Twisted Roads – Twisted Horror Stories by Matthew Tonks

Jupiter

I stand here like a total moron, staring bewilderedly into her big green eyes, trying to make words come out, but I can’t—I don’t know how to. I worked myself up so much for this that now, I don’t know what to say or do.

Well, that’s a lie. I knew what I was going to say, what I was going to do—well, sort of, anyway. But when she uttered those words, telling me what I knew she would, everything fell apart.

I guess you need to know what the hell is going on to understand. So, I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning—not right at the start, of course, but close enough. I’ll just concentrate on today; I think that’s the best place to begin.

I knew when the phone rang that I shouldn’t have answered it, especially when I saw her name come up on the screen. Eight years and not a single call, text, or letter—not once—and now suddenly a call out of the blue was unnerving.

Anyway, she said she was in town and wanted to catch up over coffee, as we needed to talk. Eight years, and now she needed to talk? I mean, I said yes—of course, I did. She was the one that got away, the one I let slip right through my fingers. You see, she wanted to explore the world, and I was happy doing the same thing every day. I still am, in fact. I just don’t have that bug. So, one day she just up and left. No Dear John letter, no explanation; she just booked a ticket out of here and was gone from my life.

It took me years to get over it, and I mean years. I still remember playing with the idea of chasing her around the world when she first took off, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and I had no idea where she’d gone. Honestly, I still have that hole in my stomach, and now that I was walking down the street to sit and have coffee with her, it was just getting worse. What was I going to say? What was she going to say? Should I have just said no? I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for this—not today, not any day. It was then that I started to think maybe she had finally done all she wanted to in the world outside our small town and now wanted to come back home, to me. That made me even more nervous. I mean, I hadn’t changed at all in the last eight years, and she’s been out there experiencing the world. God, she even had a weird sort of accent. Then my stomach churned, and I almost turned around when the coffee shop came into view. But I swallowed whatever was stuck in my throat, walked through the door, and there she was, as beautiful as she had ever been. Our eyes met, and she smiled. I smiled back and walked over. We hugged for what seemed like forever. It was amazing, and that’s when all the emotions came bubbling up. All those years of repressing how I felt burned a hole in my stomach, and I almost cried.

“Y-Y-Y-You look great,” I said nervously.

“So do you,” she said. It was then that I noticed someone else at the table, and my heart skipped a beat.

“Jerry, I’d like you to meet your daughter, Annie,” she said, and my mouth dropped open as I stared into her big green eyes and stood there like a moron.