An uncanny darkness shrouded every inch of the forest. The sky was an endless roof of the most unsettling shade of black, covering up the world in all its overbearing presence.
Amongst the countless trees towering above the ground, a lone man could be seen walking through the forest in what looked like a sort of dazed state. Apart from those, no other signs of life could be seen anywhere. Not a single bird up on a tree branch, or a squirrel scurrying about. Not even a breeze rustling through the leaves high above the man’s head.
There also seemed to be no sound either – one of the only sources of what few sounds still remained was the man’s footsteps, which came off slightly muted, like listening to them through a thin wall.
Eventually, the man stopped in his tracks. Several feet in front of him lay a massive wall of rough and jagged stone. A small cave opening could also be seen in it. Even amidst the sheer darkness engulfing its entire surroundings, this particular hole in the rock looked especially pitch black. Even more than the sky, and that was saying something – an inky, unevenly shaped void on a surface of dimly lit granite-gray.
The man stood staring into the cave in the same dazed state he’d been in while walking up to it. He blinked a couple of times, then his brows furrowed slightly in visible confusion.
“What?” He asked, which felt louder than it should have in the suffocating dead silence.
He blinked again, and his brow furrowed even more. He brought a trembling hand up to one of his temples. He blinked again, and his gaze broke away from the cave opening as his eyes began to rapidly dart around in their sockets.
“No…” The man muttered. The confusion on his face slowly turned to denial, then panic. “No, no, no, no…!” He shook his head now clutched tightly in both his hands by the temples, “You’re not… you’re not her… you’re not her…! You can’t be her! You’re lying!”
Then man then fell to his knees with his eyes clenched shut. The hands on his temples clasped over his ears even tighter. All while the man gave his everything to block out whatever audible disturbance was happening to them. “Stop it…! Stop it! STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
But no amount of repeatedly screaming frightened words at the thing he was trying to shield his ears from was apparently working, as the man was now practically writhing on the spot like someone being tortured, shaking his head in desperate, dreaded denial, “GET AWAY FROM ME!!! GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!!!!!”
With those last two sentences he bellowed at the top of his lungs, and by now looking like he was about to crush his own head with his bare hands from how he had them clasped over his ears, the man finally gathered up every bit of strength left in his legs to stagger back up to his feet. He was only a split second away from turning his back on the cave and bolting for his life, but before doing any of that, he shot his tightly shut eyes back open.
The man’s mouth opened up as wide as his terror-stricken eyes at the sight before him, before he shattered the dark, muted stillness with a blood-curdling scream.
Then the silence was almost immediately restored. No more footsteps, no more repeatedly spoken frightened words, and no more screams of terror.
No more man.
No more anything.
Nothing.
Nothing except for the forest itself.
***
“So are you actually gonna do it tomorrow?” One of two men making their way out of an office asked the other beside him.
Letting a nervous yet excited sigh out from a pair of blushing, puffed-up cheeks, the other man told his companion, “No better time for it other than tomorrow evening – I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not allowing myself to chicken out of it this time.”
The man who first spoke gave the other a genuine look of reassurance as they reached the elevator and pressed the button, “C’mon Thomas, have some confidence in both yourself and what you’ve got with Claire.” Then he added half-jokingly, “I mean, not that this lonesome bachelor would be an expert on these things, but based on what I’ve seen from how close you two are by this point, there is no way she’s turning down a proposal from you.”
Just as the elevator arrived and opened up before them, Thomas returned a timid but grateful smile to his colleague for the kind words and said in thanks, “You always know how to say the right stuff to people, don’t you Nathan?”
Visibly flattered at the compliment, Nathan just looked out the elevator window showing the scenery outside as they descended to the first floor, “I’m just trying to help out, that’s all.”
