The Loss
Luke got down on his knees. He could feel immense pain from them as blood spilled in bits from his burst veins. However, there was a greater pain; a pain he knew would take forever to diminish. It was the pain caused by the loss of a loved one, but his was extreme — he had just lost loved ones. With his sore eyes closed, he gave a soft moan which transcended into a loud displeasing shout with tears flowing down his bloody cheeks. He managed to open his eyes, and he looked at that scene again. To him, it was a horror movie; he saw his beautiful pregnant wife sitting peacefully and stiff like a dead corpse whose spirit had been escorted by the angels to the heavens.
She was at the front seat of the car which had just summersaulted. His two children were also unconsciously seated behind. One was bleeding from his head as the other had his neck distorted. This time he watched them quietly, sadly, like a paralyzed old man. He would smile at them, recognizing them as the people he loved most on earth, then in an instance he would give a terrible visage, remembering what had just happened to them. He was only twelve inches away from them and he had a perfect view. It seemed he was the only one who made it. He turned to the car that had collided into them and he saw a male figure immerge from it, running away from the accident scene into the forest as fast as he could, for he knew the consequences of his sin; over speeding, and he was not ready to pay with his life. This was too much reality for Luke to bare — he collapsed.
‘Where is my family?’ were the first words to explode from his being as he woke up from his unconscious state. He had no time to look around and realize that he was in a hospital bed. ‘Susan, Brad, Matthew…’, the nurses held his strong arms back and tied them to the sides of the bed. ‘Its for your own good Sir, you need to rest,’ they said. He calmed down in defeat. Soon he was asleep, and the nurses looked at him with pity. ‘If only he knew that his wife, along with the fetus, and son were dead, and the only other person who survived was in a serious condition.’ They whispered to themselves.
Luke’s secretary could not help but notice how lost he was at that moment. She doubted that he could hear a thing being discussed in the conference room. It had been an hour since the meeting started and all Luke had contributed to the conversation was the noise he created by persistently pressing the end of his staple pen. She remembered how vibrant he used to look back then, before the accident that occurred six months ago. Now, she could not recognize him; he had deteriorated so much, and he was always not present. She decided to gather courage and speak to him after the meeting, which happened abruptly. She marched to his office to find him withdrawing water from the dispenser with a plastic cup. He managed to smile at her; she smiled back.
‘Is everything alright, Sir?’
Luke’s eyes were locked on his cup. He stood there, as stiff as a log, with his firm hand around the overflowing cup. He did nothing to cease the flow. His secretary observed his frozen body and she surveyed the water that dripped from his cup onto the ground.
‘Yes Felicia, everything is superb,’ he gave an ironic answer.
Among Luke’s family, only Brad had survived. He was 15 years of age and such trauma was a lot for him to take in, but he was collected. There was only one problem — his father. Brad did not understand why his dad spoke to ‘invisible people’ all the time. This happened especially at night. He would hear noises from his father’s room only to get closer to the source and be dismayed: his dad would be chatting gleefully with these ‘invisible people’. He would yell his dad’s name several times but to no avail. In the day time, he sometimes heard his father call his wife’s name as if she were alive. He knew that there was something wrong with his dad, but who was he going to talk to? It only took one occurrence for him to decide who. In that occurrence, daddy once again was not himself and he beat Brad up. He called Luke’s secretary and told her all about it. ‘You’re in danger, Brad. You need to get out of there.’ Felicia had to act fast. Immediately she called the police.
Luke was devastated. He had already lost too much in such a short time, and he was not ready to lose the only thing he had left — his son. During the trial, the judge warned him that his son would be taken away from him if he still showed signs of abnormality. He could not blame his son for calling Felicia, neither could he blame Felicia for involving the police. He knew that something was wrong with him, for it was never normal to have real life conversations with people you literally felt you had known all your life, only to realize it was a hallucination and those people didn’t exist. It was confirmed that he was mentally ill when he was diagnosed of Schizophrenia. It was embarrassing. He looked at himself in the mirror and wondered if it was all worth it. His ‘invincible friend’ said to him, ‘Well you know it’s not all worth it. It’s worth nothing. Split your wrist and take your life! Go join your ancestors, go join your wife!’ This and many voices kept echoing in his head. He was shouting and yelling in his own house; he was like an untamed cat. He roared, ‘Shut up! All of you! You have no right to talk until I tell you to. I own this body, I am the landlord. If you want a say on my territory, you might as well start paying rent!’ There was perfect silence. ‘Much better,’ he said with a smile and walked off to his bedroom, feeling like he was in control for the first time in months.
He woke up the next morning finding solitude. He felt at peace. He walked to the window, shifted the curtains, and breathed in the fresh air. There were no other people that only he could hear. There was utter silence at long last. He headed towards his desk to update his journal. He saw something unusual, an envelope, and on it was written ‘PAYMENT FOR RENT’. But he was no landlord, he had no tenants…. He then remembered the events of the previous day. ‘It cannot be, it cannot be…’ he said repeatedly in agitation. He collapsed.
