STRANDED
1350 Words
DARREN
*****
[When you make a choice, you also choose the consequences.]
It's been several years that I have been looking for Culture. She left me without prior notice. She left me stranded with so many memories. Happy and Sad, those memories haunted me in my loneliness. My life was never the same after that.
I searched every nook and every corner of the world for her but to no avail. I had lost her forever. Yet I was persistent about finding my heartbreaker.
...
"I love you Darren. I always have and I always will." She claimed to have loved me. And it still feels like yesterday when I last hugged her. I loved her so much but she claimed to love me more.
Liar!
All those promises that she made to me were lies. She had sugarcoated all those beautiful words. And I was a fool to believe her all through those years. What else could I do? She was my first love and I was only trying to figure things out. I trusted her enough to let her plunder me thoroughly of my emotions.
I was never the same after she left. It was hard to pinpoint as to when I turned into a stone figurine. The agony was too much to handle, so that I drowned myself in the darkness once again. Feelingless! Numb! I became a walking dead after tasting my first ever heartbreak.
....
I tried saving my soul but my attempts to move on from her ended up in a long list of ex-lovers. Culture must have cursed me, I have never found my happiness in any other girl but her. I tried my best to forget her. But no other living woman could take her place. She was special. She has always been special to me.
"I can't live without you, Ren," I often heard her during my dates with some other woman. Her trembling voice echoed inside of me and I could bear the heaviness no more.
"Promise me, Ren, that you will never let me go!" She had smiled at me with a gloomy face way back when she had left me emotionally. It was true that Culture left me emotionally before departing physically from me. I also knew for the fact that I had been the one to hurt her so much, so that all she did was to leave. And whenever I tried dating and moving on, that gloomy face of hers taunted me.
Marking me would be an understatement. She bought my soul for herself for this life. Regardless of whatever I did, I was incapable of erasing her from my heart. Her name is engraved in my brain in such a way that even if I could forget myself, she would still stay with me until I leave this world.
She deprived me of my ability to fall in love. I had turned into a working machine, functional but devoid of emotions. It was her, always, that held the power to change me and bring me back to light. But it took me my lifetime to understand that she also had the power to break me apart into several thousand pieces.
*****
"Sir, your meeting with the HR Team is at 15:00. The issue on Montgomery Tea Estate is being handled by the PR department. We have sent our best representatives and they have informed us that the Worker's Union are finally settling for the amount that we have offered them." My secretary, Azalea, was informing me about my schedule.
'That's better!' I responded, not wanting to look at her face. Women are the same, after all. They are either liars or gold diggers.
"Sir, Miss Glory will be staying in the Aurora Apartments tonight." I tapped the glass table before looking at my secretary. I always hated that name because she made me do the unthinkable. I tend to lose control whenever she is around. She was hot and spicy. She was an ointment to my broken heart, but still, she was nowhere near Culture.
...
"Anything else, Miss Black?" I asked her through my clenched jaw. Azalea just shook her head in answer. "Are we done now?" I eyed her up and down.
'I would take your leave then, sir.' She backed away in understanding.
-----
Making a choice leaves you with the consequences. I understood that better than anyone else. Well, it all started with Gloria Liu, GG, my fiancee. She was set to accompany me to Paris the day after. I had a meeting there and she had her affairs to handle. Modelling was her passion and she had bagged an offer to walk in the prestigious NTFD in Paris. My model fiancee had everything that a man needed. Beauty. Talent. Figure. Power. Wealth. Respect. But still I couldn't give her what she deserved. She deserved to be loved. She deserved my attention and care for being with me throughout the time when I was mourning for Culture.
....
"I fear that you will stop loving me once you are engaged with her." I saw her blue eyes that had hypnotised me every time I looked at her. Culture was never there but her photograph was similar to her physical presence. I carried her photograph in my wallet everywhere. That way I always believed that she was with me. Her accusation stopped me whenever I tried to get close to GG. She left me but her words never left my mind. I could never love my fiancee the way she deserved. I didn't know how to love her with my wounded heart. Everytime I f****d GG I had to forget my sanity by infusing alcohol into my system. My sanity always reminded me of Culture's dark black hair cascading down to her shoulders.
*****
Even though I was stone-hearted, I had to prepare myself well before meeting a lookalike of my ex-girlfriend. GG was a different person entirely. She wasn't as pale as my ex-lover, neither was she as tall as her. However, she liked styling herself almost similar to Culture. The way she called me always pushed me back to my good old days with my ex. For that reason, I had to make preparations. I downed dozens of beer bottles and rum and anything that smelled like alcohol, like always.
......
'You are home, Ren!' Her eyes danced in the joy of seeing me. Nothing much has changed in the Aurora Apartments except for the furniture. What has necessarily changed is the woman from Culture to GG. Otherwise, the building was the same, the weather was the same and I was the same person whom she chose to leave behind.
'Yes, I am.' I said, kissing her on her lips. I was brave enough to do that to her only because of the alcohol running in my veins.
"I missed you." She said, breaking our kiss. "I missed you too baby!" I never called her by her name. My mouth was habituated to calling somebody else's name. Glory was foreign. She was still an outsider to my heart.
"Come here!" She said, running her hands through my upper torso and the lust in my system ran wild. The night was young. Fire ignited as soon as my hands started roaming around her fragile body. We didn't care about anybody else. We didn't need to worry about anyone because we had been engaged for the past five years. It was set that I was going to marry Glory Liu, heiress of the Glee Entertainment Industry.
Our clothes were scattered all over the place right from the entrance to the master bedroom. We spent the rest of the night in utter nakedness. We had s*x like all other times. GG satisfied my desire but she could never quench the hunger of my heart. She was a substitute but I could never tell her that.
"I can't live without you, Ren." I always heard Culture's voice in GG's words. It was more like my imagination. I was bound to my Cult, forever.
*****
- Writer