This widened the smile on Thomas’ face, even as Nathan said something about a scenario he rather wouldn’t think about just now, “Even if Claire does turn down your proposal, what does it matter? That’s not gonna so much as bring forth the end of the world, much less your relationship with her. Most likely it’ll just mean her mind isn’t ready for such a huge leap yet, in which case time will be on your side for that – know what I mean?”
Thomas honestly didn’t get that much reassurance out of Nathan’s words this time, but knowing the good intentions they still carried, he simply said, “Thanks again.” For now. Then as the elevator stopped and opened its doors on the first floor, he added just for a good laugh on their way out, “Gotta say, you offer some genuinely great relationship advice for someone who’s single.” To which Nathan cracked up with him while asking in a tone of pretend offense, “What’s that supposed to mean, huh?”
Later that evening at home, Thomas sat resting on his living room couch. Barely paying any attention to the TV he'd turned on in front of him, he kept thinking about the conversation he had with Nathan earlier. This also brought to mind the few previous times he’d wanted to propose to Claire over a date. As badly as he had wanted to get the word out to her, every attempt so far had ended in failure. All because his damned weak mind always let his doubts, nerves, and lack of confidence get the better of him. And with every failed attempt, he’d come back home full of resentment towards himself for not having the guts to do it, only for the same thing to happen again and again on the next dates.
Well, not this time.
Ignoring a news report about an investigation on a hiker gone missing in the local woods, Thomas sat up in his seat to reach out to the coffee table in front of him, from which he picked up a small velvety ring box. He opened it to reveal a shiny engagement ring topped with a pretty little jewel. It wasn’t much, but being the complete opposite of a materialistic individual, Claire had never been one to obsess over things like this, as shown from the way she always told Thomas, “If it’s from you sweetie, I’m all for it.” Which was just her own way of saying that it’s the thought that counts. And Thomas would be damned if he ever provided the love of his life anything he didn’t put genuine heart into, especially something of great importance as a proposal.
On top of that, regardless of how reassured Thomas felt from hearing them, Nathan’s words of advice were a thousand times right. If the fear of being turned down was what had been holding him back this whole time, so what then? What did he have to lose from hearing Claire say “no” in response? As far as Thomas could tell, no relationship he knew of ever ended because of a rejected marriage proposal. Based on that, the most harm – if you could even call it that – a rejection could bring to him and Claire was probably immense awkwardness hanging in the air while they made their way back home from their date. And even that wasn’t anything which couldn’t be easily solved with the help of time.
Also, if Claire’s reason for saying no was indeed because she wasn’t ready just yet, then it was like Nathan said; waiting was the answer, and for someone like Claire, Thomas could do that. So after all that said, why even bother worrying, no less over a future not even set in stone?
With those thoughts in mind, Thomas nodded in determination. Staring at the ring as if he could already see it being on Claire’s finger, he muttered to himself under his breath, “You’re not a shy little schoolboy anymore, be the grown ass man that you are already!”
***
Before Thomas knew it, Saturday evening was here, and so was the big opportunity. Not forgetting to take the ring box with him, Thomas made his way over to Claire’s house in his car, where he picked her up in a rather excited state.
“Looking forward to tonight, aren’t you?” Thomas asked amusingly, watching Claire get in the passenger seat with a big enthusiastic smile on her face.
Claire couldn’t help chuckling a bit at that, before she replied with an equally amused shrug, “Oh well, it’s only getting to see my all-time favorite movie on the big screen for the first time with you of all people, so yeah, I am looking forward to it!”
Their date this evening was to be at a local drive-in theater where the screenings were a mix of both new releases and old classics. And upon finding out through the theater’s website that it was scheduled this evening to show a particular film from 1990 she had a great fondness for, Claire had asked Thomas if they could watch it together on their free time. Obviously, he’d happily agreed to it.
