AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My sons don’t understand.This place is all they know.This life of sunshine, freedom and waves, is the only one they’ve had.They tell me they can’t comprehend the things I’ve done, the places I’ve been, the horrors I’ve seen.They don’t listen for long when I speak of it.It’s too much for them to take in, and I don’t blame them.It’s too much for any of us, even those who lived it.
For me, the memories are vague.Colourless around the edges, as though they happened to someone else while I watched from a distance.But it was me who stood there on the precipice of humanity’s condemnation, a witness to the destruction of the world from the centre of the flames.
There’s a photograph hanging on the wall in the living room of a family a world away.My family before we were linked by marriage.The family of my wife’s birth.Most of them are gone now, but the image of their faces lingers on in our memories and shine out of the photograph to grab hold of my heart and shake my emotions when I least expect it.
It’s not the things I did back then, but the things I didn’t do that stumble into my thoughts these days.The things I could’ve said.Did I say them?It’s hard to recall.My former self appears mute when I file back through the events of the past.What words were spoken?Did the friends and family I’ve lost know how much I loved them?Did I tell them, or was it an agreement between us that we never acknowledged but always knew?
For years, I ran over the memories so infrequently, they’ve turned soft and malleable.I can transform them into a moving, shifting, abstract thing as easily as swiping a watercolour paintbrush over canvas.But that’s not what I want.I want the truth to stick in my mind, to be only what it was.Nothing more or less than that.
They’re giving me an award, they say.I don’t know how to respond.The things I did were done because there was nothing else that could be done.If I hadn’t, it would’ve changed everything.I wouldn’t have married her, there’d be no children occupying every moment of our lives.This home wouldn’t exist.
Would we still live back there, in the place that became a wasteland of rubble and grief?Would we even know each other?
There’s sunshine outside.The land is warm and sweet.Prisms of light reflect off fat droplets of rain that squat on bending stems of dark green grass.Flowers dot the backyard with brilliant displays of colour.And we will sit a while longer to stare out over the yard while we sip our tea, chat about life and enjoy the hum of bees and the morning sun on our feet.The sun here is too hot to stay for long—we’ll hide in the shadows of the cool house shortly.But for now, I revel in the scent of fresh-mown grass and fallen rain.
I’ve heard it said that love is hard to find.But for me, discovery was the easy part.Keeping it seems to me to be the most difficult thing.Love creeps up on you and launches itself at you with a shout of joyful victory and you find yourself tumbling downhill at top speed, with love laughing in your ear.
It’s the holding on that takes work.And I’ve held on to her with every fibre of my being and every breath in my lungs for so many years, I can’t imagine a life without her.Everything we’ve been through, so much love and terror all rolled into one broken, beautiful whole.Sheismy heartbeat.There is nothing for me without her.
My eldest says he’s looking forward to the ceremony.I know I should be excited to go, but I don’t know how to feel, only that there’s something gnawing at my insides and a lightheadedness that makes me want to run in the opposite direction.But my wife says that it’s time for the world to be reminded of the past.We can’t afford for them to forget.
She says it’s our duty to expose evil.When I remind her that the worst kind of evil was done by ordinary people, her lips pull tight, and she stares into the distance.She won’t talk then, I know.Not for hours.It’s the ordinary nature of those capable of the blackest evil that we both find the hardest to reconcile.
Evil lies hidden beneath the surface.It festers and grows when fed with hate.But before the evil manifests like a shark’s fin slicing through the ocean’s surface, it’s impossible to foretell which, good or evil, each heart will choose.Until it’s too late.
