He saw a light shining at the far end. The dark tunnel seemed to go on and on for ages. He was alone; his intuition told him that if he went towards this invisible force that was pulling him, he would not return back. Part of him was curious, what if he didn’t have to come back to his harsh, cruel world, and part of him was scared. All that he had even wanted was to be happy, maybe for a little while, just a little while, but all that he ever got was deceit, failure, loneliness and his only friend was solitude.
He was fading fast, like the wind that blows away the blame of burning candle. As his veins throbbed faster, and blood drained away from his skin, he felt something. Was somebody there, was it Meg? He focused his eyes, his vacant brown eyes, he saw nothing. Everything was a blur. All he heard was a busy rushing noise, and some people talking…
‘Andrew, father wants you inside his room now’
‘Yes mother’
‘Andrew, tomorrow for Howard medical school’
‘But dad… oh, father, I don’t want to join the medical college. I want to become a geologist’
The next day he was at Howard, studying medicine. Silence…
“Nurse, the situation is getting critical”
Sweat poured down his face. His limpid eyes vividly showed the horror and fear in them.
“Andrew, you won’t whisper the word about this to anyone will you son?”
‘No father, I … swear I won’t. Please don’t hurt me’
‘Good if you do, it won’t take me long to slit your throat. You are a disgusting pathetic twenty-year-old with the brain of the stupid miserable eight-year-old brat and look know that people don’t believe anything a fool like say. Do they now?
‘ No… no father, I promise I won’t tell anyone father… don’t …donot lock me in the closet….. Father’
He remembered that the next day he had cried himself to sleep when he saw the picture of the mother’s dead body in front of the newspaper.
“Oh, doctor look. I think he is getting better.”
He breathed in the fresh cool air. He had never been so happy. As the coffin was buried he laughed out loud, a real hearty laughter after 25 long years. It created a big hullaballoo at the funeral and outraged angry stares met his broad smile. His father was dead.
“Nurse, look like he will make it!”
Jason had introduced him to Meg. She wasn’t pretty. She was quite an unusual girl with a weird hairdo. They become good friends and she quickly understood him. She didn’t listen for the sake of listening. She listened because she truly cared. She was a nice person and he finally had someone whom he could call the friend. But their friendship didn’t last long. After two weeks, Meg died in car crash. Once more he was alone, left in his cocoon of darkness.
“Doctor, the heart beats are failing.”
Why him, why did he have to run away from his terrifying past, why did he dread the present, and why did his unknown future hunt him? Everyone nauseating moment, every breath he took tortured him. His visions of his childhood tormented him, and nightmares lingered in every shadow. He was despised and ignored. His whole neighborhood loathed and feared him after he nearly murdered a woman beating her child. Some men had beaten him up and saved her life. Ha had almost served her right hand.
He didn’t know what he wanted from himself but he knew he wanted salvation. How could he get it? He would do anything for it. That night he wrestled with his emotion behind closed doors and enclosed cold walls. The menacing cries of the hounds, the mocking laughter of people around him ate his less and same mind. The tornado of wild crazy thoughts left him defeated. He picked up a knife and stabbed himself in the stomach. He groveled and cried in anguish, he cried for all those years that had passed in fear, indescribable pain, and utter loneliness. Steel like coldness engulfed him, he lost consciousness.
The machine beeped louder and signaling the emergency. Tensions mounted in the operating room, nobody spoke. A tear trickled down his face, he had finally found salvation. Andrew Hawkins was dead.
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