardrums until they bleed. Would it still be there? Would it still remember? More importantly, has it changed?

    Running unsteadily into the living room, like a blind man feeling his way, I tripped, as the arms of agony reached for me from below.  I looked up and there it was, sitting in the corner, beckoning me to take a closer look, like the devil whispering in your ear.

"You came back for me, didn't you? Go on, open me then, take me out, don't you want to play? It's been so long. You know you want to, you can't resist me, us."

And so I did.

Deafening and implacable like some elemental force.                                  
As fatal as the fangs of the most venomous snake.                                          Gleaming like a diamond on a dancing girl.                                                       Gone astray as a sheep that is lost.                                                                   Empty like a corpse in its grave.                                                                        Revealing all the same.

    It was never meant to happen. I never wanted it to be this way. But the things he would say and the things he would do. To me.

I had no choice, I had to do it.

I couldn't take it anymore!

    I gradually lifted it out of the box and grasped it tightly with my right, bloodstained hand. All I could see was the blade reflecting a face, a face of a monster, who was just as bad as he was.

It hadn't changed. I had.

 "I must overcome. It. Must be laid to. Rest. In peace. It will be done. Now.”