Online Read Free Novel
  • Home
  • Romance & Love
  • Fantasy
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery & Detective
  • Thrillers & Crime
  • Actions & Adventure
  • History & Fiction
  • Horror
  • Western
  • Humor

    An Unnamed Life Lost


    Prev Next



      Contents

      Cover

      Title Page

      Copyright

      Quotation

      Chapter Zero - The Morning As I Saw It

      Chapter One - A Confession For What Is Missing

      Chapter Two - Her First Moments Alone - Part I

      Chapter Three - An Overdue Alarm Calling

      Chapter Four - Her First Moments Alone - Part II

      Chapter Five - One Hundred and Seventy Four Hours Earlier

      Chapter Six - Her Final Moment Alone

      Chapter Seven - Truth Be Told

      An Unnamed Life Lost

      Luis Angel Greer

      Copyright © 2019 Luis Greer

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their preferred authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

      This edition is published by the author.

      Contact at LuisAngelGreer@gmail.com

      Follow on Twitter & Instagram

      Website: luisangelgreer.wixsite.com/index

      An Unnamed Life Lost

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or otherwise, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

      Version 1.0ς

      Published by Luis Angel Greer at Smashwords.

      He who learns must suffer

      and even in our sleep

      pain that cannot forget falls

      drop by drop upon the heart

      and in our own despair

      against our will

      comes wisdom to us

      by the awful grace of God

      -Aeschylus

      Chapter Zero - The Morning As I Saw It

      It was a morning when I could have slept longer

      But even though I couldn’t yet feel my body

      I knew she wasn’t in my arms

      I knew I wasn’t in hers

      So I decided to wake up

      To right what was clearly a wrong

      It didn’t take long after my mind was made up

      For the sensations of my body to return

      It didn’t take much longer after that

      For me to realize she was no longer beside me in our bed

      I stopped for second… for a few seconds

      What might be the longest seconds of my life in retrospect

      As I questioned if actually opening my eyes was worth it

      I rolled onto my back

      Reaching out my hand to her pillow; just to make sure

      I then returned back to my side as I opened my eyes

      That habit; that seemingly innocuous habit

      Has become perhaps the greatest regret of my life

      I laid there for a minute or so

      I could hear the vent in the bathroom was running

      I figured she was doing all those things she does first thing

      Try to making herself look more beautiful

      More perfect then I always saw her

      I grabbed my glasses and my phone from the nightstand

      And went out into the house

      As I walked past the bathroom door

      I considered for a split second knocking, saying “Good morning.”

      But I didn’t

      I grabbed a mug from the cabinet

      I loaded a pod into the machine

      And then I opened the blinds and door to let in the morning light

      When it was ready I moved it to the other side of the sink

      Added a packet of sugar and quickly gave it a stir

      Before making my way towards the front porch

      As I reached my hand out for the handle I stopped

      I realized I hadn’t heard anything

      Not the sink

      Not the blow-dryer

      Not the shower

      Not the clinking of bottles

      Or the cursing of a miss-drawn line

      So I called out to her, “Is everything alright love?”

      There was nothing

      No answer from her in either the affirmative or negative

      So I let my hand fall away from the door

      As I began to walk back towards the bathroom

      “Do you want anything for breakfast?”

      Still no answer

      “Love?” I could hear in my voice a worry I wasn’t yet feeling

      I reached out and grabbed the doorknob

      “I’m coming in.”

      I cautiously opened the door

      I was waiting for her to yell at me from the toilet

      Headphones in while reading some stupid article on her phone

      It was then that I heard her

      But it wasn’t her yelling at me to get out

      It was the sound of her crying

      I pushed the door open

      Slamming it into the wall

      My eyes quickly taking in the sight

      Of her lying curled up on the bathroom floor

      I moved to her as I dropped to my knees beside her

      I quickly put my hand on the ground beside her to brace myself

      It was then that I felt it slide

      Before my eyes even looked I knew it wasn’t water

      I asked her if she was alright

      I asked her what was wrong

      Where the blood had come from

      But she didn’t or couldn’t answer me

      I decided I was going to call for an ambulance

      I told her I was going to get my phone to call

      And without speaking, without looking up to me

      She grabbed my wrist and she locked her grip around it

      She wasn’t pulling me down

      But I could feel my blood having trouble passing into my hand

      I lowered myself back down and I placed my other hand over hers

      I went to tell her it’s going to be alright, but I stopped

      As she finally spoke through her tears and her heaving breaths, “I’m sorry.”

