Undying Love

By Darrell J. Strutz

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The cool clamminess of the stone walls, presses eternally
upon every face of my naked body.  The cold blackness is only
broken by the soft voices of laughter, the smells of a thousand
feasts, and the stark reality of an icy drop of water sliding down
my back the tears of this prison that cries for me, for I have
none left to cry for myself.  I have no more of anything except
the next lonely minute to contemplate how my sad state of
existence came to be.  One day, a proud man of a thousand
dreams and a thousand realities, reduced to nothingness in a
brief instant; to a life of no dreams, no sight, no warmth, and
only one reality of its inescapability.
It wasn't long ago that I stood as you now stand today.  As
man and woman of dignity.  Someone who smiles for smiling's
sake, and who's life is filled with simple happiness and love for
each other.  It used to be said that we were the perfect couple, a
match made in heaven, something so sure that to say any
different would have been absurd.
It was in this state of confidence that I began to take for
granted the one I loved so much..  The one that was so precious
to me transformed from my object of attraction to my object of
dissatisfaction.  There was not a day that went bye that I did not
make a jab or jest in her direction.  Often times it was hidden
under a mask of laughter or an innocent smile on my part; but
the icy words of disregard were given and received as no one
else could have received them.  For she loved me as no one else
could have loved me.  Her heart was as soft as her hazel eyes,
her skin as smooth as her innocent desires, her love so
unconditional that my remarks would only sting her soul but
never bruise it.  And so time went on and in my pride and
arrogance so did the remarks of pride's stupidity.  I sought to
ruin something so perfect, for perfection is what scared me, the
thought of such a life and its loving simplicity scared my simple
mind and caused me to find the smallest imperfections, in some
attempt to show that we were not the perfect couple that
everyone said we were.  The fact of her unconditional love only
pressed me further in my stupidity, for it shamed me to think that
she could love me so much when all I showed her was insecurity
and pride.
Soon the sly remarks of contention and the brief moments of
pain that I caused her was not enough.  I began to yell at her, to
outburst in the wildest manner over the smallest things; only to
test her love for me and to try and find fault with something so
faultless.  It all sounds so cruel and ridiculous, to watch the tears
fall down her beautiful face and hear her forgiveness on her lips. 
How I took for granted her love and her forgiveness for no one
else in all of time could have forgiven me as she had.no one. 
Through the pain of my insults she loved me all the more, and I
began to understand less and less of what love is.  For in some
sick and twisted way I loved her, as much as I could, but it was
so confused and so backward, for me to understand its
simplicity, that I could never trust it entirely.  I had lost sight of
the love I had for her and I could never give to her the love she
longed for in return of hers, only the pain I offered between my
hypocritical lips of love.  Only the violent slaps between the
gentle hugs, the sadistic beatings which I administered in loves
name.  It was all so very wrong, it was all so very real and cruel
that to remember myself as that beast is too painful to even
recall.  How I wish I would have simply accepted the love she
had offered me so many times; and how I wish I would not have
rejected such a heart so innocent and pure.  And still, despite the
pain, the constant crying, the staggering abuse, she loved me as
no one else could have.
It was on a cold autumns night, that the last leaf of love's
twisted tree fell from the sky.  As she lay there in the gutter of
life's despair, her prettiness had been reduced to nothingness by
her swollen complexion of a thousand beatings.  The rain had
washed away the flowing blood from her precious lips as she lay
in the mud, a filthy pile of mass and disgrace.  It was that night
that I stood beside her and beat her silent.  "Love me" she said
in a pitiful croak of a lifetimes worth of pain, her fragile hand
lifted from her side to touch my sleeve, its touch soft as her
forgiving heart.  And in my great pride and arrogance I ignored
her touch, her love, and her forgiveness.  I turned my nose
upward and saw only the spitefulness of our perfect love, for
nothing is perfect.  And with a proud but regretful look I turned
away, to leave my love a beaten wreck.  A woman that had only
loved me continuously and who's only reward was the
ingratitude I had to offer her.  I cared not to see her again; only
because I was so ashamed of what I had done.  Every
disenchanted thing I said, every slap of distaste I had given her
only showed how inadequate my love was.  And though I
longed to pick her up, and though I longed to treat her with the
love and respect she deserved, I had somehow forgotten how. 
And it my state of bestiality I was too ashamed to admit and
much to ashamed to face the beaten wreckage of my love and to
comprehend the horror of my actions pitted against the confused
