A Flame From The Past

44: Red and Gold Pt.1

"I'm so sorry". The words repeated, over and over again like they were trying to take back something already done, the words themselves were like daggers in my heart as I felt tears dripped on my skin.

"I'm so sorry". He cried out, the words fisting against my skin like bullets being drawn. His words didn't suffice as he cried, the tears leaving wet blankets on my skin. He was remorseful and regretful, his feelings wavering around me like they were all I could feel.

"I'm so sorry". He cried out, over and over again. The type of crying that was full of pain and misery, the type of pain that was carried by the weight of the world, and that world was finally collapsing.

My fingers shot up, into the sky as I felt a hand, grasp them, and he held it closely, feeling the breeze against my skin and the feeling of moving, but I was perfectly still. I was dying. I felt my lungs cave in, my skin irritated, my head pounding.

I was dying.

The rush, the pandemonium made me claw for breath as the discovery sent the people around me into a frenzy. The drive home, the car chasing me, the crash, the call I remembered it all, I remembered it and then the pain set in. My hands, my legs shot up and down my spine, my eyes opened to see the white lights, and as I looked over I saw Luca, running beside me. Tears streamed down his face as he grabbed for my hand, holding me one last time.

"She's awake, let's sedate her". The doctor's voices faded in and out of my head as Luca's mouth opened but it seemed mumbled, unclear.

I needed Ray. I needed to find him. I didn't come home. I didn't come home to him, he always promised I had to come home. I had to. I couldn't leave him, I couldn't.

"Ray". I coughed out, speaking but it was like no one could hear me, like the words hadn't made it out of my mouth, it was like they faded into the background noise.

"I'm so sorry". He said, which was the last thing I heard as my eyelids got sleepy, as the music around me started to fade into existence.

I always wondered where we would go once we die, I wasn't a believer in god. I didn't find light in some end of a tunnel, I believed in tragedy, that we were all on this earth to save ourselves, to save each other. At the end of the day life isn't a test, this isn't a trial period to see if we make it in or not, this is it. There is no glowing card that you get at the end of this, there isn't someone with a pen and paper tallying up every bad thing you do. And there isn't someone keeping track of every good thing either.

My eyes took charge as I opened them again, I was back at home in my small small town I had run away from. And my father was sitting at the table, my mother nowhere in sight but there was her calendar splayed out on the floor. My father sat at the table as if there wasn't a mess on the floor, like he didn't notice it all, like it wasn't there, he looked at me the same way like I wasn't there as he swung his beer bottle back getting the last bits.

Whether I had ever admitted it to anyone, even my own mind. My father was a good person, stricken by tragedy, he was supposed to be the greatest, he was supposed to be something marvelous and all through those seven years he was the greatest to me, he was something marvelous to me. He played because he loved it, not because he was good.

"Football ruined my life". The same argument over and over again, and I began to feed into it. I saw how much it had ruined him, ruined who he was. He would shout it out whenever he could, like it was his battle cry. Like it was his excuse for everything he did.