15th February 2009 - Emma saw the regret behind a facade that gave light in Aiden’s eyes. Why Aiden? How could you? These questions ran wild in an endless bubble of thoughts. Suddenly, her mind was struck with a throbbing pain and she fell to the ground. She screamed in agony and Aiden, losing faith in his façade, let it drop. He rushed to her side attentively, "Emma, Emma? Are you alright?" "Get away from me! You lying cheating monster!” she spat. Guilt stricken Aiden slowly backed away feeling helpless. The silence of twilight was disrupted by Emma’s cry of pain but was left unheard for the vigilant slept in the quiet of the early morning. Confused and disorientated, she stumbled to her feet and spat at Aiden menacingly, “You’re dead to me, Aiden.” Despite the throbbing pain, she stormed out of their apartment and ran as far as her feet could take her.
As she wished it, Aiden was dead, to her.
Two years later- A polyphonic ringtone blared while my brain was in the mid-rant of a nightmare. My voice sounded dried and cracked, like how a sleeping man's voice should. I tried my best to imitate a greeting as I picked up the phone, “Mmmmflo?” A lady’s voice rang clearly through the room, "Aiden! Where are you!? You are late!” It was like someone had stepped on the fast-forward button; it was an immediate reaction, my body threw itself out of bed and before I knew it, I was rushing out the door with my suitcase intact.I lived a few blocks away from work. Yet, the problem you see is I live very, very on top, the top to be precise. My house was hidden in the clouds, so you could probably imagine the hassle it was to get from top, to bottom. After a painfully long 20 minutes of people getting on and off the elevator, I was quite sure I'd lost my job. I was greeted with the full blast of winter walking out the front door and the noise of avid honkers and car revvers. It was New York's City finest way of saying, "Good Morning!" I broke in to a run; it was pointless trying to get my car. Ironically, I owned a sports car that was rendered useless in the midst of New York City's rush hour. I was about to turn at the next curb when something caught my eye. Not something, but someone.
She wore white, just like how I left her. Her face breathtakingly beautiful and her golden blonde hair radiated the sun’s rays as if specks of gold dust floated luminiscently around her. She stood by Starbucks, gently sipping a hot drink to warm herself from winter. She parted her lips and her breath froze against the harsh winter breeze. Subconsciously, I walked closer till we were tête-à-tête and I was faced with her sparkly blue eyes. "Emma?" I muttered. Her face remained unchanged. I tried a little louder, "Emma?" Her face grew strange but still she remained unresponsive. The strangest occurrence our eyes locked, then she walked on by.
As if I was a ghost.
My usually pink lips were chapped from the cold of winter. The thickest coat I owned happened to be my favourite white cashmere. As I stood by a local coffee house, all snuggled up and warm from a hot cup of chocolate, I heard the same strange whisper, "Emma? Emma?" Hauntingly beautiful, it sent chills running up my spine, the kind that even winter failed to do so. It came from straight ahead, but all there was, was the rush of New York City and an empty pavement. My pager blinked with a warning that I was late for work. I left immediately for some fancy French club that my boss had pre-booked for the celebration of a business merger with a multi-million dollar corporate firm.
Le Poisson Rouge, I glanced up from my monochromatic pager. This was the place. I walked through the door with my head held high and the air of a sophisticated corporate major and swung into action immediately. I schmoozed around with some of the head honchos from the new merger company. We laughed and held intellectual conversations and by the time I was through, I wondered why none of my colleagues had followed suit. I realised why, there she stood in a sea of men with their raging hormones like a bunch of love-struck teenage boys. Emma wore her flowing white dress that complimented the slender shape of her body and I too fell prey to my own pheromones. Jace Mcflurry, a well-known womanizer in the office and also my best mate put his arm around me, "Would ya' look at that. You know her, Aiden?" he said, his strong Irish descent peaking higher than ever. My response took me by surprise, "Yes I do, let's go over and say hello.”
I excused myself from a horde of men to find myself a drink. Mingling was a tiresome chore but what choice did I have? It was my bread and butter. From the corner of my eye, a red-headed man approached me. "Emma," a strange voice said. Yet the Ginger’s lips remained still. The Irish man then spoke, "This bloke over here says he knows you? Any idea?" he smiled. On a regular occasion I would have been flattered by such a handsome young man but what he said was far more curious. "Excuse me, but who are you talking about?" I said curiously. "Well this one of course!" he gestured to an empty space. I looked at him strangely and said,"...But there's no one there."
