A deep painful grunt sounded from the man who kept thrashing about in his sleep. His mind, soul, and body were lost to the memory that ate him alive and he had no way of stopping it. No, he didn't even want it to stop since that was the only way he could punish himself for the cruel fate he had subjected the woman he claimed to love to.
"Will you stop screaming, Rio? The baby is getting frightened." The woman pleaded with him vehemently.
"At this moment, I don't really care, Sandra!" Rio screamed at her again, doing exactly what she begged him not to do. He took his clothes and went out the door despite the many pleas of the woman.
"No! No!! You can't go, Rio!!! Turn back!!!!" Rio Allen screamed in his sleep as he continued to trash about and sob like a little child whose candy got lost.
The memory fast-forward itself and decided to settle at the turn when he had found his life shattered into a billion pieces before his eyes. That awful moment when she had died.
"Don't die!" He screamed with agony, holding out his hands to stop the disappearing image of the redhead woman who tormented his dreams every night. "Don't die on me." He said softly as he flickered his eyelids open.
He grunted as he got up from his bed, clad in only his underwear. His upper body was naked and his taunt muscles made him look like a bouncer at first sight. He picked up a towel and stood in front of a mirror, wiping away the beads of sweat from his face.
An alarm from his phone rang and he picked it up hastily.
Death anniversary. The alarm read and Rio cursed loudly as he sprinted into the bathroom. In five minutes flat, he was out, droplets of water dripping from his freshly washed hair and body.
In another ten minutes, his dark hair was neatly styled. He wore a plain tee and jeans, a dark shade of glass also covered his bright blue eyes. He moved out of the house and into the car. In another fifteen minutes, he was at a cemetery.
He went straight to a burial tomb that had weeds already growing around it. The flowers left there had already withered a long time ago, leaving only the dry stems as a proof of its existence. He bent low and began to weed out the grasses himself after dropping a new bouquet of flowers on the grave.
He couldn't believe that he had forgotten what that day meant in his life. How could he have forgotten the day he had lost the most precious person in his life? The one person that made his life so rosy that even the flowers were jealous?
Or perhaps he had always forgotten about the day on purpose because of how guilty he felt for his part in her death. Sometimes, he wished that he could visit the past and undo the damages his anger and action had done. Perhaps, his woman would still be alive by now.
***************
Anita Dowell fingered her shoulder length red hair as she stared intently at the newspaper in her hands. To anyone else, she was simply reading some news the media had thought was juicy. But to her, the paper in her hands was the ticket to her successful career.
As a 23 years old lady who had studied law at the university, she knew that her parents would start demanding that she show them the firm she was working at. Unknown to them, she had no interest in practicing the career she had chosen.
She wanted to be a best selling author instead.
And she would have if those blind eyes publishers had taken her two finished books to have given her the chance to at least prove that the books had potential. But no, they had the audacity to turn her away without even glancing beyond the first chapters.
She would show everyone of them how foolish the decisions to reject her books were. The paper right on her hands was the ticket to getting her dream come true.
"Allen Publishing Corporation." She read out loudly and tapped the paper, "Rio Allen, just wait."
She dropped the paper and picked up a blue scarf to tie to her neck. The scarf complimented her hazel eyes and red head perfectly. She whizzed around in front of the mirror as she thought about how shocked the owner of the publishing company would be when he saw her.
She went out the door and got into a taxi. As the car took her to the cemetery where Sarah Allen, Rio's wife, was buried, she thanked her star that she looked exactly like the dead woman whose death anniversary was today.
It all worked well for the plans she had in place. She just had to stage an accidental meeting with the owner of Allen Publishing corporation. She was sure that he would be intrigued by her look and then she could sob into his arms and get a publishing deal from him.
And why? It would be all because she looked exactly like his dead woman.
"We're here, Miss." The driver announced to her a while later.
She got down, paid for the ride, and disappeared to the cemetery. The place gave her hairy feelings but she shrugged it off, knowing that it was a little sacrifice for something that would forever change her life. She let her eyes roam around for the man who was the masterpiece of her plan. The moment she spotted him, she walked straight to where he stood.
Rio patted his cheek when he felt something wet trickle there and realized that he had been sobbing. He cleaned the tears away with the handkerchief he took from his pocket before he bent once again and cleaned the dirty name plate.
Sarah Allen, the name read.
"I can't believe it's been two years since you left me all by myself, Sarah." He finally choked out. "Nothing is the same without you here." He sobbed again.
Anita went straight to the grave beside Rio and began to wail loudly. She didn't know who owned the grave and she didn't care. All she just needed was to catch the publisher's attention.
"How could you leave me alone? How could you abandon me too?" She wailed while beating her chest like her heart was in pain. Her red hair flew around in every direction her head turned to.
"You promised to stay with me. You promised never to leave me even for a second." She sniffed her nose. "Where is the proof of that statement now?" She continued.
As she kept sobbing, she kept peeking to see if her acting seemed genuine enough to catch the attention of the man beside her.
When Rio first heard the loud wailing sound beside him, he ignored the voice since he knew that the person was simply grieving for their lost one just as he was. But when the sound got even louder with each speech, he knew that the person was more in grief than he was for his wife.
He turned his gaze to the person to offer a few words of condolences and he found himself attracted to the flaming red hair that kept bouncing about. When he realized that he was staring at the owner of the hair for longer than it was necessary, he cleared his throat and looked down again.
Anita had nearly rejoiced when the man had stared at her hair for a while, only to be disappointed when he looked away abruptly again. Perhaps she had made a mistake by not showing the man her face? She nearly gave in to the urge but she wanted the plan to look accidental as possible.
"How dare you?! How dare you not stay true to your words?!!" She screamed again, this time, a little too loudly.
Rio had had enough of the loud sound that promised to damage his ear drums if he didn't get away soon, so he stood up to leave the area. As it was, he already spent enough time wallowing in his self-pity and he could continue at home on his own.
As he took three steps away from the woman, he found himself attracted to the red hair once again. Maybe it was because his wife had the same shade of hair color. But more than the hair, he knew that he couldn't just leave the grieving woman alone when he knew how hurtful those emotions could be.
Before he could stop himself, his feet dragged itselves to where she bent, her face hidden from the world. "Are you okay, Miss?" He asked solemnly.
Bingo, her plan finally succeeded and that too, with less effort than she thought it would take, Anita thought as she raised her head to face the man.
"Sarah?" Rio said and stumbled back out of fear.