love I held for her.  I more or less decided that day that she did
not deserve such a love as mine, and that I could only stop the
abuse by turning away from loves imperfection.
Time passed by slowly; a gaping hole filled the emptiness of
my house as the day turned into a week before she came to me
once again.  I awoke to see her eyes of unconditional love turn
into eyes of unconditional sorrow.  Her body shook with the
realization of what I had done to her and the realization that to
love someone like me is to never live at all.  And so she had to
react, to save herself and what little dignity remained.  For she
had given me her soul, her body, and her spirit and I had given
her nothing except rejection upon rejection, slap upon slap
against someone so beautiful, that it pains me to even think of
such things.  It was a look of remorse, not hatred, for having
realized that she had wasted so much of herself on me.
That was the last thing I saw as she took the sharpened knife
and removed my eyes.  I screamed in terror, unbelieving, as I lay
trapped upon my bed by the heavy cords of sorrow that she had
tied me down with.  It was in my screaming agony that she
grasped my waggling tongue and removed it likewise.  I thought
for sure that she would remove my very heart, for what was left
to take from me?  She bound me tightly and rolled me from the
bed unto our wooden floor.  I laid there in utter horror, feeling
the blood oozing from my wounds, hearing only the scraping of a
shovel against the wooden boards and the softer earth that lay
beneath. 
It was then that she placed me in my icy tomb, its walls
of stones that she so ingeniously placed around me replacing the
arms of love that once held me.  There she left me; naked, my
dignity removed, my sight gone forever, as well as my pride, my
tongue and all of its destruction was to never speak again.  But
why am I still alive?  I thought.  Why must I remain alive to hear
this sordid story, the pounding of the earth atop my silent grave. 
For now I was helpless.  I could not even cry for help, I could
only lay and suffer as her pain was expressed upon me; as she
buried forever the person responsible for her wasted love.  I
swore I heard her cry as she shoveled the dirt upon me, and as
she replaced the floor boards above me.  But then that was it.  I
could hear the bed being pushed back above my unmarked
tomb and then realize that I was buried here forever, forgotten
as I had forgotten her.
I'll be honest, I wanted nothing more than to die in that
tomb and to remember no more my selfish cruelty and be able to
forget this entire act of justice that was wrought upon me.  I
wanted to die because I deserved to die, as no one else could
have deserved such a horrible punishment.  But in my state of
horror and misery there still lived the human instinct to survive. 
And it was by some tortuous means that I was able to live.  It
was not easy, the air was stifling and damp, as I would suck the
rocks for its water which seeped upon me abundantly.  My
hunger drove me to eat any creature that came across my
fingers.  I know not what I ate or what it was, but I ate and I
was alive, but better off dead.  It was then that I once again
heard the laughter of her voice and imagined her smile.  I could
smell the food of her spirit and almost touch her soft skin once
again.  I heard her live as she had never lived before, love as she
never had loved before; and then it hit me that I could have been
that man of love that now lived with her.  Everyday, every sound
of joy only reminded me of how stupid I had been, how selfish. 
Every night they spent above me only caused me to scream
inside for the loneliness I now had forced upon me.  To be able
to hear her happiness through the stones of my grave was just
too much to bear; and this grave was no longer a simple tomb,
but a tortuous Hell, where my cries of regret, of sorrow, and
remorse are heard by no one.  The realization of the great love I
had for her was locked away in my tomb, to be forgotten
forever, buried.  What was even worse was knowing that in her
mind I did not even exist.  I was dead and gone, buried beneath
her feet, unknowing to here that the scratching sound she heard
each night was not a mouse but my fingers clawing against the
stones of my tomb.  Crying out for her to remember her pain
and in someway remember my love.  She had no idea of the
tortuous agony I was enduring, but its fitting isn't it for I had
never realized the great pain I had put her though, a living hell
not unlike the one I lived in now.  For I had never excepted her
great love for me because I could not comprehend it, and now
she could not except my extreme apology because now she can
not hear it.  She did not even know that I lived my sad existence
only in the hope that she realized this.
I don't know how many days, weeks, months or years I lay
there decaying as a living corpse, an animal of regret.  But soon I
knew I was to die, and along with me the knowledge that I
could have loved her and lived a life of love.  But that was not to
be, I knew, and in my last dying thought I heard upon her lips
the laughter of her voice and I felt her great love.  And I reached
my hand upward and mouthed a voiceless "love me," as I
released my last dying breath

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