Jace darted from me to Emma repeatedly. He asked her more seriously now, "Do you know an Aiden Harris, Miss?" Her teeth clenched and her fists balled and the mention of my name, "Yes, I do. What about him?" Jace continued, "Well he is standing right next to me." Suddenly, fear and confusion intermingled with her features; the most prominent of features were her eyes of course. Her angelic face fell and what seemed like guilt and repent tore her apart. She then whispered, "But Aiden Harris is dead, I killed him."
Emma refused to believe I was alive, she started scream and break things. I was brought back to the time when I cheated on her. There was always something different about Emma. The way her face changed from love to worry, from worry to anger and from anger to fear, all in a flash of lightning. As time passed, her condition worsened, she became neurotic and violent. I had always thought Emma was strange but now I realise, there is something genuinely wrong with her.
My head throbbed with so much pain as the voice got louder. The pieces came clearly now, the figure that haunted me was a vague resemblance of Aiden. The devil of my angel. I screamed, “I’m sorry Aiden, I’m sorry I killed you!” Aiden’s devil called out to me, “Emma! Emma!” I heard the shattering of glass and there was blood, so much blood. Then all was quiet as the world faded to black and for a split second, I saw Aiden again, his voice now angelic and his eyes reassuring. He whispered, “Emma, are you alright?” Then his words were lost in the wind as he disappeared behind my eyelids.
Someone had called 911 when Emma started to act violently, there was blood splattered all over the broken pieces of tableware, Emma’s blood. The paramedics had to tranquilize her before she inflicted anymore injuries on herself. I rushed to her side and whispered, “Emma, are you alright?” Before the paramedics took her away, with her eyes fluttering close, she looked at me and smiled, like she could see me. Then I realised that I was still in love with Emma.
Emma’s symptoms demanded she be treated for having psychiatric disorder. The senior psychiatrist had heard of Emma's strange ailment and decided to take lead. The doctor had informed me that the occurrence of her case was the rarest of its kind. It was very peculiar. Her case became far more curious when all her test results turned up negative. There was nothing wrong with her. At least the results seem to think so. There was no cure for her, she was a lost cause. I couldn’t take it anymore so I left, I couldn’t bring myself to hear how the woman I loved, would never be able to see me again.
I felt like a piece of meat, a science experiment as the doctors poked and prodded me in places to check if I was “mentally stable”. I had to give a full account of what happened that night between Aiden and I. It repulsed me. When I was finally discharged from the hospital, I felt just as confused as the night all of this mess took place. I found myself at the foot of the empty apartment where Aiden and I used to live. As I stepped into the forgotten room, I was transported to the night I killed Aiden. It was the 15th of February, 2009. We argued and screamed at the top of our lungs. My expression was as cold as Aiden’s. Yet his façade was breaking lose as I could see the pain in his eyes. I hated fighting, I loved Aiden so much. I knew he had a reason for doing so, but all sense was lost as the pain seeped into my mind. A sharp pain radiated throughout my brain and I screamed in agony. Aiden’s voice came, “Emma, Emma? Are you alright?" "Get away from me! You lying cheating monster!” I retaliated. Then something came unexpected, I grabbed the nearest blunt object I could find and stabbed him continuously till he bled to death. I didn’t hear him scream because all that came next was the darkness. I woke up at the end of the Subway on the 4th Avenue at 5 AM and cried till it was daybreak. What have I done?
There were clothes and broken glass strewn all over the place. Neither Emma and I got around to cleaning this mess, we hated returning here for it was a dent in our memory. We just dropped everything and left, as if this place were haunted. Yet, it is haunted, haunted by our dreadful past. Call it fate or destiny, I wounded up here in hopes that I could see Emma again. Fate was on my side for there she sat, perched on an old stool, sobbing quietly by the kitchen counter. Even though I knew she couldn’t see me, I walked over to her and swung my arms around her waist and kissed the back of her head, for the very last time. I would disappear to let her live normally again. She spent her life rebuilding and remodeling everything the way it was before she met me. It was clear, we have no future.
So I kissed her goodbye.
The sudden warmth of an embrace came, as if an angel had come to kiss my tears away. The warmth was a reminiscent rush of loving memories summoned from a forgotten place in my heart. Nostalgia cascaded down my face in the form of crystal tears as I remembered the similar warmth of Aiden’s hug. I knew, somewhere in a different time or parallel universe, Aiden was beside me, hugging me, comforting me. I sat there in his arms, wishing the ghost of Aiden would always be mine. Finally, Aiden’s devil was gone and his whisper came in a low angelic voice, “Goodbye Emma, I love you.”
