"To Never Be" - Of the Heart

       Still not able to let it go, Nicene asked, “So the man you were in love with, what happened to him?”

       “I met him before I started to believe my mother’s stories, when I was still naive about what I am. It’s actually because of him that I wanted to find out about those stories. He was my first real love, and you know how those are. I was so full of mixed emotions and lust that I didn’t want to believe my world would go on without him.”

       She stopped for a moment, her face was red and flustered. I could tell it was harder to talk about it than she was admitting it was.

       Nicene must have noticed the same thing also, when she decided to say, “I’m sorry Stephanie, I shouldn’t have asked about it.”

       “No Nicene, it’s okay. Both of you need to know this, both of you deserve to know this.” Pausing again, she took a breath, as if summoning up the courage to continue. “He was my first, in every meaning of the word. I was young, in love, and I thought it would last forever. I didn’t know it would hurt him like that, I didn’t know that my love was so strong it would pour myself into him. There was nothing better than the lust I felt around him, but it didn’t take long before I started to notice small changes. The more of myself I seemed to give to him, the more he seemed to become another person. Finally he had changed so much, I broke up with him. I tried to explain that he simply wasn’t the man who I fell in love with, but he didn’t see the changes in himself. The end of our relationship caused him great pain, and much greater rage. He took the emptiness within his heart, and filled it with the power I had given him. He became distant from me, and during the few chances I did get to see him, he seemed only hollow inside. He used the strength which he had taken from me, to fill the void within his heart, and let it pollute his soul. Suddenly one day, he just came back to me, saying that he had to be with me and that he could not live without me. When I said no, he became very angry, almost violent towards me. The man I feel in love with never would have hurt me, but the man standing before me was ready to hurt me to stop his own pain. That is when I first saw it; that moment is when I could actually see the difference in the man I loved and the man before me. That power had completely consumed him, and he had let it.”

       I didn’t notice she had stopped talking right away. I thought it was more of a pause, while she composed herself. After more then enough silence I had decided to speak up, but Nicene had beat me to it.

       “You still haven’t answered my question, what happened to him?”

       Stephanie looked at Nicene, but before she could speak, I burst in, “You don’t have to finish the story, we get the idea already.”

       “I do need to finish the story Tobias, to help you understand. You see, he had given up on himself, and let darkness into his heart. When I denied him again, he was so angry, that he lost sight of himself. He no longer cared about living, he no longer cared about himself, and that is when he let the darkness take control. The darkness manifest itself within him, feeding of his power and anger, pretending to be him. And when this happened, he listened. He let the darkness control him, and became nothing more than a vessel for something else. That night he tried to rape me, saying I would not deny him the pleasures that rightfully belonged to him, and I fought back. I didn’t know what to do, and I was terrified of the creature I saw before me. I was completely over run by the will to survive, and in doing so I let lose all the fear, anger, and power I had inside me, onto him. When I did, the creature inside him fully manifest, taking complete control of David’s body.”

       As soon as she said that, her emotions flooded outward in tears. She fell to the ground, and started crying. It was then I realised she hadn’t said the man’s name throughout her entire story, almost as if on purpose, she had avoided saying his name. I began to move towards her when Nicene pushed me back down behind her. Raising her hand to my shoulder, she shook her head from side to side, but never said a word.

       “I’m so sorry David!” Stephanie spoke aloud, almost screaming as she sobbed, “I was afraid and didn’t understand what was happening. I’m so sorry I ever hurt you. I deserved to die that night, not you!”

       “Stephanie,” I whispered, not really knowing what to say. “Stephanie, like you said, it was him, it was the creature inside him.”

       “NOOOOOOOO!” Screamed Stephanie.

       Suddenly it was silent. When she shouted she had looked up at Nicene and I, and almost as if she was remembering where she was, she stopped weeping. Her heavy breathing filled the air, with an occasional sniffle, and there was silence.

       “Stephanie, you had to do it. It wasn’t him, there was nothing you could do, it would have killed you if you had let it.”

       “Stop it Tobias. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I could have saved him, I could have at least tried to help him.”

       “Stop it!” Nicene yelled. “Don’t be stupid. You’re blaming what happened on yourself. He was the one who gave up on life, that wasn’t your fault.”

       “You don’t know! Stop it, just stop it! Both of you!” shouted Stephanie.

       After thinking about it for a moment, I realised something. She thinks she deserved to die for what she did. She wanted to be forgiven for what she had done to her lover all that time ago. I had to know if I was right, so I asked, “Is that why you wouldn’t fight back in that alley tonight Stephanie?”

       She shot me a look of utter hatred, and growled as she spoke, “How dare you.”

       “Well its’ true isn’t it? You didn’t fight back because you thought you deserved the same fate David would have afforded you.”

       “Shut up!” She howled, “Don’t ever speak his name.”

       “Stephanie, you had to do it. He had already given up on life, you did him a favour.” I could tell she wasn’t hearing what I was saying, so I decided to try the most emotional approach possible. “If David really loved you, would he be able to live with himself after hurting you?”

       After hearing that, her eyes went wide, and she seemed to stop breathing for a moment. She just sat there, propped up on her knees, staring at her hands, and finally exhaled. “I know it wasn’t him Tobias, but he still didn’t deserve to die that way.”

       “Stephanie, from what you’ve said, he was already dead inside, you just destroyed the darkness with his heart.” At least that is how I was hoping it worked, because I had the same burden to bare as Stephanie now. I had killed a man who had given away his life, but did that make it right? As long as I kept telling Stephanie, and as long as I kept telling myself that it was the right thing to do, then I will be fine.