The Twisted Love

Matt Cochran

How can this be possible? How could she do this to me? Worst of all, how could I be so blind to not notice that slightest detail? Now all I can do is lay here reflecting on that treacherous event, and because of it, darkness has shrouded my soul completely in a veil of protection and security…

“Marc, Marc, Wake up”

My mother was leaning over me, clenching my sweat-soaked arm. She wore a look of anxiety on her delicate face that accoutered my conscious with guilt. Through a squinting of my eyes, I rose upward in a position that had my upper body perpendicular to my legs. I was clenching my pajama pant legs and my chest heaved slightly. Reality now had a firm grasp on me and pulled me away from the world of illusions.

My mother gave out an audible sigh, “Bad dream.” It seemed too realistic to be a dream, but too outrageous to be reality.

My normal breathing patterns returned. “Yeah a bad dream.”

“What a relief,” she said as she straightened her body in an upright position with her back rigid.

“So mom what time-”

“Mom!” I was interrupted. “Mom!” The voice of my brother, Andrew, echoed up the stairs and made its way into my room as a muffled, drawled sound.

“Hold on. I’m coming,” My mother yelled with sweetness as she dashed for my bedroom door.

“Oh, Marc.” She halted her gait. “Don’t stress”

She left me to my thoughts and myself. As I began reviewing the dream with scrutiny, I slipped on my rather average garments. I glanced at the clock; it read 6:24. I’m running late for school I thought, as my desperate, rushed actions formed my conscious state.

Huffing and puffing, I dashed past my mother and through the door. A “goodbye” escaped my lips but I doubt it reached her.

The colossal weight of my backpack slowed my darted motions as I panted to the bus stop. I heard the rumblings of a car engine, but I didn’t even have time to swivel my head.

The bus stop was just within my view, but there was a problem; it was desolate, void of students eager to trek into another rather mandatory day of school.

The car engine’s roar inched closer until finally, it halted, and a sultry, eloquent voice shot into my ears. “Do you need a ride?” The disembodied voice asked.

I rotated my upper torso first, and then my planted legs followed in a sort of staggering motion.

Immediately after I had caught that first glimpse of her, I could sense the sheer power, confidence, and beauty of her overflowing aura. Everything about her, from her golden, luminous hair, to her piercing eyes that swirled my consciousness, resembled a thought, a fragment of remembrance, locked inside the vault of memory.

“So, are you getting a ride or what?” She reiterated, as she leaned and grasped the steering wheel of a highly, expensive-looking Mercedes.

Every ounce of confidence in me oozed, and my esophagus closed, as a product of nervousness. “I-I guess,” I stammered as my internal body temperature felt as if it had risen 1,000 degrees beyond normal.

I lifted the door handle attached to the passenger’s entrance, and joined the luscious beauty inside of the Mercedes.

As she began cruising toward Arundel High School, I began examining her more closely through a series of side-glances; and I soon identified her as Megan Gibbs, not one extremely popular, but she at least had school wide appeal, even if most students only accepted her, and not had revered her.

Shuffling questions in my mind for a non-self-degrading exchange of dialogue, I presented myself as boring or uninteresting to Megan. To my surprise, though, she was the one to initiate the conversation. “So-,” she paused, expecting a name.

“Marc,” I said, while looking straight out, at the environs through the windshield.

“So, Marc,” she began, “ this may come as a surprising question to you… but are you still a virgin?”

Surprising it was, and she said it with a playful tone my mother would use. I wanted to lie, in order to sound cool, like guys she was accustomed to conversing with, but my conscious wasn’t going to allow it. “N-Yeah,” I hesitated, as I said my response in a low tone of voice. “Why do you ask?” A question I used, to fulfill my end of a conversation.

“Well,” she smiled. “I like stripping guys of their virginities.”

“Ha, Ha very funny.” I joked.

She, too, began to laugh with mirth, and a hint of contempt. “Hey, Marc do you want to hang out sometime…no better yet, I’ll sit with you at lunch today.”

She moved relationships with such haste. I had only known her for ten minutes, and already she wanted to spend every moment with me. I couldn’t find a good reason why; I was not the most attractive guy, and I didn’t have that movie-star magnetism induced by high, explosive levels of confidence.

I had come home from school, and from Megan. Just like she had promised, she sat with me and my friends at lunch, but, while she may had joined me, I could partially sense desperation in her actions as if I were as desirable as gold.

Now, I stood in front of my ostentatious house, my hands clenching my lacrosse stick. I was playing catch with my companion and trainer, Shaun. Shaun’s appearance and emotional attraction is like none I have ever experienced; he could hook one into doing anything he wanted done, but the most terrifying aspect of his magnetism was that you were aware of his manipulations, but, like a gravitational field surrounding an object, you couldn’t detach yourself from his grip; once you were in his orbit, a massive burst of energy was required to be released from his force; it’s a psychological trick of the mind.

“So, what’s the deal with you and Megan, man. I have heard some things that-”

“She and I are just friends, and I don’t really know what to make of her border-line obsessions with me.” I said, as I caught the lacrosse ball with little precision, and flung it to Shaun, who gracefully snagged the ball with an enormous amount of accuracy. Shaun had this idea that I needed to become involved in some sort of activity, such as sports. Since he was playing lacrosse, my playing of the sport imbued me with an advantage; his skill passed on to me.

“Well, you should be happy about this sudden change of events, Marc. Before this incident, no girls even looked at you, but now you’re starting to show the love potion, now that Megan has been hanging around you.”

