I finally came to my senses three days later. I was staring at the rain falling down against
the window, dripping in rivets against the flowers when a shudder overtook my shoulders. They
came like waves and I couldn’t control them. Tears started rolling down my cheeks pooling in my
eyes and dropping like the rain onto the bed sheets, leaving miniature puddles. My mouth opened
gasping for air and trying to scream all at once yet no sound emerged. But the pain, it was the
heart wrenching agony that made me clutch myself into a ball. Trying to drown out everyone,
everything. Anything to escape the memory of that day. It came each night and left me shivering
and dripping in perspiration. It became a pathological fear, a fear of the night, of It. Because I
knew that each time It came, I would be reminded of that one day.
How could I be so stupid, after I had watched so many of those preppy ads. “Don’t drink and
drive!” “Remember we’re watching” “Drinking while driving raises your chances of an accident …”
Yet I had encouraged her! I had been the one that convinced her even, and in that instant in the
blinding lights before the crash I had realized how wrong I had been in doing so. Just how much I
would regret it. Like deer in the headlights, our eyes matched as they widened in horror.
Its been a year, but It still comes every night. It is my purgatory. My karma for the misdeeds I
have done. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be rid of it. This guilt that grips my heart in its bony,
icy grasp. Squeezing me until I am on my knees begging for forgiveness. If there is anything that
I could do to ease my conscience just slightly, I wouldn’t hesitate for an instant. Yet I doubt it, for
if there were, I would have done it already.
It creeps in the night. Its claws whittle away at the door, its fangs curl in a snarl upon its
ugly dysmorphic snout. I clasp onto the door handle like a lifeline, trying desperately to keep it
at bay. I beg for it let me rest in peace for just one night. But it never does and try as I might it
continues to torment me without mercy. That is my story. It is the one day that changed the many
after. It stays as that one-day and when people refer to it we all pause for a moment to reflect, to
contemplate the impact, the crater, that it had left in our lives. But it is I who pay the debt owed
with every inch of my life, with every breath I drag in and blood I pump out.
