An Unnamed Life Lost Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Quotation

  Chapter Zero - The Morning As I Saw It

  Chapter One - A Confession For What Is Missing

  Chapter Two - Her First Moments Alone - Part I

  Chapter Three - An Overdue Alarm Calling

  Chapter Four - Her First Moments Alone - Part II

  Chapter Five - One Hundred and Seventy Four Hours Earlier

  Chapter Six - Her Final Moment Alone

  Chapter Seven - Truth Be Told

  An Unnamed Life Lost

  Luis Angel Greer

  Copyright © 2019 Luis Greer

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their preferred authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  This edition is published by the author.

  Contact at [email protected]

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  Website: luisangelgreer.wixsite.com/index

  An Unnamed Life Lost

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or otherwise, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version 1.0ς

  Published by Luis Angel Greer at Smashwords.

  He who learns must suffer

  and even in our sleep

  pain that cannot forget falls

  drop by drop upon the heart

  and in our own despair

  against our will

  comes wisdom to us

  by the awful grace of God

  -Aeschylus

  Chapter Zero - The Morning As I Saw It

  It was a morning when I could have slept longer

  But even though I couldn’t yet feel my body

  I knew she wasn’t in my arms

  I knew I wasn’t in hers

  So I decided to wake up

  To right what was clearly a wrong

  It didn’t take long after my mind was made up

  For the sensations of my body to return

  It didn’t take much longer after that

  For me to realize she was no longer beside me in our bed

  I stopped for second… for a few seconds

  What might be the longest seconds of my life in retrospect

  As I questioned if actually opening my eyes was worth it

  I rolled onto my back

  Reaching out my hand to her pillow; just to make sure

  I then returned back to my side as I opened my eyes

  That habit; that seemingly innocuous habit

  Has become perhaps the greatest regret of my life

  I laid there for a minute or so

  I could hear the vent in the bathroom was running

  I figured she was doing all those things she does first thing

  Try to making herself look more beautiful

  More perfect then I always saw her

  I grabbed my glasses and my phone from the nightstand

  And went out into the house

  As I walked past the bathroom door

  I considered for a split second knocking, saying “Good morning.”

  But I didn’t

  I grabbed a mug from the cabinet

  I loaded a pod into the machine

  And then I opened the blinds and door to let in the morning light

  When it was ready I moved it to the other side of the sink

  Added a packet of sugar and quickly gave it a stir

  Before making my way towards the front porch

  As I reached my hand out for the handle I stopped

  I realized I hadn’t heard anything

  Not the sink

  Not the blow-dryer

  Not the shower

  Not the clinking of bottles

  Or the cursing of a miss-drawn line

  So I called out to her, “Is everything alright love?”

  There was nothing

  No answer from her in either the affirmative or negative

  So I let my hand fall away from the door

  As I began to walk back towards the bathroom

  “Do you want anything for breakfast?”

  Still no answer

  “Love?” I could hear in my voice a worry I wasn’t yet feeling

  I reached out and grabbed the doorknob

  “I’m coming in.”

  I cautiously opened the door

  I was waiting for her to yell at me from the toilet

  Headphones in while reading some stupid article on her phone

  It was then that I heard her

  But it wasn’t her yelling at me to get out

  It was the sound of her crying

  I pushed the door open

  Slamming it into the wall

  My eyes quickly taking in the sight

  Of her lying curled up on the bathroom floor

  I moved to her as I dropped to my knees beside her

  I quickly put my hand on the ground beside her to brace myself

  It was then that I felt it slide

  Before my eyes even looked I knew it wasn’t water

  I asked her if she was alright

  I asked her what was wrong

  Where the blood had come from

  But she didn’t or couldn’t answer me

  I decided I was going to call for an ambulance

  I told her I was going to get my phone to call

  And without speaking, without looking up to me

  She grabbed my wrist and she locked her grip around it

  She wasn’t pulling me down

  But I could feel my blood having trouble passing into my hand

  I lowered myself back down and I placed my other hand over hers

  I went to tell her it’s going to be alright, but I stopped

  As she finally spoke through her tears and her heaving breaths, “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter One - A Confession For What Is Missing