Driving off, Thomas smiled both to himself and at Claire. Perhaps it was the thought of what he intended to do later after the movie, or he was simply glad to see his love in such a bright mood, but either way, for some reason her enthusiasm just felt so infectious at the moment. This led to him getting the urge to humor her further on their way with more playful comments, “I’m honestly going into this movie completely blind, so I don’t know what to expect other than hopefully a good time… but then again, what isn’t a good time when we’re together?”
Claire chuckled even more, knowing Thomas wasn’t being 100% serious but still appreciating his choice of words. She then responded with a blush and a sideways glance at him, saying, “Ditto.”
Thomas recognized that as Claire’s signature gesture towards anything she agreed with him on. Ever since they’d first started dating, Thomas had always heard Claire utter the word “Ditto” instead of the more typical expressions of agreement. Initially he’d simply thought of it as a funny quirk of hers and did nothing else than humor it. As time went by though, and their bond brought them closer to each other, he found himself using it just as casually as she did, to the point it had become something like their own thing by now.
Little did Thomas know, tonight’s date would reveal to him where exactly this quirk of Claire’s had originated. But right now that wasn’t his concern. What was his current concern though, was when he looked over at Claire while they had pulled over at a stoplight and saw she’d forgotten something.
“Claire, your seatbelt.” Thomas pointed out, and Claire glanced down at herself to see she hadn’t fastened it over her body, to which she hurriedly did so and said, “My bad – I forgot.” Then as soon as the red light turned to green she mumbled to herself, “Of all the things I keep forgetting every time I get in a car…”
However, that seemingly trivial matter quickly vanished from both of their minds, as the rest of the ride towards the drive-in theater remained mostly uneventful. And when they did get there, they were immediately preoccupied with tending to other things, mainly setting the car radio at the right frequency before the movie – which turned out to be “Ghost” starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore – began.
As he’d said earlier, Thomas knew next to nothing about the movie they were watching (he didn’t bother looking it up beforehand because he didn’t want to be spoiled), so he expected to get one or two surprises out of this first-time-watching. That said, only a few several minutes in and he found himself already taken aback at certain lines of dialogue spoken between the two leads.
Slightly laughing out of surprise, he whispered to Claire, “So this is where you learned to say ‘Ditto’?”
Claire laughed along with him and nodded. “This movie really changed the meaning of that word for a lot of people, you’ll see why by the end.” She replied in a manner of a person trying to explain a freshly exposed embarrassing secret, albeit without the smile fading from her face even a bit.
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The same could be said for Thomas, who found this revelation genuinely cute and wholesome. It was like getting to see a new side of his girlfriend – soon to be fiancée – he didn’t know before; AKA another part of Claire for him to love along with the rest of her. With those thoughts in mind, he held her hand and said, “If this movie really is that well-made to affect a whole generation like that, and for you to call it your absolute favorite, I wouldn’t put it past it.”
Thomas felt Claire hold his hand back as she said, “You’ll never hear ‘Ditto’ the same way again after this, I guarantee.” Followed by another joy-filled exchange of laughs.
Actually, the movie didn’t really end up affecting how Thomas conceived the word, but he was too polite to tell Claire that. He was just happy enough to cherish it in his heart as one of the countless special things he had between his love and no one else. Kind of similar to the leading couple in the movie, except unlike those two, their exchanges of the expression had never been one-sided.
Nonetheless, he still had just as much of a great time as Claire did throughout the whole runtime. Definitely a touching story worth checking out with a loved one, Thomas thought – especially with a loved one.
Speaking of which, by the time the end credits were nearly finished rolling (the two had deliberately waited a bit while enjoying the end credits’ music for all the other cars to exit, so they’d have an easier time doing the same), Thomas felt around in his pocket for the ring box. This moment was just as he’d envisioned; the air was in the perfect ambience for a proposal, what with them just being done watching a beautifully made romantic movie for their date and everything. All he had to do was say the right words to Claire, present the ring to her with the question, and receive the answer he’d longed to hear from her, once and for all.