      Chapter One - A Confession For What Is Missing

      It isn’t that she doesn’t remember

      Or that she cannot express them to me

      Those moments before she woke

      Those which led her to know even while worlds away

      That something was wrong

      The problem, if you chose to call it that

      Is that in the here and now

      I don’t want to cry for them

      I don’t want to cry in the way that I know I would

      If I allowed myself to write that part of their story now

      So instead let me speak of those moments

      When she awoke

      Of what brought us to the moment

      As I took her hand in mine

      Chapter Two - Her First Moments Alone - Part I

      She was startled awake

      As she moved from the world she was in

      Back into the world where our bodies were

      Much like how I feel in this moment

      There was a part of her that didn’t want to remember

      That didn’t want to carry with her into the waking world

      That which she had just learned

      She woke

      Without need for her body to register the sensations

      She immediately rose, perhaps quicker than she should have

      But in that moment she already knew

      With all that she was

      That there was nothing she could do

      To undo what had happened

      Without much t
    hought she made her way to the door

      She paused for a moment before passing through the threshold

      She looked back to my still sleeping form

      So unaware that she was awake, that she was is in distress

      She thought for a moment about calling to me

      But she didn’t

      She thought for a moment…

      She thought about going back, to conceal the blood with the bed sheet

      But she couldn’t

      And so she turned her body

      Her eyes watching the bed for as long as they could

      Before going into the bathroom

      As she closed the door behind herself

      She let her fingers linger on the lock

      Before letting her hand slip away as she stepped further in

      She looked into the mirror

      She hated herself

      She didn’t want to see her reflection

      She hated her vanity

      She hated the world for creating a desire in her to be beautiful

      Looking at herself in this mirror

      A mirror that was only in our home

      Because she needed it to be

      Because out of all things that I had before I welcomed her

      A mirror was not one

      She ran the water

      Then she looked at the handle

      She saw the blood she had left on it

      And she closed the valve

      She didn’t know…

      No one ever talked about what you do in this moment

      She could still feel something like a lingering pain

      She knew that she should wake me

      That we should go to a doctor

      That even if…

      Even if there was nothing that could fix this

      That she still needed to take care of herself

      This is about when I woke

      When my regrets about being lost in my selfish morning habits begin

      When I wish… and that isn’t a word I use lightly

      When I wish I had looked to her side of the bed

      When I wish I had known that she was in need of me

      She heard as I passed by the door

      As I readied myself for the day

      It is then that in retrospect I begin to regret that I was awake

      Because that is moment she let her mind move on

      To the thoughts of what it would mean for me

      Chapter Three - An Overdue Alarm Calling

      She didn’t know how to feel

      In that moment as she stood in our home

      Waiting for those little lines to appear

      She didn’t understand how she was supposed to feel

      Waiting for it to display her results

      She had missed her period

      It was only by a day

      But she knew she hadn’t felt the same

      Not since that night; not since…

      There was something about the… something was different

      So she bought the test

      She bought it hoping that she was wrong

      She bought it hoping that she was just late

      That it was her nerves

      That it was something easily explainable

      But as she stood there

      The alarm from her phone ringing

      She couldn’t bring herself to look down

      Because she didn’t know what she wanted it to say

      Because she felt that something within herself was now different

      And that nothing in her life had ever felt more right

      Chapter Four - Her First Moments Alone - Part II

      We were normally safe

      We were so safe that when she found out

      She was easily able to track it back to the week before

      To the exact moment we let it happen

      To the moment she heard me ask “are you sure?”