“And what’s this love potion?” I asked, as I chased after the ball while leaning low.

“Confidence.” He yelled to me, my position approximately three yards away from his.

Shaun glanced at his watch and afterwards, made an expression of elation as he galloped toward his resting and changing station. “Marc,” he shouted, behind his shoulder. “I’ll see you later, I have a make-out session with Gabriele, and just remember that you should be excited about Megan’s interest in you, and not depressed about it.”

Days started turning into weeks; and weeks started turning into months. Leaves began turning igneous red; Megan’s compassion for me began to increase; and I began to see hope in my life for the first time since my existence. Megan, who had instilled every desired aspect into my personality, had given me much to be a person; now, I was one who did not hibernate around massive crowds, or not one who only spoke a few words to guest before dismissing himself. I exuded attraction, that magnetism I had always wanted; but for all she had given me, I wasn’t prepared to give it all back to her in the form she had desperately desired; but intense pressure came the night I got a call from an urgent voice, secreting into my ears.

“Marc,” she said. “It’s Megan. Can you please come over to my house? I want to talk to you.” Talk to me? Is that all she wanted to do? Her voice sounded too rehearsed, as if she had been practicing, dreading to ask me this question all night, for she to just want talk to me. What did she really want?

When I arrived at Megan’s extravagant home, I had noticed one her friends, Samantha, pulling off in her luxurious Ford Mustang, leaving only two occupants at her house, Megan and me. I pressed the door bell and immediately after doing so, I could hear the echoing dings surging through her house; and shortly after the rings of the bell made it’s ominous laps around the interiors, the door creaked, and there stood Megan, clad in a silky, silver night gown that accentuated her magnificent beauty with glistening elegance.

My stomach began to clench and my sweat glands percolated the wet, sticky substance on the exteriors of my entire body; it must be my former self, seeking a way to rid itself of the new, confident, me. Megan remained perched in front of me with an obviousness to the motivation of her meticulous actions; and as she had that smile on her face, I turned the reels of thoughts in my mind; there was one image of her that was totally contradictory of her delightful attitude, as if I were feeling compelled to warn her about something, not yet unfolded in the logical chain and flow of sequential events time had mapped out for us all. “Come in,” she almost whispered in a surprisingly sensuous voice. I staggered into her abode, which was decorated with glossy furniture and a chandelier that had two dimmed light bulbs lodged in the center. The mood reeked of serenity; but I could sense anxiety circumvented the calm atmosphere.

“I know what you are trying to do and it’s not going to work Megan.” My booming voice shook the living room in which, we were standing.

“Come on,” She said while sliding her gentle hands under my shirt, which slightly faltered the defense I entered in the room with.

“I can’t.” I said as I began to turn my back and straddle away from her. “There is this artificialness present inside of you,” I began. “And I can never sense your true feelings for me, or your true emotions; it’s as if you are playing a game with me; it’s as if I’m a-” I paused then said softly “A trophy to you.”

“That’s it!” She yelled angrily. “I only got with you for one reason.”

“And what’s that?” I asked in a calm, confident tone.

“ To be with Shaun?”

“To be with Shaun.” I repeated, hardly believing what I had just heard.

“ Yes, Shaun, your best friend. Yes, Shaun the amazing person who pulls me in with his beautiful blond hair and pearly gray eyes and-”

“Then,” I interrupted. “Why go after me. I am his best friend.”

“And his girlfriend, Gabriele. She’s my best friend.” So that was the shadowy figure that just left, I thought as I lie in suspense of Megan’s intense words.

“So what does this have to do with anything?” I said.

“Well it doesn’t; except that I’m going to stab her in the back.”

“What does all of this have to do with me?” I shouted.

“Well.” She began, in a crazy, mad jumble of words. “I phoned an anonymous source to telephone Shaun and to tell him that you were trying to seduce Gabriele, so he should be here any minute. I wanted to have sex with you to give the impression that we were inseparable, because if we were, Shaun would want to steal me to get revenge at you.” She began to give a chuckle that was filled with deviousness. “It’s too easy.”

Dingdong; Dingdong; the doorbell rung and Megan skipped to the door, and creaked it open. Shaun stood there with an enraged expression and his eyes were fixed on me. “Hey Shaun,” Megan said with gaiety, as her eyes darted and locked in my direction.

Shaun, without even glancing at her, stomped toward me, and started jabbing his index finger at my chest. “Why did you mess with my girl,” Shaun yelled angrily, his words piercing my mind.

“Shaun this is a set-”

“Shut up!” he shouted as he raised his shirt to reveal a 9mm pistol. He reached for it, cocked it, aimed it squarely at my chest, and just as I was dashing for the door, I heard the loud rumbling of his fired gun; and for a moment, time had slowed, and I was able to reflect on my time with Megan; even if short-lived, the joy I had with her, and her betrayal taught me a lesson about love. That ones who seek it, is driven by a force; but ones who already had it firmly grasped were doomed, for there are too many factors in love; and with factors, there is a higher possibility that every event of ones life can turn out like this.

The slow motion button became unlocked; and the play button was pushed; time now resumed its routine function and the bullet sheared through my back; and I collapsed to the inviting rug. I could hear Megan pleading to Shaun to listen to her; and then I heard a gunshot, and then her scream, and then silence. If only I had sensed that Déjà vu moment, I could’ve prevented all of this from happening; I could’ve barred myself from ever meeting Megan.