Lustful Eyes

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.