Aiden had gone and taken all the warmth of his love with him, leaving the bitterness of winter to seep back into my life. I screamed to the heavens, “Aiden, take me with you!” There was a hollow place in my chest; life would never be the same again, as I felt the ghost of Aiden slip away. My head started to spin and everything became black and white. My life was in a Gaussian blur. I had to see Aiden, for the very last time. I pulled together every conscious sense I had left and staggered to a pile of forgotten photo albums. The pain doubled, excruciatingly so. As I flipped through the pages, pictures of Aiden slowly begun to disappear and all I could see was me. I screamed, in pain, in sadness and in heartbreak. The pain intensified to its peak till I could feel no more. My eyelids started to flutter close. The last thing I saw was a picture of me hugging a mass of thin air, taken right before Aiden’s death. It was like Aiden never existed in my life at all. With my dying breath, I uttered his name for the very last time. Aiden, I’m coming home.
A formal looking envelope arrived at the foot of my front door this morning. As I sat down and drank my morning coffee, I opened the letter and a copy of Emma’s report had fallen out of it. Off the clean piece of paper printed in black ink it read,
I skimmed the rest of the letter briefly but the last sentence was particularly eye-catching as it read,
All of a sudden the phone rang; it was someone from police department.
Emma lay completely still in her peaceful stance, as if she were sleeping. Her face was completely void of colour and her usually tender skin was stone cold. Policemen seem to pace aimlessly around the disheveled apartment, snapping pictures and interrogating the neighbours. Their footsteps were noisy and wild chatter filled the room. Yet the world seemed to revolve around Emma, as all the noise was just an irritating buzz in the background. Caution tapes were messily stranded around the room, encircling Emma's body within it. I walked over to her, pushing my way thorugh the police and evading the caution tapes. As I cradled her dead corpse in my arms, I noticed a tiny piece of paper clasped between her hands. She held it close with her dying clutch, as if it were something precious. Slowly, I unfolded her hands and it revealed a picture of Emma hugging me, the night before it all fell apart.
Engraved on its back were the words, “In loving memory of Aiden Harris.” In that instant I knew, she loved me too.
As she wished it, Aiden was dead, to her.
Two years later- A polyphonic ringtone blared while my brain was in the mid-rant of a nightmare. My voice sounded dried and cracked, like how a sleeping man's voice should. I tried my best to imitate a greeting as I picked up the phone, “Mmmmflo?” A lady’s voice rang clearly through the room, "Aiden! Where are you!? You are late!” It was like someone had stepped on the fast-forward button; it was an immediate reaction, my body threw itself out of bed and before I knew it, I was rushing out the door with my suitcase intact.I lived a few blocks away from work. Yet, the problem you see is I live very, very on top, the top to be precise. My house was hidden in the clouds, so you could probably imagine the hassle it was to get from top, to bottom. After a painfully long 20 minutes of people getting on and off the elevator, I was quite sure I'd lost my job. I was greeted with the full blast of winter walking out the front door and the noise of avid honkers and car revvers. It was New York's City finest way of saying, "Good Morning!" I broke in to a run; it was pointless trying to get my car. Ironically, I owned a sports car that was rendered useless in the midst of New York City's rush hour. I was about to turn at the next curb when something caught my eye. Not something, but someone.
She wore white, just like how I left her. Her face breathtakingly beautiful and her golden blonde hair radiated the sun’s rays as if specks of gold dust floated luminiscently around her. She stood by Starbucks, gently sipping a hot drink to warm herself from winter. She parted her lips and her breath froze against the harsh winter breeze. Subconsciously, I walked closer till we were tête-à-tête and I was faced with her sparkly blue eyes. "Emma?" I muttered. Her face remained unchanged. I tried a little louder, "Emma?" Her face grew strange but still she remained unresponsive. The strangest occurrence our eyes locked, then she walked on by.
As if I was a ghost.
My usually pink lips were chapped from the cold of winter. The thickest coat I owned happened to be my favourite white cashmere. As I stood by a local coffee house, all snuggled up and warm from a hot cup of chocolate, I heard the same strange whisper, "Emma? Emma?" Hauntingly beautiful, it sent chills running up my spine, the kind that even winter failed to do so. It came from straight ahead, but all there was, was the rush of New York City and an empty pavement. My pager blinked with a warning that I was late for work. I left immediately for some fancy French club that my boss had pre-booked for the celebration of a business merger with a multi-million dollar corporate firm.