But he didn’t go for it. Despite his determinations the other night telling himself to man up and just do the deed already, those damned four words in his mind, “once and for all” had begun to rile up his doubts and anxieties yet again.
Would it indeed really be “once and for all” if he proposed right now and got his desired answer?
“Urgh, don’t be so stupid, you wuss…” Thomas thought to himself to stop his godforsaken nerves from clouding his judgement, like they had so many times before. “Remember Nathan’s advice, even if she says no now, it doesn’t mean she won’t say yes later…”
When would be “later” though, asked the other part of Thomas’ mind he so desperately wished would shut the hell up already. He knew he’d told himself he could be patient for any amount of time for Claire to be ready someday if she wasn’t, but how true would that be if it actually happened? How did anyone know what could possibly happen during all that so-called waiting time?
Pretending to keep listening to the movie’s soundtrack playing through the radio, Thomas clenched his eyes shut for a second in utter frustration. “Don’t let your damn nerves take you over again,” he thought, “you’ll just end up going home full of regret for the umpteenth time, what are you even having such thoughts for after all you’ve done so far…”
“Thomas? Honey? Aren’t we getting out? Almost everyone seems to be gone now.”
Having been so wrapped up in his own mind, Thomas hadn’t even noticed nearly all the parking spaces in front of the screen had already been vacated. His car was one of the few still remaining.
“Ah, my bad.” Said Thomas, secretly grateful to Claire for snapping him out of it. He started the car up and cooked up a quick excuse as he buckled his seatbelt, “I probably got way too distracted by the music – great score for a fittingly great movie, it really is.”
It must’ve worked, because all Claire did in response was huff a small snort of agreement through her nose and shrug, along with her signature, “Ditto.”
Thomas laughed with her again – both because he felt like it and to keep up his illusion – and proceeded to drive the car out of the drive-in theater.
Thomas silently breathed a slow sigh that went unnoticed by Claire and felt the ring box in his pocket once more. That familiar sensation of resentment began to replace his anxiety even as he shifted his focus on driving back home.
Not again. Damn him and his irrational fears.
His eyes then landed on his car’s navigation system screen for a split second, where the vehicle was shown as a small green arrow moving along a simplified overhead view of the area, along with how much estimated time they had left before they arrived.
That gave Thomas a sense of hope. Their date might’ve ended a couple of minutes ago along with the movie, but he wasn’t to part ways with Claire until she was home.
“It ain’t over until it’s over.” Thought Thomas. He still had a chance to make up for the one he’d let himself miss back at the theater – he would pop the question to Claire when they stopped by her house, and this time there would be no excuses for real. He would let no amount of irrational fears interfere with him finally getting this over with before he could bid Claire goodbye for the night and watch her head inside. If Claire’s front door was his window of opportunity, there was no way it was closing without him getting the word out.
Taking another split second to glance at Claire this time, Thomas gripped the steering wheel with more resoluteness in him than before. However, even as he turned his gaze back to where anyone’s gaze ought to belong during driving, something he’d noticed about Claire just now flashed past his mind at the speed of light – that is, before an actual light suddenly flashed before him in a moment of blinding white.
“What the-!” Thomas uttered a startled shout and tried to swerve his car away from the light He immediately recognized it as the headlights of a truck coming right in their direction. At the same time, Thomas also heard Claire scream out his name in terror. And that was the last thing either of them remembered before there came a deafening crash of metal and glass, at once followed by the whole car coming to a violently abrupt halt that threw Thomas into the abyss.
***
Everything felt numb and agonizing at the same time. Thomas was surrounded by a garble of incoherent noises that sounded like countless people talking over one another, accompanied by a high-pitched wail in the background. He could neither move nor make out anything within his vision, until a white light was shone in his eyes a second time.
Instinctively his eyes followed the brief movements of the light before it was extinguished. Once the light’s afterimage went away, Thomas was able to see the pitch black of the night sky before him. In front of that, there were also the heads of several people standing around and looking at him. That was how Thomas realized he was lying down somewhere, possibly a stretcher.
