Note: Seventeen years later : Samantha is 17... Damian (Darren) is also 17.... Daniel is 36.
______means a shift in perspective/area....like
from Damian's to near Sam or Daniel.
*** is shift in time or place
*** is shift in both time and person.
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Damian steped out of his jeep and looked around. The new town his family had moved to had a familar feel to it. Besides the facts the houses were as nice looking, and the school was basically the same style, he had a feeling he knew this place.
"Hey, mom, have we aver been here before?" He called out to his mother, who was unloading some boxes from the trunk.
"No, darling," she said looking up. "We've never even been on this side of the coast....Why?"
"Just dejavu...like I've been here or something, thats all."
Laughing she picked up the box,"Maybe you did in another life..ha aa aa...but really honey-just ignore it."
With that
she went inside. 'She really doesn't get it, does she?' He thought and
grabbed a box.'Its just going to keep bugging me later....' He had
been having these feelings his whole life. Like he remembered something,
or someone. People on the telly or on vacation, like he knew them from
somewhere far off. Or if something happened to him, even if it was for
the first time, he had a vague feeling of having done it before. Like when
he came out to his parents. He somehow felt he had done that before, but
ovoisly he hadn't, at least here. It was like having damn amnesia, never
knowing if what you thought you had done or knew was true or not. Why he
felt these things was beyond him.
But he didn't
let anything worry him, just shrugged it off like all the other times.
He just walked inside and went to put his boxes away.
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Samantha walked into her house thru the kitchen door. The same door Darren had last said good-bye in. Putting down her bag, she walked to the fridge as she called to her father, in the next room.
"Hi Dad,"
"Hi honey, how was school?"
"Ok I guess, chorus was cancelled though because the teacher was out and they couldn'y find a sub."
"To bad for you," Said Daniel as he came into the room. He still looked the same,as he had almost seventeen years before, although he didn't have the same cheerful and calm face. Tragedy had almost completly taken that away from him.
"Uh, were are the cups? Their not in the same place as this morning."
"Oh, I'm sorry." He said and got her a cup from the cabinet to the left of the sink. " I just had this urge to clean. And ...then after I was done I noticed I'd just reorganized everthing.....the same way as...as..when....."
"As what?" Sam said curoisly, eying Dan with an odd suspsion.
"Same as when...before..um...when you were little.." His face went somber and he looked down briefly.
"Oh, dad, you haven't been looking at the albums again have you?" She said this in almost a whisper as she leaned over and hugged him.
"Yes....I'm sorry...Its just it will be 17 years next Friday. I can't help remembering honey, I'm sorry if it bothers you. You were so young and grew up like this and I'm sorry and....and"
Daniel was almost crying now. He bent his head onto Sam's as she spoke. "Don't be sorry. I do remember...a little..and don't think that how I grew up was wrong. Thats so far away from the truth. Shoosh."
For a while they just hugged one another. The room vibrated with a melencholy gloom and vague rememberings of happier days. But for the moment the two just held each other. Sam trying to console her father for his pain, over her other parent she never knew.
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That night, when Daniel
crawled into bed, he couldn't help but bring the photo album with him.
He just wanted to see his Dazza, to remember the happiest time in his life.
Sitting on the bed he flipped the pages. On the first page was him and
Darren on the steps of their old apartment. 'God, that apartment brought
us so close', he thought. The next page was a few pictures from their wedding.
Although it wasn't totally legalized, that had been the day they had said
they would be togther for ever. There was one from the ceromony, as they
kissed, and there was also a photo of Darren and himself cover in bits
of frosting, from the cake.
As the hours passed
and the pages turned the appearances lessened until they stopped completly.
Daniel was quite upset by the time he got to the last page, and knew he
should not have looked in the first place. He curled into a ball and layed
his head on the pillow. He shut his eyes and cried silently. But as he
did memories floated in his mind. Darren with the camera. Samantha laying
on His stomach, as she slept. Darren singing in the clubs, with all his
self put into the songs, and then smiling at him. Flashes of Darren when
they first met mingled with that of them making love. Even fragments of
Darren's voice came clear. 'I love you Darling' '...I
wanna stand with you on a mountain, I wanna bathe with you in the sea...'
'Isn't she cute?' 'Danielll !'
Everthing stabbed
Daniels heart but he couldn't stop anything from coming. Darren fishing
in the boat. Himself trying to teach Daz the piano. Darren and himself
kissing on their wedding day and then on that last day. 'What could possibly
happen.'
'Sir, theres been an accident....' Images
of Darrens body when he had had to identify it. His bloody shirt and once
smooth face, distorted and ridged. Samantha crying in his arm as they went
to the funeral. Pictures of his beloved sleeping. Memories of thier overwhelming
love, utter passion, and even when they were mad at each other, seemed
better then this emptyness.
Daniel crawled into
a fetal position and sobbed. He cried out at this pain. It had ripped him
apart so bad that it was impossible to share with anyone else. Crying uncontrolably,
the once collected man, wished feverently that he could have his Dazza
for just one more day. Just once more to love him and kiss him. And if
he could have nothign else, and things couldn't be changed from sheer love
alone, to say good-bye.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
In the next room a girl listened.
She heard her only father sobbing. And just as he cried she did to. But
not for a lost lover, but for a father she had never know. A dad she could
never hug, or hold, or say good-night to. A father who would never be there
to comfort her if something went bad. Or to scold her, out of love, for
doing wrong. Even to fight with and then make up with. This was stolen
from her because of just one man. And not only had that man stolen one
father, but he had ruined part of her other. She had never gotten that
happy man, or the one who could be so strong. She had her father, Dan,
who had lost his hold on everything that Saturday. Who completly loved
her, but was so full of pain, and she could never reach him to help. And
this is why, on that night, Samantha cried silently into her pillow and
wished for the father she never knew to come to her just once.