When Jealousy Wins

(Vol. 11 | Spring 2024 - Cowley Student)

  

The night air was thick and seemed to hang stagnant around the edges of the almost forgotten lake. Years ago, many neighbors and families would gather here for the day. All the children would playfully splash and carry on with laughter and giggles in the cool water. The adults would sit in the shade of the old oak trees and sip on iced tea, catching up on the gossip. Young couples, lovers wanting some privacy under the stars, or newly engaged or married couples would come to this lake in the evening and night hours. This was a serene place once.

What used to be a popular place to meet and cool from the hot and humid days of summer or sneak a kiss or two now sat overgrown and somewhat peculiar. A touch of eeriness seemed to linger, swaying along with the tall grass and cattails that grew at the water's edge. People would talk about a strange and forbidding presence that wandered at that lake now. Sadness and grief accompanied anyone who visited it now.

         Only a few people even remembered this lake; even fewer still came to it. The new rage was an elaborate new aqua center in town only minutes from most; or the ones who didn’t mind traveling a bit; the beautiful grand lake built on the far side of town. For those who used to travel the thirty minutes to come out here, as the children grew and were able to walk in groups of friends to the center, no longer begging for rides out to the lake, parents felt a sense of one burden being lessened in today’s busy world. For the others who preferred the amenities at the new lake, the sentimental value of this little lake dried up as parts of it did.

The lake seemed just to give up and let the weeds and grass gradually take over, slowly chewing up the beachfront and encroaching on the good spots along the bank to cast a line or two for those who wished to fish. It was as if the spirit of the lake had been crushed, and there was no longer any purpose or attachment. It all just wasted away—a little at a time.

Many of the trees that still sat staunchly watching over the desolate area, battered by the storms of years past, were trying desperately to brave the coming of each new storm season. Spots that used to be mowed and well-kept were barely even noticeable. Places families would gather to set up the barbeque were all but gone. Floods had washed away items left behind, and the only young adults that visited now, with trouble on their minds, came out to party while vandalizing and looting until nothing much at all was left.

The funds donated for the voluntary cleaning crews withered away as the interest of those who wished for cleaner water, showers with hot water, and tables and grills for get-togethers became more prevalent. Many said there was no actual place to lay the blame; things just changed over time, and the lake was not immune. It sat there quietly as nature took back what people had claimed and then abandoned.

Lonely and lost souls who remembered the good times they had enjoyed here, wishing and longing for those times back, but knowing that was impossible, would still visit. It was once called the “Lake of Lovers,” but that was until one evening when everything changed. Many locals knew bits and pieces of the story, but few knew all of it, and fewer still wanted to know anything about it. But I’ll tell you if you’ll listen. I was there. I remember it all.

It all started with a jealous woman who had wanted him for herself. She had already had her chance, but she had betrayed him. Then the rumors she started about me, that I was being unfaithful, each one was like a dagger in my heart. He called me and asked me to meet him at our favorite place that evening. I expected a romantic evening near the once beautiful lake.

When I arrived, he was already there, sitting on a stump near the water’s edge. There was nothing but him and his truck. No blanket was laid out lovingly, no bottle of wine was chilled, and no glasses were waiting to be filled. There was no meal for a lover’s picnic nor flowers to show the love he carried in his heart for me. I was confused. I parked my car beside his truck and made the short walk towards where he was, and I thought how strange it was that not once did he look up until I was directly beside him.

Then, all of a sudden, he stood, and the terrible words he began yelling at me. The cursing he used as he shouted so close to my face that I could smell the alcohol on his breath. He was calling me terrible names, saying that I was a filthy woman and a lying cheater. He kept telling me I would get what I deserved. I was shocked at first and tried to question him. That only further escalated his foul mood. The words he yelled and the manner in which he said them furiously drove his words and those awful names like daggers even further into my soul.

I couldn’t believe what was happening, and I started to back away. But he grabbed my arm. Preventing me from moving away. He wasn’t finished yet. His rage was building and blinding him. He kept hissing at me, telling me how he knew all about the others. The other men, the ones I would secretly go out and meet. I was speechless. My words froze in my throat, and my heart was trembling. I swore over and over to him that it wasn’t true; I begged him to listen. I begged him to stop and listen to me. Then, with a heartlessly cold look, he plunged the sharp knife, down deep, into my chest the first time.

I screamed out of sheer terror! I asked him to listen and begged him to stop. I looked into his brown eyes where once there had been nothing but love for me, but there was no way to reason with him. He stabbed me again. Not once, not twice, but three more times, and as he reared back another time, all I could do was scream with what little energy I had left. I knew I wouldn’t survive. I couldn’t survive this attack.

As the blood began to pulse out of the open wounds on my chest, he plunged the knife deeply once more. His ex-wife did this; she knew what to say and how to drive him to this point—using our love to destroy us and taking the dagger of what she had done to him, and turning it and twisting it as if I had done the same. She had turned him into nothing but a raging shell of the man I loved. He was no longer my love—no longer a loving man.

I could feel the warmth leaving my body. The blood kept spurting out of the knife wounds and covered both him and I. This was how I would leave this world by the hand of the one who had promised me love and safety within his arms forever. When my vision began to fail, and my body no longer answered my commands, I knew. I could feel myself falling. I knew I was near the water’s edge when I fell, landing in a heap. I could hear the water lapping as if to greet me. I knew that this was the place where I would leave all that love we shared behind. I just didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it.

