Fate Worse Then Death

• Aaron Garrett, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2010

Being a teenager is the greatest experience that everyone is given that chance to have. Not one teenager can say that they don’t see the world as their oyster and that they all feel indestructible, even I felt like that once, until I was struck by a car going to my seventeenth birthday bash. I could remember seeing the sky and clouds rush about as I came crashing to the ground to end up facing the car that hit me. The driver was a man in his mid thirties, who stood over me as my life was drifting into the realm of the afterlife. My father came running around the corner of the street yelling my name, startling my assailant. The driver ran back to his car and drove off in a psychotic manner, leaving my farther to hold me in his hands as I slowly drifted into darkness, causing him to feel helpless to save me.
That was my last memory of him before I passed on hoping to join the eternal kingdom of peace that so many people had preached about. To my surprise I couldn’t pass on until my father came to terms with what happened, leaving me no choice to roam about the earth as a spectre forever following my farther. In my mind I expected to follow him for only a few months and see him return to his normal, cheery self, but he turned to a darker side that I had never seen. I watched as he planned for his revenge on the man that killed me, spending every day planning his demise and even going to the extent of purchasing a gun. This became his only goal, slowly consuming him until he finally located him five years later in the downtown area in a rundown apartment building. I had no choice but to follow him
He reached the outside of the door and forced his way in, drawing his gun at my killer. He slowly fell to his knees and begged for mercy, but my farther wouldn’t grant him this gift of life. The hammer fell and was only followed by an eerie silence for many minutes.
I heard him whimpering the words “Why isn't the pain disappeared?”
His guilt over not being able to save me couldn’t be healed by this act of violence, for many years after he took up heavy drinking and became a raging alcoholic. As every day that passed, I wished that I could say to him that it wasn’t his fault but I couldn’t. Every night he would cry himself to sleep and as time passed I watched him slowly slip away from the living to become and empty soul.
To die is a fact of life but to watch a loved one that cared for you so dearly slowly destroy themself in front of you, unable to stop them or assist them is a fate worse than death, a fate unknown by anyone.