Regret

• Daniel Beydoun, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2022

As the sun settled below the horizon, the man wept across the rounded stone set before him. The frosty night air closed around him and an old bird screeched starchily into the sorrowful night. Every moment of the pain the man felt was channelled into the bed of grass before him where his hopes and dreams were buried beneath the earth. The bitterness was like a knife in his gut, slowly driving deeper and deeper in, driving the life out of him, killing him bit by bit. Darkness enclosed the surroundings but the man only saw the light coming from the stone, a light that was speaking to him. "Come my love", it said, over and over again, slowly driving his head into madness as the desperation and guilt he felt gnawed at his heart.
"Come my love", the voice said again, the sound deafened him as he felt himself sliding towards the stone. Every word said by the light urged him to do something; speak, move, scream, sleep, but all he could do was stare at the stone and the bed of grass beneath it, letting all joy and happiness go into it, leaving a corpse behind. A corpse whose life had been ruined by a single action. A corpse whose life would never be the same because of stupidity. A corpse whose life and meaning lay 5 feet under the earth, and a corpse who had valued arrogance and pride, over humbleness and love. As the tears slipped down his face, he felt all the riches and treasures he had earnt over a lifespan of work come to nothing and in that moment, the only thing that meant anything to him was the pile of bones under the stone in front of him.
"Come my love" the voice said again, and he felt something snap inside of him, rage that had been built up over the years came out in a sudden flurry of emotion, unleashing every bit of sorrow he had ever felt and endured into a sentence, a sentence that he had been trying to say all his life, but his pride and business had got in the way, a sentence that if said would have done miracles, a sentence that would have changed his life.
" I am sorry ", the man said in a shallow rasp of breath, and for the final moments of his life he felt something he had never felt before, something that he had been wanting to find all his life but could never seem to get, peace.
"Come my love", the voice said a final time and this time the man listened, slowly sinking to the floor feeling his life slip before him and the darkness enclose around him. Slowly but surely, the man sunk onto his wife's grave saying one final thing before his end.
" I am here ".