I didn’t know if I’d be gone before the narrow rivers of my blood made their narrow courses down the bank toward the water’s edge. Or perhaps my death would be slow and excruciatingly painful. I could feel his presence near me as if he wanted to prolong my agony. Yet, I heard him saying my name. I could barely make out the tears that streamed down his face when I looked up at him with what little sight I had left. His anger and anguish caused his voice to quiver, but it offered me no comfort.

He had become the monster of my nightmares. I had become the victim of a callous, lying woman. Her very hand did not plunge the knife deep into my chest, but still, it was her that led him to carry out this horrible crime. It was her and her vicious lies that drove him, consumed the good in him, and made a deranged man out of my lover. The last thing I saw was him slumping down beside me to sit on the stump.

Blindly staring ahead, he watched as the water moved in gentle waves towards the bank. Its gentle ebbing was mesmerizing and, in any other moment, would have brought a sense of calm and peacefulness. He looked down at the ground before him and saw the dark liquid that slowly coursed from my veins towards the water. It was as if the two were drawn together by some unseen force that would only be satisfied once they were united.

For her, breaking us apart was not enough. The wicked toying with his mind until it was full of nothing but rage, and driving this gentle, loving man to the brink of insanity was her mission. The warmth of the sun lingered even though it was already setting deep into the horizon, and the breeze coming off the lake made a false promise. It whispered of peacefulness and love. Little did I know that I would surrender to the tremendous forever-dark silence that was enveloping me, carrying with me a broken heart and shattered mind. My dying was a process, a slow and surreal act.

It was no secret that I knew that one day, my life would be over. If I had been asked for a spot more dear to me to leave this world, it would have only been for this place. Unfortunately, I did not think I would leave by his hands, the hands that used to hold and caress me as we lay on a blanket and listened to the calming sounds. The quietness of death was wrapping its dark fingers around me and carrying me away. I was slipping away to the sound of his sobbing.

Had I a choice, I would have chosen to tell him one more time that there was no hatred in my heart, but my time was nearly over, and the words never left my lips. My body turned cold, quickly ravaged by death’s disregard for the life I wasn’t finished living. Slowly, my being, the part that made me the woman I was, was disappearing within the darkness that would hold me now and forever more.

The haggard-looking man who had once felt deep in his soul that nothing could tear us apart sat holding his face in his large, masculine hands. In his mind, my blue eyes would sparkle for eternity. Promising him unconditional love and a safe place for his heart and weary mind, but in a twisted, cruel trick. Above us, there was a constant chirp from the birds as they flew over the lake, but the broken man sat there on the bank without hearing them. The darkness that filled his once-loving heart consumed him and left an empty shell of a man.

Again, he glanced down at the little rivers of the dark, thick fluid, my life force, that inched closer and closer to the water’s edge of the lake. The rage that had blurred his brown eyes was gone now, like a flame that had died from lack of oxygen.

When the man looked up at the sky, he could feel the soft breeze coming off the lake whispering to him, offering him something I could never have given him. A sanctuary. It would hide his terrible secret, hold it close, and never tell, just as my empty shell would speak no more. The words of false betrayal had been carved out of me like the inside of a tree that had developed a disease and rotted from within.

No longer would my beauty taunt him; no longer would we share precious moments here at our little lake. The Earth would consume my empty vessel, as it would consume the remnants of the dark liquid that was slowly soaking into the sand. The small amount that had reached the water would soon be diluted beyond recognition. The man knew that, eventually, a decision would have to be made. One that could only be made by him.

Would he leave the calmness of the lake that offered no reprimand for his treacherous deed, or perhaps he could enter the calmness of the water and wait until it enveloped his now empty shell and offered him the silence and serenity that he so desired? He would find no mercy, though, for he showed no mercy in his act towards me. He deserved no forgiveness. All the water offered him a forever silence.

The cattails near the water’s edge gently began to sway; a breeze was coming up, and it was inviting them to play along. He stood with certainty and gathered up my cold and stiff body into his arms. He had decided that together, the two empty shells would enter the water and seek refuge in the forever-deep silence there. Slowly, the natural world around us would dispose of our corpses and hide the truth, the unforgivable truth. Once and for all, it would still his weary mind, never to be restless again.

The dark rivers of my precious liquid mocked him, and he used the side of his old boot to scrape sand across what remained. He would quiet the mocking as he had stilled the lips of one so fair, me, his greatest love. And as he entered the water, carrying my dead body, it was as if it encouraged his surrender, welcoming the couple that would, after all, spend eternity together.

What love had gifted and jealousy had consumed, the water would hold tight. The secret within its depths. Lovers who dreamt of a happy ever after but instead were robbed by the malicious mind of a jealous woman who had yet to realize her error. She might have won in the silencing of my beating heart, but the despair it caused her prize, her trophy, the man with whom she had blatantly destroyed through her wickedness, would be lost to her forever more. He would surrender himself, along with me, to the cold and dark depths and she would never hold him again as she had intended.

The lake would be renamed because of us. The people who lived nearby would call it the “Lake of Lost Lovers,” and only the very lonely and bereft would visit our murky grave. Some would come to contemplate joining us, and others simply to sit a while. Until evening came, no one stayed past sunset anymore. For that is when my lover and I would rise from the depths of death and destruction to sit once more, lovingly, by the lapping water’s edge. Two souls with no place to go, no way to leave, and no tomorrows waiting for them.