Pain

Dan spotted a crumpled piece of paper lying on the floor in the corner of the room. He stooped down to pick it up and at that very moment a sharp pain shot up his chest. He shouted out aloud and fell to the floor with a loud thud. He could hardly breathe. He wanted to shout out for help but he couldn’t, all that he could do was produce a hoarse whisper calling out to his dead wife whom he swore he would hate till his last breath. But the fact was that he didn’t hate her at all in fact he was still in love with her. And after calling out his name he breathed his last.
Stephen hated Dan. Well you couldn’t blame Stephen for that Dan wasn’t really the epitome of fatherhood. Dan was actually ok at first but things went downhill when Angela left him for some other man with loads of money. There is nothing extraordinary about what happened it happens quite frequently in today’s world, men run after good looking women and women run after rich men for their money. But what is to be considered over here is the effect this had on Stephen. No mother was ok with Stephen but an ill tempered dad and no one to console him was not. Dan used to flog Stephen with his belt on an almost daily basis and most of the time there was no reason for the flogging. On the day Stephen turned 17 Dan branded his back with a horseshoe, stared at the mark for sometime and then started laughing out aloud. All Stephen could do was shout at the top of his voice while Dan stood there laughing at his son, staring at him like a maniac.
At the age of 28 Stephen got married to Elizabeth. They got divorced when he attained the age of 30. It was a day in summer Stephen wasn’t feeling well and so decided to return home early. He let himself into the house with the key he had. He didn’t bother to ring the doorbell since he presumed that his wife was off to work and Samson, his son, had gone to school. All of a sudden he heard shouting from upstairs. Stephen rushed up the stairs to find Samson lying on the floor with vacant eyes looking up at the ceiling; there were slash marks all over his body. He was too dazed to spot an old man staring maniacally at a wall and laughing out aloud. Then the man started moving towards a corner of the room. He stooped down to pick up a crumpled piece of paper, shouted out aloud, fell to the floor and lay still.