  It isn’t that she doesn’t remember

  Or that she cannot express them to me

  Those moments before she woke

  Those which led her to know even while worlds away

  That something was wrong

  The problem, if you chose to call it that

  Is that in the here and now

  I don’t want to cry for them

  I don’t want to cry in the way that I know I would

  If I allowed myself to write that part of their story now

  So instead let me speak of those moments

  When she awoke

  Of what brought us to the moment

  As I took her hand in mine

  Chapter Two - Her First Moments Alone - Part I

  She was startled awake

  As she moved from the world she was in

  Back into the world where our bodies were

  Much like how I feel in this moment

  There was a part of her that didn’t want to remember

  That didn’t want to carry with her into the waking world

  That which she had just learned

  She woke

  Without need for her body to register the sensations

  She immediately rose, perhaps quicker than she should have

  But in that moment she already knew

  With all that she was

  That there was nothing she could do

  To undo what had happened

  Without much t
hought she made her way to the door

  She paused for a moment before passing through the threshold

  She looked back to my still sleeping form

  So unaware that she was awake, that she was is in distress

  She thought for a moment about calling to me

  But she didn’t

  She thought for a moment…

  She thought about going back, to conceal the blood with the bed sheet

  But she couldn’t

  And so she turned her body

  Her eyes watching the bed for as long as they could

  Before going into the bathroom

  As she closed the door behind herself

  She let her fingers linger on the lock

  Before letting her hand slip away as she stepped further in

  She looked into the mirror

  She hated herself

  She didn’t want to see her reflection

  She hated her vanity

  She hated the world for creating a desire in her to be beautiful

  Looking at herself in this mirror

  A mirror that was only in our home

  Because she needed it to be

  Because out of all things that I had before I welcomed her

  A mirror was not one

  She ran the water

  Then she looked at the handle

  She saw the blood she had left on it

  And she closed the valve

  She didn’t know…

  No one ever talked about what you do in this moment

  She could still feel something like a lingering pain

  She knew that she should wake me

  That we should go to a doctor

  That even if…

  Even if there was nothing that could fix this

  That she still needed to take care of herself

  This is about when I woke

  When my regrets about being lost in my selfish morning habits begin

  When I wish… and that isn’t a word I use lightly

  When I wish I had looked to her side of the bed

  When I wish I had known that she was in need of me

  She heard as I passed by the door

  As I readied myself for the day

  It is then that in retrospect I begin to regret that I was awake

  Because that is moment she let her mind move on

  To the thoughts of what it would mean for me

  Chapter Three - An Overdue Alarm Calling

  She didn’t know how to feel

  In that moment as she stood in our home

  Waiting for those little lines to appear

  She didn’t understand how she was supposed to feel

  Waiting for it to display her results

  She had missed her period

  It was only by a day

  But she knew she hadn’t felt the same

  Not since that night; not since…

  There was something about the… something was different

  So she bought the test

  She bought it hoping that she was wrong

  She bought it hoping that she was just late

  That it was her nerves

  That it was something easily explainable

  But as she stood there

  The alarm from her phone ringing

  She couldn’t bring herself to look down

  Because she didn’t know what she wanted it to say

  Because she felt that something within herself was now different

  And that nothing in her life had ever felt more right

  Chapter Four - Her First Moments Alone - Part II

  We were normally safe

  We were so safe that when she found out

  She was easily able to track it back to the week before

  To the exact moment we let it happen

  To the moment she heard me ask “are you sure?”

