The Last Letter
By Jeffrey Miska
Published by Jewimi Book Publishers
Copyright 2012
To find other stories and works by Jeffrey Miska, visit his website at https://www.timespirits.com
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Marie arrived home after working her part time job as the receptionist at a local veterinary clinic. She walked into her house this evening the same as any other, hungry and ready to change into comfortable clothing for the night. Being a Friday, she had one of the few luxuries this night, that a full time college student studying veterinary medicine could have. This luxury was the freedom to do nothing, except relax and look forward to a weekend off from school.
Marie lived in a modest home in Laval Quebec with her mother, father, and Grandmother. She grew up living with two brothers who were considerably older than she, and had moved out on their own last year. As a family, there was nothing unusual about them, although Marie’s Grandmother was an unique woman who led a very interesting life.
She was born in Paris and lived there for most of her childhood. There were also some horrible years living in France as a young girl during the German occupation of WW II. After the war, she got married and moved with her husband to Montreal Canada and stayed in Canada ever since that day.
That evening, Marie ate dinner with her family and after helping her mother clean up the dishes, she sat in their dining room at the table as everyone else stumbled off to their respective places throughout the house.
Her evening routine began the same it always did by checking facebook as well as text messages from her many friends. Tonight however, the usual reply to from her boyfriend Phillip was delayed in arriving. He was away at school and they’d not seen one another for months now.
Hours had passed before she finally heard the familiar tone assigned to his texts and looked at her phone to find a lengthy series of paragraphs. It didn’t take long before his message became terribly clear. Marie realized that this poorly contrived and despicable message from her boyfriend of over two years was a lengthy but clear message to discontinue their relationship. Even more upsetting to her, he had picked the cowardly method of writing it in a text of all things, instead of telling her face to face.
It had been written as one might drop a request to pick up milk, or send a reminder to show up at a dentist appointment. It’s true that he was away at college, but even a phone call, a heartfelt shred of verbal remorse or a two week delay until winter break would have been more acceptable than this. To add to the trauma of the entire event, this came as a complete shock to her as well. It was difficult and painful for her to accept that he would terminate a relationship this meaningful in such a horrible way and she felt shattered by the shock and initial pain of a broken heart.
Reading his text that evening, she was astonished at how the words he’d written seemed so unlike the person she loved or could have ever loved. Her desperation during the moments that followed drove her to consider the most degrading of responses.
“Should I beg him to stay with me?” she thought.
“I must be able to do something to save what we have? Why is he doing this to me? What did I do?”
Her mind was in complete turmoil.
These questions flowed and cascaded through her mind like the tears streaming down her face. As thoughts continued to race in her head, her feelings of hopelessness were profound. All the dreams crushed by this simple note became seemingly endless.
The sun was just going down.
Running straight to her room as though it offered sanctuary, she fell on her bed squeezing her phone in her hand. Night was now upon her and with it came more questions.
The questions drawn from the most enigmatic and darkest corners of her mind. Those distorted and self targeted arrows made of doubt in one’s self that travel swift in the darkness and wound deeply when ones armor becomes broken or torn. It was a whisper of that silent “other” in a person’s mind, usually in the background but now clearly audible in the solitude.
It was a voice compelling her to consider that she might not be worthy of love at all.
That night, her ability to sleep soundly was completely removed from possibility. The hours passed as a horror of tearful thoughts and restless cat naps. She was in a half awake state reliving happy memories that she now felt as nightmares and regrets. She frequently lost any hope of sleep as a refuge from her pain and at one point gave up trying to sleep entirely.
Marie sat up in her bed, blew her nose and walked into the bathroom to turn on the light. As she looked into the mirror with eyes squinting in the bright light, she saw a reflection of a face unknown to her. It was a face so void of the inner happiness it radiated earlier in the day. Her eyes were swollen and red with blotches on her skin that seemed to be everywhere. Her eyes burned and radiated a palpable heat as prominent as the painful lump in her throat.
Placing a cold washcloth on her face, it brought a coolness that seemed to bring her some inner comfort. It cleared her mind enough to focus on a question that still seemed unanswerable.
“How would I respond to such calculated words of abandonment?” she thought.
“What do I say to a person who in almost every way is dead to me now? Living but dead. Yes that’s exactly what it is!” finding comfort in the revelation.
“I’m trying to come to terms with a person who to me, has tragically died, yet I might see him someday in the most common of places. At a car wash or the store, or walking down the street with someone else holding his hand. My god this is worse than watching them die.”
Again, she began to weep as she turned off the light and walked back to sit in her bed. Looking up with vision blurred by the remnants of tears left in her eyes, she could read the teal colored numbers on her alarm clock as 3:23 AM.
Her phone now sounded like a broken oven timer that buzzed again and again. She knew, it was friends who must have seen her seemingly vanish from the social network of life, yet she could do nothing to appease them or herself. Whether it was the distraction of her phone, or the simple end of her minds endurance to continue Marie fell asleep.
The following morning, the sun broke brightly shining through the trees that lined the yard of her house. Sun stippled reflections of the bare leafless branches of maple trees cast their shadows on the walls of her room. As her eyes fluttered and opened to see that lovely morning light, there was a brief moment that passed like smoke in a swift breeze.
For that fleeting time, she felt as though everything was as it was and she felt the same peace she usually carried within her, but within moments, her conscious mind robbed her of that gift. She was robbed of something taken for granted by so many people so many days of their lives. Simple peace of mind.
The sad memory of what happened the night before consumed her again, yet although deeply sad, there had been some change that occurred during the few hours of sleep she’d been blessed with.
The crushing pain of betrayal and her own self doubt had been transformed into something new. She could feel the pain of her emotional wounds but the bleeding had stopped and the permanent scar that would inevitably remain made her angry.
So angry.
She was angry he did this to her. Angry how he did it and angry that she let herself become so vulnerable to being a victim. She felt like an oblivious fool wading throu
gh the clouded waters and hopeful fantasies of love blind girl. Regret and sadness from the night before became a commitment to guard herself so this could never happen again.
Now empowered by some inner determination, she picked up her phone and began to read the urgent requests and heartfelt messages from friends who were trying to reach her. It was apparent that the untold tragedy in Marie’s love life from twelve hours ago had been as visible to the world as the sun shining in her window.
Friends trying to help her and console her, offset the sickness in her gut she felt after reading the newly posted status of her boyfriend Phillip as, “single”. The tears welled up in her eyes again, but this time, fueled by anger, she clenched her fists and slammed her right hand down onto the bed.
“No!” she growled.
“I’ve shed enough tears for the likes of a person who could do that to me.”
She on the bed with teeth clenched and her blood boiling. After thinking for a moment, she dropped her head and stared down at Philips name in her list of contacts.
“I still don’t know what to say.” she mumbled.
She instead chose to respond to the dozens of messages and requests of those concerned about her well being, her friends. It went on for hours throughout