      And she felt a force well up inside herself like nothing she had known before

      A moment that she knew, even then, she would never forget

      Chapter Five - One Hundred and Seventy Four Hours Earlier

      Outside of a rather emphatic unprompted discussion early in our relationship

      The topic of children wasn’t discussed

      She wasn’t at a point in her life where she wanted to have them

      And I wasn’t at a point in our relationship where it seemed like a good idea

      So, while it might have been for different reasons

      It was something that we were on the same page about

      It was something that never warranted further clarifications

      Her family saw her as too young to be thinking of things like that

      Her friends didn’t see me as a person she should think of those things with

      So there was no outside pressures upon us; so we didn’t talk about it

      Normally we were safe

      Safe to the point that I never gave a passing thought to a problem arising

      We had gone out a week or so earlier

      Something that in itself wasn’t rare

      What made it a very unique event was that we went out with a group of my peers

      I was never one to form close bonds

      And between being very comfortable in my solitude and my general disdain for people

      I often didn’t have a need to… I didn’t know how to, “maintain” friendships

      Through twists of circumstance I reconnected with an old friend

      Which came with a “You should come out and catch up.” offer

      It was something I would have most likely never taken him up on

      But upon hearing that I actually, once upon a time, had friends

      And even more, that they actually wanted to know me again, she wanted to go

      I never saw her as a child

      As someone who needed me to guide or to protect her

      But I also couldn’t help but behave more responsibly when I was with her

      A byproduct of the way she perceived me I suppose

      This night though…

      In all the time we were together

      She had never heard me say, “I probably won’t be able to drive back tonight.”

      But that was where the night brought us

      Now while she had cut herself off long before I stopped drinking

      She had issues with crashing into medians even while sober

      So she wasn’t going to even think of driving, not with me, not my car

      I know she spent a while thinking about it as the night went on

      In a flash of what if, after about my fourth drink I came up with the plan

      It didn’t make sense to pay for a ride home just to come back

      No one there was going to touch my car

      And there was a hotel not too far away I once had a business meeting in

      So I knew where our fall back was

      After what I think was another two drinks I made our reservations

      I don’t know why I didn’t mention it to her

      I suppose it just didn’t fit into the moment

      She was kind of the belle of the ball and enjoying the attention

      She came to me as the night was wearing down

      Clearly having thought about our situation for a while

      For her it was almost like a roll reversal I suppose, her chance to be the adult

      She prefaced her prepared thoughts with, “So you’re really drunk.”

      Which bid a laugh from me as it was the first time she ever said that to me

      She waited for my laughter to end; her mistake

      As I stole her thunder and moved right into,

      “I know right… good thing I got us a room down the street.”

      She hit me; well it was more of a shove

      “I’ve been coming up with plans for like an hour.”

      I nodded, “I booked the room about four hours ago.”

      She snatched the drink out of my hand and took it as her own

      It wa
    s a cute gesture, one she regretted immediately as she drank from it

      But she made damn sure she drank it all

      The night ended shortly after that exchange

      As we were getting ready to leave she realized where the hotel was

      And that my plan was to walk there

      Which led to her calling me “an idiot” and summoning an uber

      Which then led to me calling her princess

      As the vehicle pulled up

      As I opened the door for her

      As the driver greeted us

      Pretty much every time something happen until we made it into our room

      She hit me the first few times

      I think she rather enjoyed it by the end

      Now I’m going to spare the sordid details

      But we didn’t let the room go to waste

      Even as intoxicated as I was, I was still aware of my body

      And I avoided causing us… problems; until…

      Until I was in a slightly compromised position

      I don’t know what she heard or what thoughts went through her mind

      But when I warned her that she needed to acquiesce to my need to vacate her

      She didn’t…

      I could have forced her without hurting her; but I didn’t

      I held back as long as I could

      I gave her another warning which she ignored

      And then I embraced her

      Chapter Six - Her Final Moment Alone

      She knew

      She knew from the moment she found out that she couldn’t not…

      But there was still a part of her that was having trouble accepting it

      Accepting that everything she had planned for herself was changing

     


    Prev Next
Online Read Free Novel Copyright 2016 - 2025