As soon as this had registered with him, Thomas gingerly turned his head sideways to take in the rest of what was happening around him. On his left was what looked like a heap of crumpled metal on wheels, which used to be his car and the truck that had crashed into it. Not far from the wreckage, witnessed by a whole crowd of people circling the scene, was a police car and a couple of officers seemingly apprehending someone Thomas couldn’t quite make out.
Then onto the right his gaze went. What greeted him on that side was an ambulance with its back doors wide open. As it turned out, the high-pitched wailing noise was actually its siren. Between all this and what he last remembered before waking up, Thomas was just piecing together what must’ve happened to him and Claire, when a second group of paramedics came into sight. They too were tending to a stretcher, on which Thomas could somehow make out…
“Claire…?” He could barely mumble in a pained sort of groan upon recognizing his girlfriend lying still on the stretcher. He couldn’t, however, hear what the paramedics around her were saying, if they were saying anything at all. They didn’t even seem to be doing all that much either for some reason, only looking at Claire and each other, then back at Claire again.
Thomas eventually felt the stretcher he was on being lifted up as his group of paramedics reached the back of a different ambulance. Soon all he could see was the white walls of the emergency vehicle. But that wasn’t before Thomas managed to get a good look at the paramedics surrounding Claire cover her still motionless body from head to toe with a white sheet.
“Claire… Claire… Claire…!” All Thomas could bring himself to do as the ambulance closed its doors and took off to the nearest hospital was continue to call out Claire’s name in the same state of both numbness and agony his whole body was in. More precisely, those sensations were now bleeding into his heart, striking him with a new kind of pain that gradually coursed through him like a lethal injection amidst everything else. And the only thing either his mind or body was able to muster up in response to this torture was to repeat the name through his bruised lips.
Even though he knew Claire was neither with him nor could hear him right now.
Even though he knew she never would be able to from this day forth.
***
Thomas was brought up to speed on everything at the hospital much later when he’d recovered to a stable enough condition. On his and Claire’s way home, his car had gotten into an accident with a drunk-driving truck. Whoever had been behind the truck’s wheel was of course expected to be put behind bars, hence the scene with the police officers Thomas remembered witnessing.
As for him and Claire… needless to say he was lucky to be found alive in the crashed vehicle. But on the other hand, nearby witnesses and the paramedics who’d arrived at the scene later had been greeted with something far more different with Claire – that being her bloodied, lifeless body thrown out in the middle of the road after the crash had sent her flying through the windshield, what with the seatbelt she’d forgotten to buckle again being unable to prevent it.
As the whole story fully sank into his mind during his stay at the hospital, Thomas knew only one thing; none of the medicine or physical therapy he received here would ever help him recover from this. It didn’t matter if he was able to stand on his own two feet again when everything inside him had collapsed beyond repair. Humpty Dumpty was in less pieces than his heart at this point.
Never mind the torture of being bedridden all day and night so as to let his bones knit and other things, just being alive here in a reality where Claire wasn’t gave Thomas infinitely greater suffering. A perpetual torment from which running far away to a better place was impossible, on injured legs or not. There was simply no escape no matter how badly he wanted it.
The same could be said for the shattered, devastated mess that was his mind. Every moment of every day he lay awake in bed, Thomas found himself trapped in his own memories that forced him to relive either all the happier past times he’d spent with Claire, or the harrowing sight of the sheet-covered corpse that signaled the end of those days. Even his dreams were no different, as almost every night in which he silently cried himself to sleep, he was greeted with nightmares of either the same imagery of Claire’s dead body on a stretcher, or him having a good time with her like they always had before she was violently and abruptly taken away from him.