Le Poisson Rouge, I glanced up from my monochromatic pager. This was the place. I walked through the door with my head held high and the air of a sophisticated corporate major and swung into action immediately. I schmoozed around with some of the head honchos from the new merger company. We laughed and held intellectual conversations and by the time I was through, I wondered why none of my colleagues had followed suit. I realised why, there she stood in a sea of men with their raging hormones like a bunch of love-struck teenage boys. Emma wore her flowing white dress that complimented the slender shape of her body and I too fell prey to my own pheromones. Jace Mcflurry, a well-known womanizer in the office and also my best mate put his arm around me, "Would ya' look at that. You know her, Aiden?" he said, his strong Irish descent peaking higher than ever. My response took me by surprise, "Yes I do, let's go over and say hello.”
I excused myself from a horde of men to find myself a drink. Mingling was a tiresome chore but what choice did I have? It was my bread and butter. From the corner of my eye, a red-headed man approached me. "Emma," a strange voice said. Yet the Ginger’s lips remained still. The Irish man then spoke, "This bloke over here says he knows you? Any idea?" he smiled. On a regular occasion I would have been flattered by such a handsome young man but what he said was far more curious. "Excuse me, but who are you talking about?" I said curiously. "Well this one of course!" he gestured to an empty space. I looked at him strangely and said,"...But there's no one there."
Jace darted from me to Emma repeatedly. He asked her more seriously now, "Do you know an Aiden Harris, Miss?" Her teeth clenched and her fists balled and the mention of my name, "Yes, I do. What about him?" Jace continued, "Well he is standing right next to me." Suddenly, fear and confusion intermingled with her features; the most prominent of features were her eyes of course. Her angelic face fell and what seemed like guilt and repent tore her apart. She then whispered, "But Aiden Harris is dead, I killed him."
Emma refused to believe I was alive, she started scream and break things. I was brought back to the time when I cheated on her. There was always something different about Emma. The way her face changed from love to worry, from worry to anger and from anger to fear, all in a flash of lightning. As time passed, her condition worsened, she became neurotic and violent. I had always thought Emma was strange but now I realise, there is something genuinely wrong with her.
My head throbbed with so much pain as the voice got louder. The pieces came clearly now, the figure that haunted me was a vague resemblance of Aiden. The devil of my angel. I screamed, “I’m sorry Aiden, I’m sorry I killed you!” Aiden’s devil called out to me, “Emma! Emma!” I heard the shattering of glass and there was blood, so much blood. Then all was quiet as the world faded to black and for a split second, I saw Aiden again, his voice now angelic and his eyes reassuring. He whispered, “Emma, are you alright?” Then his words were lost in the wind as he disappeared behind my eyelids.
Someone had called 911 when Emma started to act violently, there was blood splattered all over the broken pieces of tableware, Emma’s blood. The paramedics had to tranquilize her before she inflicted anymore injuries on herself. I rushed to her side and whispered, “Emma, are you alright?” Before the paramedics took her away, with her eyes fluttering close, she looked at me and smiled, like she could see me. Then I realised that I was still in love with Emma.
Emma’s symptoms demanded she be treated for having psychiatric disorder. The senior psychiatrist had heard of Emma's strange ailment and decided to take lead. The doctor had informed me that the occurrence of her case was the rarest of its kind. It was very peculiar. Her case became far more curious when all her test results turned up negative. There was nothing wrong with her. At least the results seem to think so. There was no cure for her, she was a lost cause. I couldn’t take it anymore so I left, I couldn’t bring myself to hear how the woman I loved, would never be able to see me again.
I felt like a piece of meat, a science experiment as the doctors poked and prodded me in places to check if I was “mentally stable”. I had to give a full account of what happened that night between Aiden and I. It repulsed me. When I was finally discharged from the hospital, I felt just as confused as the night all of this mess took place. I found myself at the foot of the empty apartment where Aiden and I used to live. As I stepped into the forgotten room, I was transported to the night I killed Aiden. It was the 15th of February, 2009. We argued and screamed at the top of our lungs. My expression was as cold as Aiden’s. Yet his façade was breaking lose as I could see the pain in his eyes. I hated fighting, I loved Aiden so much. I knew he had a reason for doing so, but all sense was lost as the pain seeped into my mind. A sharp pain radiated throughout my brain and I screamed in agony. Aiden’s voice came, “Emma, Emma? Are you alright?" "Get away from me! You lying cheating monster!” I retaliated. Then something came unexpected, I grabbed the nearest blunt object I could find and stabbed him continuously till he bled to death. I didn’t hear him scream because all that came next was the darkness. I woke up at the end of the Subway on the 4th Avenue at 5 AM and cried till it was daybreak. What have I done?