  And she felt a force well up inside herself like nothing she had known before

  A moment that she knew, even then, she would never forget

  Chapter Five - One Hundred and Seventy Four Hours Earlier

  Outside of a rather emphatic unprompted discussion early in our relationship

  The topic of children wasn’t discussed

  She wasn’t at a point in her life where she wanted to have them

  And I wasn’t at a point in our relationship where it seemed like a good idea

  So, while it might have been for different reasons

  It was something that we were on the same page about

  It was something that never warranted further clarifications

  Her family saw her as too young to be thinking of things like that

  Her friends didn’t see me as a person she should think of those things with

  So there was no outside pressures upon us; so we didn’t talk about it

  Normally we were safe

  Safe to the point that I never gave a passing thought to a problem arising

  We had gone out a week or so earlier

  Something that in itself wasn’t rare

  What made it a very unique event was that we went out with a group of my peers

  I was never one to form close bonds

  And between being very comfortable in my solitude and my general disdain for people

  I often didn’t have a need to… I didn’t know how to, “maintain” friendships

  Through twists of circumstance I reconnected with an old friend

  Which came with a “You should come out and catch up.” offer

  It was something I would have most likely never taken him up on

  But upon hearing that I actually, once upon a time, had friends

  And even more, that they actually wanted to know me again, she wanted to go

  I never saw her as a child

  As someone who needed me to guide or to protect her

  But I also couldn’t help but behave more responsibly when I was with her

  A byproduct of the way she perceived me I suppose

  This night though…

  In all the time we were together

  She had never heard me say, “I probably won’t be able to drive back tonight.”

  But that was where the night brought us

  Now while she had cut herself off long before I stopped drinking

  She had issues with crashing into medians even while sober

  So she wasn’t going to even think of driving, not with me, not my car

  I know she spent a while thinking about it as the night went on

  In a flash of what if, after about my fourth drink I came up with the plan

  It didn’t make sense to pay for a ride home just to come back

  No one there was going to touch my car

  And there was a hotel not too far away I once had a business meeting in

  So I knew where our fall back was

  After what I think was another two drinks I made our reservations

  I don’t know why I didn’t mention it to her

  I suppose it just didn’t fit into the moment

  She was kind of the belle of the ball and enjoying the attention

  She came to me as the night was wearing down

  Clearly having thought about our situation for a while

  For her it was almost like a roll reversal I suppose, her chance to be the adult

  She prefaced her prepared thoughts with, “So you’re really drunk.”

  Which bid a laugh from me as it was the first time she ever said that to me

  She waited for my laughter to end; her mistake

  As I stole her thunder and moved right into,

  “I know right… good thing I got us a room down the street.”

  She hit me; well it was more of a shove

  “I’ve been coming up with plans for like an hour.”

  I nodded, “I booked the room about four hours ago.”

  She snatched the drink out of my hand and took it as her own

  It wa
s a cute gesture, one she regretted immediately as she drank from it

  But she made damn sure she drank it all

  The night ended shortly after that exchange

  As we were getting ready to leave she realized where the hotel was

  And that my plan was to walk there

  Which led to her calling me “an idiot” and summoning an uber

  Which then led to me calling her princess

  As the vehicle pulled up

  As I opened the door for her

  As the driver greeted us

  Pretty much every time something happen until we made it into our room

  She hit me the first few times

  I think she rather enjoyed it by the end

  Now I’m going to spare the sordid details

  But we didn’t let the room go to waste

  Even as intoxicated as I was, I was still aware of my body

  And I avoided causing us… problems; until…

  Until I was in a slightly compromised position

  I don’t know what she heard or what thoughts went through her mind

  But when I warned her that she needed to acquiesce to my need to vacate her

  She didn’t…

  I could have forced her without hurting her; but I didn’t

  I held back as long as I could

  I gave her another warning which she ignored

  And then I embraced her

  Chapter Six - Her Final Moment Alone

  She knew

  She knew from the moment she found out that she couldn’t not…

  But there was still a part of her that was having trouble accepting it

  Accepting that everything she had planned for herself was changing