By the time he was able to sit upright in bed to properly receive visits, such as those from his elderly parents and his friends (mostly a genuinely very worried Nathan), Thomas was so broken inside he wasn’t sure if it was possible for him to feel anything anymore. Though he was still grateful for the visits, all their words of concern or wishing him a good recovery just fell on deaf ears. Now whenever his mind replayed any past memories of Claire for him, his insides turned into a great, empty black hole of nothingness, as if he could feel any more of that than he already did.
This was the mindset Thomas came back home from the hospital in after an amount of time he couldn’t care less on how long it had been. He also didn’t care that his workplace had given him some days off for him to return later on a recovered enough state, nor that his parents and Nathan had scheduled for him therapist sessions to attend during that time.
As far as Thomas was concerned, regardless of how much he wanted to appreciate these efforts by people who cared for him from the bottom of their hearts, none of those things mattered. Because none of them could do anything to provide him with what he wanted most badly right now; Claire.
As impossible as Thomas fully knew it was, he just wanted her back in his life. After everything they had been through together, as well as everything they had to live for together in the days to come, he refused to suddenly be thrust into this hell where Claire wasn’t here to help him pull through. Despite his body’s full recovery, he might as well have lost half of himself in the accident with how much he couldn’t bear even the thought of having to just keep going on like this.
To add insult to injury, all those thoughts were immensely and uncontrollably intensified by what Thomas had wanted to do for Claire on the night of the crash. And now with her gone forever, after all those chances he’d had but foolishly backed out of, he would never get even a single one of those precious chances again. He hadn’t known what he’d got until it was too late.
That said, Thomas thought several days later, sitting on the living room couch as motionless as the way he felt inside – dead – what wouldn’t he be able to give if somehow, SOMEHOW, he was able to get one last, albeit most certainly out-of-reach, chance? This thought first began on the third day Thomas had returned home from the hospital, during which he’d been mindlessly organizing a few things around the house. Before long though, what should he randomly come across then but the engagement ring (that had miraculously survived the crash as well) he’d intended to give to Claire?
And so had begun a whole new torture from then on, consisting of immeasurable remorse leaving Thomas’ already broken heart even more crushed than his car after the accident. Not just remorse over his failure to propose while he still could, but also over irrational things nobody, let alone he himself, had any way of knowing. “What if I’d popped the question to her right after she’d told me we had to leave? Could have the few minutes we took to stay there longer while I proposed done anything to change things? What if by delaying our time getting out of that theater even for just a little bit, we could’ve prevented ourselves from coming across that drunk truck driver? Is it my fault that Claire died? Is her blood on my hands for not noticing she didn’t have her seatbelt on again?”
With his brain plagued by this train of thought never leaving him no matter what he did, Thomas had tried turning to distractions that he hoped would get all of this out of his head. One of those distractions had been searching for anything to watch on a streaming service. But as his luck would have it, while scrolling through a long list of movies, Thomas had somehow managed to run across one that acted as a piercing reminder of his misery the second he’d noticed it on his computer screen – Ghost.
Instantly drained of the mood to do anything, Thomas just resorted to lying on his bed in another fit of silent sobs. All while his tear-blurred vision also filled with flashbacks of that last night he’d spent with Claire watching Ghost together.
Amidst those mental images of the movie, however, Thomas then randomly recalled a specific plot point from it which, in spite of himself, stopped his sobbing at once; more specifically, the character of Oda Mae Brown, the psychic who had helped bring Sam and Molly together again after the former’s unfortunate death. And that one random memory had eventually become the catalyst for the aforementioned idea of a possible one last chance.
Yes, no doubt he’d gotten disturbingly desperate to have such thoughts in the first place, but at the moment Thomas didn’t care even for that either. The loss of his dearest love, coupled with this one bit of excruciatingly long-unfinished business, had so devastatingly infected his mind, it was by now reaching a state in which reason or common sense could no longer get to him. Thomas was determined that he’d never be able to be at peace again until he grasped at that extra chance, and he wasn’t going to take anything else for an answer.