A Reason to Live
Marcus Shepard
Hi, there is no sex in this. I don't even give you a physical description. This story is sad. To maximize the experience, I recommend a cup of Black Chie Spice Tea, with a little bit of milk, sweetened to taste, and having Evanescence's "My Immortal" playing over and over again in the background. Also, I think a dark room would be a good idea... The lyrics are in italics and are meant to be read with the story, but are not an actual part of the letter, just an overlay. As always, this never happened, I was never here, and you didn't see thing.
A Reason to Live
To My Dearest Love,
A year and a day has always been a sacred time in my religion. The time Cerridwen stirred her cauldron. The time to initiate to the faith, the time of the handfasting. This time of my mourning. A year and a day had past since your death my beloved; time unbearable. Time I could no longer bare. You never left me, my love, only went just beyond reach, to the far side of the horizon. Now that time had past, how could I live on as I have?
I'm so tired of being here. Suppressed by all of my childish fears, and if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave. Your presence still lingers here, and it won't leave me alone...
I see you, everyday. When I close my eyes, your image is burned on the inside of my eyelids; the child, now lost. When I open my eyes, I see you, floating before me. Constantly there. The Priestess said it would pass; but you are there none the less. I see you, reach to you; I try to stroke your cheek, as I did countless times before. But my hand only passes through the incorporeal form, dissipating you for a moment; like smoke in the wind. And for a moment, I see you die again. Once more taken from before me.
These wounds won't seem to heal; this pain is just too real. There's just too much that time cannot erase...
Time has faded nothing. The pain is the same. The ach of your lack, the shame of my failure to protect you. They tell me there is nothing I could have done to save you, but it matters not. I know the blame is mine. I know it in my heart; I know it in my soul. Every fiber of my being screams it to me with each undeserved breath I take. Your life, your soul so young, stolen from this world; while I live on. If living you can call it. My purpose, my reason, gone with a single stroke of fate's curl brush.
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears, when you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears. And I held your hand through all of these years, but you still have all of me...
The nights you came to me; your a shelter in the storm. A harbor from your bad dreams. A shoulder when the world was cruel to my beloved boy. Years together, your friend, your mentor, your lover, your worshiper. You were my everything then... you still are my everything. What am I now? My soul has gone with you, my love.
You used to captivate me by your resonating light. But now I'm bound by the life you left behind. Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams. Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me...
The radiance of your soul is still seen by me. Your friends still miss you. A year and a day, and the sight is still marked by flowers and pictures and mementoes. Some leave letters to you there. I find my self talking to you, even now. I hear you answerer me as though you where at my shoulder, always. I dream of you, when I sleep. I see your face, your smile, your love. I see how you were. I see you die every night; I wake up screaming. You are all I think of.
These wounds won't seem to heal; this pain is just too real. There's just too much that time cannot erase...
Why should I go on with this pain? What point is there to my continuation without you? A year and a day, but no new point has entered my life. I've looked, I swear I have. Another child to shelter from the storm. Nothing had come. Nothing could replace you, my beloved. There is was substitute for the life you are to me.
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears, when you'd I'd fight away all of your fears. And I held your hand through all of these years, but you still have all of me...
Where are you? Have you gone on, or are you still here. I see you, but can't touch you. What life is that? You were my everything, my immortal.
I tried so hard to tell my self that you're gone, and though you're still with me, I've been alone all along...
But I haven't been alone, you are waiting for me. How can I make you wait any longer? A year and a day is long enough waiting. I stand before the cliff overlooking the ocean. The place we first met. The place I will meet you again. I took a breath, and prepared to step over the edge, and plummet down through the air, through the murky depths of the cold water, and into the warmth of the Summerland, and the corporeal embrace of you, my love. Once more to stroke your cheek.
Almost, I lift my foot... I don't... I feel the warmth of a hand slipping into my own. Small, like yours was. I look down to see your friend Tommy, standing beside me, overlooking the ocean with me. His face was damp with tears, and countless more threatened to spill forth from his eyes. He hugged my hand against his chest; I could feel his silent sobs. I knelt beside him, and held his form against me. I raised a hand, and wiped the tears from his cheek. I squeezed his hand in mine, offering what strengths I could in my own weakness.
Can you forgive me, my love? I could not leave him there, alone; no matter how much I wanted to be with you, I could not. So now what do I do my love? Is it a betrayal of you, to live for him? Can you forgive me, for letting him fill a part of my heart, when my heart has always been yours? I have a reason to live now, and can not do otherwise... I love you still and always.
Yours in eternal love,
Marcus
End
Love it? Hate it? Loath it? Harboring homicidal tendency towards the writer? Let me know. Luminously_I_Dream@yahoo.com . But most of all, tell me if you read it this far...