It had been a long time coming. It was bound to unravel on me eventually. Imogen exhaled impatiently. I know she wants an answer but I don’t have one for her. Not one that she would understand. She exhaled that sigh again. That familiar, exhausted, deflated airbed sound and I knew I had to at least try. “It’s not what you think…” was all I could seem to muster. She snorted as though the notion was hilarious. “So? What is it?” she prompted, adding extra emphasis to the “it”.
The sharpness of her tone hung in the air between us for a moment or two as I tried to come up with a believable answer, before she intensified it by standing up. Her chair grating across the floor like nails down a chalkboard. She retrieved a fizzy drink from the fridge before returning to her seat, placing it on the table not once moving her gaze from her intended destinations each time. Then she turned it upon me. So deliberate. She’s so clever. She’d find out eventually anyway. She probably already knows.
It was my turn to sigh. I had to tell her. She had to know. I clasped her hands in mine and gathered all my strength as I turned to face her. “Look, there’s something I haven’t told you…” I paused, the words catching in my throat as my mind searched for something, anything to tell her but the truth. “See, the thing is Immy…you’re not…real…” the truth tumbled out as fast as the tears that spilled down my cheeks as I began to reveal the terrible burden I had carried with me for the past six years.
Imogen cocked her head in confusion. The silence hung in the air between us like tear gas before she spoke. “Not. Real?” She pulled away from me, sitting further back into her chair, still wearing that same confused expression. “I know this is gonna be hard for you to understand Immy, really hard…its hard for me too believe me…” “I’m not real!?” She cut me off. I could hear the anger starting to creep into her tone as she rose to her feet. “What are you talking about?! Not real? Seriously Chris, I have heard some excuses…” “It’s not an excuse Imogen, there IS no excuse for what I did!” I reached across the table again, grasping desperately to regain contact with her. She understandably pulled further away and backed away from me.
She glared at me as tears began to fill her beautiful eyes, the eyes I’d fallen in love with all those years ago. “I don’t understand you sometimes, I really don’t.” She swiped at an escaping tear. “Explain this to me! Explain yourself!”
And so, I did.
I explained how it hadn’t always been this way. How, once, she was real. We were childhood sweethearts, destined to be together. Married right out of college, we were happy, we were inseperable. Right until the very end. Until that fateful night six years ago. We had been out with friends for a meal, which had turned into drinks. More drinks than it should’ve. I knew better. Our friends begged us to walk back home with them and carry on the festivities there but I declined. Insisting I was fine. Imogen herself, suggested a taxi or even the bus, yet again, I declined and insisted there was no need.
I knew better. And they had relented.
I didn’t even see it coming, let alone have the reaction times available to have avoided it in my inebriated state. The sound of crunching metal filled the air, the screeching of brakes, the shattering of glass echoed and Imogen’s screams shattered my eardrums as I sobbed. “Im so sorry!” I pleaded “I never meant for any of this!” I raised my head to look at her, reaching out for her once more.
Reaching out into nothingness.
Imogen was not really there. She was not real.
Imogen was gone.
She would never be there to hear my apology. To hear me admit it. To finally say out loud what I had done as I fought with the ghosts of my guilt in the darkness.