fate

Blood flowed from the glistening little cuts on his hands and face. Puncture wounds zig zagged over the curves of his muscular, athletic chest. Tears, mingled with the warm, red blood that coursed down his face. Pain, not of a physical nature, rather pain of an emotional turmoil, radiated through the vastness of his eyes. Heavy, rasping breaths echoed from his lips as he lay there on the red tinted pavement.
As he lay there all this man could think of was the moments that had only happened mere minutes ago. As the blood flowed his mind slipped back into a moment when all was right...

"Victoria Ann Winter, will you marry me?” David whispered, as he looked up to the most beautiful woman in his life.
"I... Da.... Yes!!!" she cried as tears of joy trickled down her magnificently crafted ivory face.
A smile of pure unadulterated joy, unable to be hid, reached across David's face to touch both ears. He leaped up and swept his beloved into a passionate embrace. An electric kiss sent tingles through David as he stood with her in his arms.
"I love you Vicky!!!" he cried, when they finally pulled apart.
Through the joyful tears, she smiled at him. Never, in all this time they dated, did she expect him to propose. She had fully expected him, the man she loved and adored, to just remain her lover until he moved on. Depressing as it seems, she thought he hated the prospects at marriage and was completely taken aback at this proposal.
As with all things, fate decided to step in. In the shadows behind the couple, a man stood waiting to take fate in his own hands. As they passed by him, the man slipped out of the sheltering darkness. His only obsession on this planet was Victoria; he worshipped her and had not recovered when she dumped him. Hatred for this man, who now obviously had stolen Victoria from him, cut across his eyes as he brandished a wicked blade.
David never knew what hit him until he had been stabbed at least three times. He was dazed and unprepared for an attack that was fueled with so much hatred towards him. As he fell from the pain, David saw Victoria step in the way, taking what may have been David's fatal blow.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" he cried as she fell, bleeding from a mortal wound.
Blaming David for this unintended occurrence as if possessed by some wild beast the attacker jumped on David and began clawing his face and hands, until he was pulled off by several strong passersby. David lay rasping, trying to breathe as he helplessly watched his love die.
As she breathed her last gurgling breathe, David faded into unconsciousness...

Hours passed by as he lay upon a hospital bed, tormented by the demons of sleep. Sweat rained down his face as his body was contorted by odd angles brought on by restless slumber. Her scream radiated across the dreamscape he was trapped in, escaping from his very lips.
The hospital staff watched over David, tears jerking their eyes because the pain he felt radiated in their souls. Many came to sit by him, some saying prayers to whatever deity they worshipped, others trying to offer him some way to return to consciousness.
Every now and then, those sitting with David let out a gasp, especially when screams from deep inside him radiated out into earsplitting eruptions. There wasn’t any medicine that seemed to be able to awaken him, nor any that would sedate him enough so that he could sleep peacefully.
It went on like this for three solid days. In those three days a newspaper story was written about the man who seemed to be bringing out the good Samaritan in people. It wrote of his loss and of his tormented state of existence in this not quite comatose state of being.
On the fourth day, David awoke to a peaceful white light shining throughout his hospital room. For a few minutes he didn’t remember what had taken place and where he was, so he called for his beloved Vicky.
But then his hazy eyes focused and what they saw was a homely old nurse, hesitant and unwilling to come close to David. Memories, recollection, and pain came rushing so fast and all at once, that if he had not been laying down he would have fell backwards from the sheer force of it.
A sob, unbridled by the expectations of social acceptance, tore itself from deep within his shattered heart. A weak pair of pale hands, skeletal in comparison to their former selves, gave his ragged face a place to bury the tears. Like a child who was scared and alone, not completely understanding the truth, he wept.
All the poor nurse could do was watch him helplessly, wanting to hold him and comfort David, but unable to cross ethical lines set in place by hospital guidelines. She stood there, as other nurses and doctors flooded in, to sedate this patient who was in such emotional pain that it could rival some physical wounds.
Time passed slowly as David, struggled to come to grips with reality. Within a week after he had returned to consciousness, David was allowed to leave the hospital and return to what would normally be a life of enjoyment.
What greeted him at home was… despair. All he saw was memories of Vicky; saw images of her running around… of him chasing her into the bedroom. He sank down to the ground, leaning his sweat covered back against the door, and began to cry once more.
This was too much for David to bear, the grief was uncontrollable and the memories to deeply rooted in his being to be gotten over. The strength he once believed he had was now little more than a mirage, untouchable and little more than a daydream.

Some days later...

"I would rather have never loved at all, then have that moment of true happiness and lost the woman I can't live without..."

A blood stained letter lay under the cold hand of a sad broken hearted man, who had blown his brains out because of grief...

David was found by his mother, having finally been able to get to her son from half way across the country. From above the door, she retrieved the spare key, scrunching up her nose at the foul stench that came from behind its beautifully crafted oak form.
A soft click whistled through the suddenly chilly air as the door unlocked. When the door slowly and dreadfully swung open, it was as if a suction cup had been pulled up from an air locked area.
A scream that brought all those in the neighborhood running to her aid, tore apart the quiet suburbia. Her legs, strong for a lady of her age, buckled beneath her as she slipped a pale hand over her horrified and frozen mouth.
Her crystal eyes took in this horrifying sight. They ran over the dozens of flies running along the pools of crimson blood, swimming in the death pools. They ran over the shattered skull, the emptiness in the one remaining eye.
The neighbors, upon seeing this sight as well, called the police, the fire department, and whomever they could think of. They held the old woman, who within three minutes had seemed to age thirty years. They let her sob heavily upon their shoulders as they waited for the authorities to show up.

If you go to a cemetery in that town, and see two tombstones under a strong oak tree, remember the two lovers, torn apart by chance, but whose love sealed each others fate. Between the two gravestones a little marker was placed that said:

“Giving up a worthy life for the love they shared, these two lovers lay together, bound for eternity in our hearts.”