Nightmare

Listening to SNoW's Nightmare. It's in Japanese, so it doesn't hurt so much.

---

The day is cloudy, with a cool breeze that constantly startles the fat pigeons on the ground. The buildings are also gray, all metal and glass.

I clutch a huge bouquet of orange blossoms surrounding a single rose, tiptoeing to get a closer look at the stage. The navy robed graduates are filing off, their mouths stretched in wide grins.

My hair whips across my face with the wind. Squinting through the stray strands, I spot the familiar brown face. As always, I can’t help but smile to see her. I hasten my steps.

Congratulations, I would say. But I couldn’t think of anything else. There were so many unspoken words, after all these years.

One thing hadn’t changed though.

I love you. Even after all this time.

Then I freeze. The whole world slows.

She’s walking hand in hand with another girl.

I can only see her face now, hear her laugh; everything else, even that other girl has faded. The happiness oozing out of every cell in her body. Her warm smile, my smile, the one that is just for me. Flashed in someone else’s direction.

I drop the bouquet; it lands on the pavement with a scatter of petals.

I finally turn my attention to the girl. Did she think she was prettier than me? Did she tell her that she was special, that she was the only one she wanted? Did she know about me?

It’d been ten years since I had spoken to her. We were teenagers, her a year older than me. She left me when she graduated from school. It wasn’t because of the distance she left me; she told me she left me for God. “I can’t be with you,” she told me. “But don’t forget. I’ll always love you. Maybe, if we’re good enough, we’ll be together in heaven.”

She said that she needed to heal. She hid them, but I heard the tears in her voice when I spoke to her on the phone. She said that she would take a month or two. After a week, I tried to contact her. to my horror; I’d realised she had changed everything; her mobile number, her email, even her address and landline. I knew her family had been planning to move, but I didn’t realise she’d timed her “healing period” with that.

It took me almost a year before I found her new address. I had to blackmail, and eventually threaten bodily harm to various contacts before I got the information.

From time to time, I would just hang around, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Sometimes I felt like a stalker, but hell. She had stalked me for four months after we first met.

She graduated from college and entered an arts school while I ended up at the local university, studying Law, a course I never wanted.

I hoped she would get into contact with me. She never did.

That was why I was here today, with the stupid bunch of flowers. I thought she would be able to look at me without hurting now.

What was that she had said to me before she left?

“If you find a guy – “ I started.

“I don’t like guys. I don’t do relationships.”

“So what, you’re going to take a vow of celibacy?”

“Something like that.” She looks at me. “I love you so much.”

I’d believed her. But then, I had believed her when she told me that she would never leave me. When she said that I was the only one she wanted.

I turn to go. I don’t think she even saw me.

***

I love you.

I had taken every type of pill in the fridge. Panadol, cold medicine, Chinese herbs ground into tablets, even vitamin capsules.

It would be enough.

I lie on the bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, watching the shadows dance across it.

I don’t want to go to Heaven without you.

I can’t help the tears that keep falling from my eyes.

I love you. I love you I love you I love you.

---

The things my mind comes up with.