Lost dreams

It all started when I left my family at my deceased aunt's funeral and met a crying girl by the wall. She was dressed in black, her raven hair covering her face. I approached. When she heard my footsteps, she turned her eyes toward me. From the first moment I saw her, I felt something shift inside me. A sensitive part of me, something everyone had been so effective at killing lately, was reborn. I approached her and asked what had happened. She replied that her boyfriend had dumped her. I learned that her name was Cecilia, she was twenty years old, and she lived, surprisingly, a hundred paces away. I had never seen her before. When I asked her why she had left me, she replied that she had just moved yesterday, and that was the reason her boyfriend had broken up with her. After a long conversation, I finally asked the question that had been troubling me for a long time. I had to know why she was sitting in the cemetery, and why she was trying to come to terms with the loss of her boyfriend there. Then I heard words that have always been close to my heart: "I like being close to the end." We moved to a nearby grave that looked as if it could hold twenty people. I texted my mom that I wasn't going to any of the ceremonies at my uncle's house, and we continued talking.

When it got dark, we lay on the grave and watched the stars. We lay there until about 1:00 a.m. and then headed back to our homes. I don't know if it was love at first sight, but I felt like I was floating on clouds. She was perfect. Too perfect. And walking with her at night, I felt like I was floating on waves of sensitivity. Suddenly, I heard the screech of tires and a loud crash.

When I woke up, I didn't know if it was a dream or not, but when I opened my eyes, I saw Ceclila's bloody face above me. I asked her quietly what had happened to her, and she replied that it wasn't her blood, but mine. I didn't understand. I asked her to explain. She then told me the whole story of how I was hit by a drunk driver in a red Opel Astra. She called an ambulance and saved my life. She administered CPR and CPR. I asked in a whisper, because I couldn't speak otherwise, if she had administered mouth-to-mouth. She replied with a slight smile that she had. I said I was very grateful, because I finally had someone to live for, and I regretted not being conscious during the CPR. She told me something that affected me better than any medication at the time. Now, if I remember her words correctly, I think I'll quote her: "CPR? Whenever you want, honey." Ten minutes later, the doctor came and told me the extent of my injuries. Both legs were broken. The right one in two places, the left in three. Six broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a fractured lumbar vertebra, forty-eight stitches all over my body, a punctured right lung, a crushed duodenum, and a few other minor scratches. I told him it probably wasn't so bad if I was alive, breathing on my own, thinking, and feeling all my body parts. Then the doctor said the words that shook me: "There have been many severe cases, but in your condition, only one in five hundred survives. You were damn lucky, boy. The worst is behind you." I looked at Cecilie and said, "You can't kill me now if my guardian angel is with me."

That accident brought us together. She spent several hours in the hospital every day. She took better care of me than anyone ever had. I was in bed for about two months. And that was the sweetest vacation of my life. Thanks to alcohol and that driver, my dreams of happiness finally came true. We met every day, talked for hours about everything and nothing. The topics of conversation didn't matter, nothing mattered except that we were together.

The idyll lasted eight months, and we still felt the same way about each other as we had at the beginning. One day, we went for a walk to the cemetery, to our favorite grave, and saw four people standing on the path, dressed like people we both hated—in tracksuits. As we passed, one turned toward me and elbowed me in the ribs. I cringed, and all I could see was the toe of one of them's shoe. After a while, I woke up, looked at Cecilie lying next to me, walked over to her, rolled her onto her back, and saw a red stain beneath her. When I saw blood flowing from where the knife had just been, I screamed with all my might. When I saw the knife lying nearby, I grabbed it and stood up. I saw my future victims walking toward the cemetery gate. I silently ran up behind them, grabbed the hand of the first one, and spun him around so I was face to face with him. With one swipe, I severed his carotid artery. At that moment, the others turned. One, seeing the gushing blood, turned and started running, but the gate, kicked hard, struck him in the back. He fell to the street, right in front of an oncoming car. The largest of them ran up to me and tried to kick me, but I jumped onto the grave and kicked him in the throat. He fell and didn't even have time to get up, and the knife, driven through his skull and into his brain, finished the job. At that moment, the last of my victims began to flee, but since he was in a typical tracksuit, he wasn't fast on his feet. I pulled the bloody knife from the head of the largest one, who only now realized he'd messed with something he hadn't realized was powerful. He messed with love. I stood up, looked at the last one, and started running. I caught up with him after about two hundred meters and knocked him down with a kick in the back. I grabbed his arm and rolled him onto his back. He only had time to say, "Please don't..." before blood gushed from his heart and the six other holes in his abdomen. I returned to Cecilia, looked at her face, brushed her beautiful hair back from her pale face, kissed her one last time, and ran the knife blade, embedded in the vein, from my wrist toward my elbow. I did the same with my right arm. I thought, "My heart can't be hurt any more this way," and with the last of my strength, the knife blade pierced the skin of my abdomen and sank between my third and fourth ribs. The world began to brighten, I felt warmth, and I died. Beside us, on the grave, the words "Together Forever" were inscribed.