Redemption (work in progress)

Sometimes I would call her when I knew she was busy, just so I could hear her voice on the answering machine. I said I was over her, but I knew I wasn’t. It’s just one of those things that you say every once in a while to try and trick your mind into believing you are. I loved her then, and I loved her now. Sometimes a smell would trigger a memory of her sweet scent. Other times I would simply have déjà vu’s at random times. And then there were the dreams. The dreams were constant, recurring and quite vivid. The dreams were what made me long for sleep each night, yet at the same time it was the dreams that would keep me awake. The dreams were always the same. It would be a rainy night, and her and I would be standing in the playground adjacent to our elementary school, incidentally the same playground on which my best friend had broken my arm when I was fourteen. He had done it intentionally.
Alison and I had dated for a little over a year, and then one day just like that she decided to inform me that she had been sleeping with my best friend, and that she was in love with him. This created a big problem for me as my best friend has been living with my family since he was born, his parents killed in a car accident. Alison and I had always shared a special connection. It wasn’t just that we shared the same birthday; it was something more. Normally, I don’t believe in the supernatural, the paranormal, or anything of that sort, but her and I really did share a mental link. Call it being psychic, extra-sensory perception, telekinesis; it’s irrelevant. Occasionally we would talk to each other in our minds, and occasionally we could share vision with each other, although it would cause both of us intense migraines afterwards. I wouldn’t realize the source of these migraines until much later.
A year after Alison had left me, I decided to move a two-hour drive away from the borough. I thought it was time for me to move on, get a fresh start in a new house, and leave the year-old couple with their own place. The night I had packed all my necessities into my Chevy (I was planning to return some time in the week with a U-Haul), I decided to spend the night at a local motel to get used to the feel of being away from home. When I unlocked the door to the crummy motel room, I immediately shut it behind me, tossed the key on a nearby counter and collapsed onto the bed. I didn’t bother going to the seedy bathroom and brushing my teeth or rinsing my face, as I was so accustomed to. Why? A mirror (albeit nearly shattered) hung above the sink; I detested looking at myself in the mirror to the point where I would go out of my way to avoid it. There was too much truth behind those eyes, too much pain. It felt like I was looking into the mirror of my soul, and I couldn’t stand it. Ever since Alison had left me, it felt like she had taken a piece of my soul with me. And I couldn’t stand staring at a gaping black hole in my soul, all encompassing, and sucking all life inwards toward it. Moreover, there was no point in staring at a wound that I knew would never heal. Not when there was barely a soul left to heal, barely a heart left to be broken. Oh sure, I’d move on. I had already started to. But the hurt, the stabbing pain, the darkened numbness of abandonment was there to stay. It’s kind of ironic, actually. Numbness being a feeling in itself.
It was this numbness that quickly allowed me to surrender to sleep’s sweet serenity. The last thing I remembered before switching to sub consciousness was seeing “11:02pm” displayed in bright red LED on the clock next to the bed. Suffice it to say, my dreams were anything but serene.
It must be something about the way the mind works, but it’s such a strange phenomenon that you have the ability to see something coming for so long yet still be so surprised when it actually hits. But like they say, hindsight is twenty/twenty. Looking back, I had seen the subtle hints, the early warning signs. But I hadn’t done anything to try and stop it. It was like I had smelled the gas leak, but never thought twice before lighting the match. Alison had seemed to become distant in the last few weeks before she had announced her revelation. She had also begun inviting Aaron to go along on our previously private outings more and more. Whenever I would question her about it however, she would merely say that she felt sorry for Aaron not having many friends or acquaintances to hang out with. And what could I possibly say in response to that? No? How insensitive would I sound then? So I tolerated it with little to no resistance. He was my best friend. I could trust him. She was my girlfriend. I could trust her. I said I could trust them, but I knew I didn’t. It’s just one of those things that you said every once in a while to try and trick your mind into believing you do. The worst part of this whole situation was that I had no one to talk to about it. My best friend and my girlfriend were both indisposed in the situation, thereby eliminating my two main pillars of support. I had a friend once. I once had a friend that would have listened to all of this, and given her honest opinion. I once had a friend that was there for me through everything, through my entire life. Then I made the biggest mistake of my life. I crossed the line; the line between friends and lovers. Her name was Julia, and she had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and I had been through it all with her. Then one day it just happened. One minute we were sitting on her bed discussing life, the universe and everything. The next minute we were lying in her bed in each others’ arms. I can still remember the scent of her hair as it gently brushed against my face. I can still remember the sting of her palm as it roughly struck against my face a week later. That was when I crossed the second boundary that would end our romanticism as well as our friendship permanently. I had crossed the line between understandable jealousy and mild neurosis. I became paranoid, obsessed with the need to keep track of her every move. I became very distrusting. The day she found out that I had actually been asking other people to verify things that she had told me to be the truth was the last day I ever spoke to her. She confronted me about it. When I gave no suitable explanation (largely due to the fact I had none) she responded by slapping me across the face, and instructing me in strong words to never speak to her again. To this day, I have at least one nightmare a week that involves me reliving the last day of our friendship. Tonight was one such night.
