Another powerful short story from one of our talented authors.
PAIN by Annabelle Stevens
"Get it through your thick skull! It's over! It's over!" shouted Sarah, growing increasingly agitated with every word.
"But... why? What's wrong? I mean, what have I done? I don't understand...." came Tom's anguished reply. "I mean, I thought things were going so well between us!"
"Look, just go away, will you! You're sad, pathetic," was her biting reply.
Tom gaped at Sarah in horror, and felt his chin began to quiver. Oh please God, don't let me cry not in front of her...
"Look Tom, we've only been going out with each other for a month. I'm surprised it's even last this long. You'll get over it," Sarah said without the least bit of sympathy.
"All right, I accept your decision, but could you at least tell me what it is that I've done?" Tom demanded angrily.
"You're boring. You never want to go anywhere, or do anything. And to top it all off, you're really weird!" Sarah accused, flailing her arms frustratedly in an attempt to get her point across.
With that she stormed off, leaving Tom alone with his grim thoughts. He tried desperately to come to terms with what had just happened, but all the same, it was a terrible blow.
At first he had been numbed by Sarah's unprovoked verbal assault, but now the painful emotions started to well up inside of him.
The words 'pathetic' and 'weird' echoed in his head remorselessly, and the anguish flowed through him, threatening to wash away all other sensations.
With only a few words, Sarah had turned his entire world upside down. How could things ever be the same again?
Dusk was rapidly descending on the park, and the chill wind caused Tom to tremble.
It brought him out of his daze briefly, however, and he headed back to his house with a heavy tread.
Tom kept his head down, looking at the cracks in the sidewalk as he tried desperately not to think about Sarah. In this melancholy mood, he began to wonder about her abusive words.
Were they really true? Was he boring, pathetic, weird?
Tom had never been popular or successful. Tom had always been the quiet one at school, ordinary, perhaps a bit too shy for his own good.
Now he began to grow angry, not with Sarah, but with himself for having been such a failure.
"What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I have to ruin everything?" he muttered to himself, barely able to breathe.
He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat, which signalled another unmanageable welter of emotions about to surface again. His hurt, confusion and anger surged up, and he could do nothing but mentally denigrate himself.
As he neared his house, he was relieved to see it in darkness. All of his housemates were no doubt out on dates. After all, it was a Friday night. That's what normal people did.
Tom, he was weird, he criticised himself as he turned the key in the lock and headed up to his room. Why pretend any more?
He didn't bother to turn on the lights, preferring the darkness as he sat with his ashtray cradled in his hands, and fumbled in his jacket pockets for his lighter and cigarettes. His movements were mechanical. He was still far too preoccupied with his cataclysmic breakup with Sarah to think of anything else.
But to dwell on the scene was to self-inflict the cutting pains over and over again.
In an attempt to distract himself, Tom lifted the CD nearest to him, and popped it into the stereo which glowed dimly in the deepening twilight.
The song lyrics suddenly began to make sense to him. "Love is suicide.... The empty bodies stand at rest, casualties of their own flesh...."
Tom suddenly felt an agonising jolt of pain. Looking down sharply, he realised he had stabbed himself in the hand with his smouldering cigarette butt.
Fascinated and repelled, he looked at the glowing end for a millisecond, before pressing it back down onto this palm deliberately.
The physical pain was almost a relief after the inner torment he had just experienced. At least it was tangible, there was a reason, an explanation for the agony he was enduring.
The moment of madness left Tom passed almost as quickly as it had manifested itself. He went into the bathroom and flicked on the light.
He washed his hand carefully, glad to be doing something practical and then he dressed the wound neatly and efficiently with some burn cream and a band-aid, as he had once seen his pretty new housemate Rebecca do for his friend Tim.
As he worked carefully, he asked himself honestly, Was she worth it? Was Sarah so special that he had to just accept her assessment of him and his life?
Surely there had to be other women out there who would find him interesting, attractive?
But why bother? The pain of his hand reminded him of other pains, even worse than the emotional turmoil. There was old age, illness, despair, poverty.
Why suffer, when he could end it all now? He was a reject on the scrap heap of life. Anything he had ever wanted had turned to nothing. Why endure the never-ending catalogue of disappointments and torments, when one flick of the gas, one whiff, would be enough to end it all?
Tom trudged downstairs into the darkness, and opened the oven door wide. He blocked off the edge of the window and the bottom of the door leading to the hall with some tea towels, and turned on the jet.
Within minutes he could smell the sickly odour, and put his head down on the table, taking deep gulps as he did so.
Then a voice from far away was calling, "Tom! Tom!"
Was it his dead mother? Was there really an after life?
"Tom, why did you do it? Why?" came the agonised voice of Rebecca, Tom's newest housemate.
"Sarah dumped me," he muttered, trying to lift himself up off the cold floor tiles.
"Oh thank god, you're alive!" Rebecca exclaimed, almost in tears. "No, Tom, lie still, you're not well enough to stand up yet."
"I don't give a damn!" Tom muttered rebelliously. "I'm such a screw up. I can't even commit suicide right!"
He tried to rise and push past her, but Rebecca clung onto him, offering him support as he made his way towards the nearest chair.
Then she knelt down in front of him to look up into his face in the almost dark room. "And why would you want to kill yourself?" Rebecca demanded, now furious. "You're handsome, funny, with a great career. I thought you and Sarah were never right for each other, but with all my strange nursing hours, I didn't think I could manage to juggle a boyfriend and my job at the same time. And of course I didn't want split you guys up.
"But if it's really over with her, then here it goes. Tom, I want you more than any other guy I've ever met in my life. Will you please, please go out with me?"
Tom began to laugh then, so that Rebecca stood up angrily and began to storm out of the room. But Tom darted over to the door, blocking her way.
"I expected a lot of answers, yes or no amongst them, but never in a million year did I imagine you would be such a creep as to laugh in my face!" Rebecca wailed, near tears.
"I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at myself," Tom admitted, pulling Rebecca's slender body close to his. "And to think I tried to kill myself over a bitch like Sarah, when all the while, I liked you. And what's even better, you actually liked me."
Rebecca hugged him to her in relief then, and Tom melted into her warm, comforting embrace.
"Come on, let's get the windows open before the lads get home. But whatever you do, don't turn on the lights or smoke."
"Thank you. You've literally saved my life."
She stroked his cheek tenderly. "We'll save each other's."
Then she stepped away to fling the kitchen window open wide.
Tom shed a few tears of pain, but especially joy, an emotion he had almost thought, and almost been, incapable of feeling ever again.
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