There were clothes and broken glass strewn all over the place. Neither Emma and I got around to cleaning this mess, we hated returning here for it was a dent in our memory. We just dropped everything and left, as if this place were haunted. Yet, it is haunted, haunted by our dreadful past. Call it fate or destiny, I wounded up here in hopes that I could see Emma again. Fate was on my side for there she sat, perched on an old stool, sobbing quietly by the kitchen counter. Even though I knew she couldn’t see me, I walked over to her and swung my arms around her waist and kissed the back of her head, for the very last time. I would disappear to let her live normally again. She spent her life rebuilding and remodeling everything the way it was before she met me. It was clear, we have no future.
So I kissed her goodbye.
The sudden warmth of an embrace came, as if an angel had come to kiss my tears away. The warmth was a reminiscent rush of loving memories summoned from a forgotten place in my heart. Nostalgia cascaded down my face in the form of crystal tears as I remembered the similar warmth of Aiden’s hug. I knew, somewhere in a different time or parallel universe, Aiden was beside me, hugging me, comforting me. I sat there in his arms, wishing the ghost of Aiden would always be mine. Finally, Aiden’s devil was gone and his whisper came in a low angelic voice, “Goodbye Emma, I love you.”
Aiden had gone and taken all the warmth of his love with him, leaving the bitterness of winter to seep back into my life. I screamed to the heavens, “Aiden, take me with you!” There was a hollow place in my chest; life would never be the same again, as I felt the ghost of Aiden slip away. My head started to spin and everything became black and white. My life was in a Gaussian blur. I had to see Aiden, for the very last time. I pulled together every conscious sense I had left and staggered to a pile of forgotten photo albums. The pain doubled, excruciatingly so. As I flipped through the pages, pictures of Aiden slowly begun to disappear and all I could see was me. I screamed, in pain, in sadness and in heartbreak. The pain intensified to its peak till I could feel no more. My eyelids started to flutter close. The last thing I saw was a picture of me hugging a mass of thin air, taken right before Aiden’s death. It was like Aiden never existed in my life at all. With my dying breath, I uttered his name for the very last time. Aiden, I’m coming home.
A formal looking envelope arrived at the foot of my front door this morning. As I sat down and drank my morning coffee, I opened the letter and a copy of Emma’s report had fallen out of it. Off the clean piece of paper printed in black ink it read,
“Emma noted signs of inverse schizophrenia, believing the absence of people and things that where there. Signs of schizophrenia were often affiliated with hallucinations and bizarre delusions. Emma had psyched herself into believing you were dead for the past two years as her earlier stages of schizophrenia made her believe that she murdered you. Unconsciously, her ailment worked around her desires and instead made you a void in her life. However, she believed that the ghost of you haunted her. Your encounter with her only further confused her brain causing her inverse schizophrenia to worsen...”
I skimmed the rest of the letter briefly but the last sentence was particularly eye-catching as it read,
"...which my finally result in her death."
All of a sudden the phone rang; it was someone from police department.
Emma lay completely still in her peaceful stance, as if she were sleeping. Her face was completely void of colour and her usually tender skin was stone cold. Policemen seem to pace aimlessly around the disheveled apartment, snapping pictures and interrogating the neighbours. Their footsteps were noisy and wild chatter filled the room. Yet the world seemed to revolve around Emma, as all the noise was just an irritating buzz in the background. Caution tapes were messily stranded around the room, encircling Emma's body within it. I walked over to her, pushing my way thorugh the police and evading the caution tapes. As I cradled her dead corpse in my arms, I noticed a tiny piece of paper clasped between her hands. She held it close with her dying clutch, as if it were something precious. Slowly, I unfolded her hands and it revealed a picture of Emma hugging me, the night before it all fell apart.
Engraved on its back were the words, “In loving memory of Aiden Harris.” In that instant I knew, she loved me too.
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