When I awoke, I was completely blind. Panicking, I instinctively brought my hands to my eyes in an attempt to rub out my blindness. Fortunately, it turned out that I really wasn’t blind, but that instead a thick substance was covering my eyes. After clearing my eyes of the strange fluid, I could see what it was: blood. I hysterically ran for the less-than-hygienic bathroom, grabbed both faucet handles and turned them on full. There was a rattling of pipes for a moment, followed by the agonizing creak of metal being placed under strain. I then stared at the faucet in awe as a seemingly endless supply of blood began to pour forth from an unknown source. Shocked, I looked up and into the mirror to see how much of me was covered in this unknown blood. The face I saw reflected back at me was not my face, but was the face of a beautiful young blonde woman which I, mistakenly and instinctively, assumed to be Alison. The girl in the mirror was prettier than Alison, and was slightly slimmer, with beautiful deep blue eyes and a pearlescent smile. For a moment, it distracted me from the fact that I was still covered in blood, and that blood was pouring forth from what should have been my only clean water supply. Alas, when I looked back down at the faucet and my hands, I had seemingly awoken from my delusions as all that covered them were quite transparent droplets of water. And upon returning my gaze to the mirror, I was staring back into the empty shell of a man that remained.
My trance was broken by the piercing ring of the phone. I had specifically requested the front desk (or whoever was running the motel) to hold all my calls so that I could finally indulge myself in natural sustaining sleep. At first I toyed with the idea of ignoring it and simply unplugging the phone and drifting back to sleep, but then sudden realization dawned on me. First of all, I wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon after witnessing what I just witnessed. Second of all, who knew I was even staying here? I hadn’t told anyone. As far as Alison knew, I was already at my new house, unpacking my things. As far as Alison knew, I was already feeling that empty numbness as I sorted through the various objects that represented our relationship. If that was what she thought right now, she was sorely mistaken. Even if that had been the case, I wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction of knowing it.
I answered the phone.
“Hello?” No response. “Is anyone there?”
“Damon.” I was taken aback by the tenderness with which this female voice spoke my name. Almost as if she knew me intimately. Like speaking to an old friend you haven’t seen in years.
“Who is this?”
“You should know. You created me.”
“What? I don’t even know who you are!”
“No. You certainly don’t.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to love you. I want to be there for you the way Alison never was. I want to be there for you the way Alison never can be. And more importantly, I want to help you to forgive.”
“Forgive who?”
“Forgive Aaron, forgive Alison, and most importantly, forgive yourself.”
“Forgive myself? Forgive myself for what?”
“For killing her.”
There was an audible ‘click’ as the phone was disconnected from the other end. I had no idea who was on the other end of the phone, and my questions had only led to more questions with which I had no time to ask. The voice said that I had killed Alison. That was impossible, since I had just spoken to Alison a few hours ago. Nevertheless, panic slowly clawed its way into my stomach, squeezing and twisting it within its icy grasp. I picked up the receiver and quickly dialed Alison’s cell phone. As one ring turned to two turned to three, I started to feel worse and worse. Then finally, on the fourth ring, she answered.