Everyone has regrets, for some, it may be as simple as, "if I had caught that ball, we may have won the game!" For others, it could be as life changing as, "If I hadn't done this, would he still be alive?"
Well, my regret is this; "What if I hadn't lost my temper? Would I still have her? Would all those people still be alive?"
Well, I guess that that may be a little confusing without the background, so I'll start from the start.
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I had always had a dog, though mine was made of shadows. He was with me at all times, but he grew larger and nastier when I was angry.
I was eleven when I met her, and she was ten. She was playing with her cat made of light, her black hair tied back in a ponytail, and her blue eyes full of laughter.
When I met her first, I was seething with anger for something I have long since forgotten. All I remember was that seeing her cat calmed my wolf, and he shrunk to the size of a puppy.
We spent a lot of time together, Flora and I. Her cat calmed my wolf, and she calmed me. We grew up together, not talking about anything personal, even our families. Oh, I wished so often after the incident that I had asked her about her family, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Our friendship grew into something else, and once I left school I looked for a job as soon as I could. I still spent time with her, and we often enjoyed walks along the beach together, our shadow and light pets playing together.
Ever since I met Flora, the largest my wolf had even gotten was the size of a small wolf. I never seemed to be angry at all, and I think I rather took it for granted.
I happened when I least wanted it. I was twenty-three, she twenty-two. We were walking along the beach, as we often did, but this time I had a ring in my pocket. I intend to propose to her that night.
As we were nearing our favourite place to watch the sunset, I saw a man sitting on our bench. My wolf grew slightly as I grew a little angry. Flora gripped my arm slightly.
The man looked up and started when he saw Flora.
"Flora!" he shouted, leaping up. My wolf grew even bigger. He rushed to her and embraced her.
"Leo!" Flora cried, pecking him on the cheek. "I didn't know you were in town!"
He laughed, "Well I am, my little Flower. Who's your friend?" I waited for Flora to tell him that I wasn't just a friend, I was something more now. But instead, she just said, "Oh, he's Roger."
Leo laughed and kissed Flora on her cheek. That was when I lost it. My wolf flung itself on Leo, growling and barking. It lunged at him, my anger fueling its rage. Flora was flung to one side, her cat rushing to her.
I called my wolf back only a minute later, but the damage was done. Flora looked at me, anger and.... fear? in her eyes.
"What have you done," she cried, struggling up.
"Flora, please, you know how hard it is!"
"No! Why did you do it? He was my brother!"
I felt like she had slapped me. He was her brother. No wonder she had greeted him like that.
"Flora, I'm sorr-,"
"No!" she snapped, cutting me off. "Just leave!" She shook her head at me and glared. "Just leave."
I stepped back, shaking my head.
Anger suddenly filled me, and, keeping a careful rein on my wolf, I pulled the ring box from my pocket.
"Fine!" I shouted, flinging it at her, "If you don't want me, I'll leave!" I stormed off, tears blocking my vision. Her voice was always embedded in my memory, called after me, "Why in the world did you think I would marry you!"
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I ran all night, not caring for anything, my parents, my siblings, nothing. My heart was broken and would never be fixed.
I only stopped running when I collapsed. I knew my wolf would protect me, so I slept.
When I woke, I couldn't see it anywhere. I sat up, wondering where I was. Then I remember, and cast myself on the ground again, wishing that I had remained strong, that I never had my wolf, that I hadn't run. Even that we had never met
"Broken heart? Lost a girl. I know how you feel." I looked up quickly at the strange voice and saw a man. He was old, around seventy, but he was crouched, stroking my wolf, which was the size of a tiny puppy. He smiled a gap-tooth grin.
"Oh, I know how you feel, laddie." He stood, and my wolf bounded back to me. I shoved it away. "Couldn't control your anger? Think it's his fault?" the man continued. "I can make the pain go away."
If he had said that he could make heartbreak go away before today, I would have laughed and sent him away. I often wished I had done just that, but I didn't. Instead, I looked up, interested.
"How?" I asked, and from that moment on I was his.
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He took me to a small batch in the woods and began to train me. He taught me to not hold in the anger, and that hurt and betrayal would make my wolf grow. He also taught me how to keep firm control of my wolf, letting it grow only as much as I would let it.
One day, around four years after he had taken me in, he came into my room as I practised growing and shrinking my wolf. He was bent and crooked, looking old and tired. I stood quickly and gestured for him to sit on the bed.
"It's time to tell you a secret, laddie," he said, slowly lowering himself.
My wolf shrunk and jumped onto the bed beside the man. He absently patted it as he spoke.
"I'm not seventy, laddie, but five hundred years old." I looked at him, startled.
"What?!" I burst out. "You're what?! How?!"
He chuckled. "As you already know, magic is in the world," he gestured to my wolf, sleeping beside him. "You can see it in him. When I was your age, magic was much much more common, witches were real, and were drowned often. Even black cats could curse, or bless you.
"I was cursed by a cat with immortality. I was forced to watch my children die of old age. When I was seventy years old, and still looked like I was twenty, the local villagers accused me of being a wizard a tried to drown me. It was then that I discovered that I had a wolf, like you. It protected me.
"So I watched as the world changed, as people began to find things, and create amazing inventions. I grew older then, and hated it. I looked fifty when World War One started. I was beginning to feel my age and resented it. If I had to live more than anyone I met, I may as well stay young!
"One night, a great battle was fought outside my hideout. When I woke, it was still going. But, I realised that I was not fifty anymore, but forty. All that day I aged backwards, and by the time the battle was finished, I looked only fifteen. I was glad that I didn't age any less because I felt immature and foolish.
"Over the next few years, I figured that my favourite age was thirty. I was young enough to do everything without feeling it in my bones and old enough to be mature. Once the two world wars were over, I set up shop, as you say, here and stayed. "
I stood, listing as he told his tale. I believed him, proof of his story was right beside him in the form of my wolf.
"Where do I come in?" I asked suspiciously.
He nodded at me,
"Smart lad, knew I'd need you. Well, the fact is I don't have the money to travel across the sea to where wars are being fought. And, my wolf has vanished. I guess five hundred years was a little too long for it. I can no longer make the deaths I need to live."
I was beginning to have an idea of why he needed me, but I just listened.
"So, I need you to kill some people, just enough for me to age backwards to thirty."
I knew I would have to do it, but I didn't want too.
"Why should I?" I demanded.
"Because I saved you! You would have died of heartbreak if I had left you. I gave you a reason to live, and this is how you repay me? By refusing my simple request!"
"Killing thousands of people is not a simple request!" I cried. "Besides, you're an old man with no protection, and I have my wolf." I slowly let my wolf grow. It woke quickly and growled.
The man raised his eyebrows and waved his hand at it. It hesitated and began to shrink. I scowled and forced it to grow, letting my anger lose and every ounce of rage, anger and betrayal into it. The wolf didn't grow and inch.
"Save your anger," he said. "Follow me."
Knowing I was caught, I bowed my head and followed, cursing under my breath.
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He led me to a small town and told me to destroy it all, killing everyone. I began, hating every moment of it. But when I watched my wolf destroy a building, I suddenly felt strong. When I watched people running, screaming in front of it, I felt powerful.
I imagined that all of the running people were Leo, or my mentor, the man who caused all this. Finally, the town was a smouldering ruins, bodies lying limp on the ground.
Instead of feeling the remorse and guilt I should have, I felt strong, powerful and more in control than I ever had.
I half hoped I had killed the man in the town, but, when I began heading back to the batch, a man about five years my señor joined me. He had brown hair and no wrinkles, but he was undoubtedly the man.
"It's good to let the rage out. Good to kill, isn't it?" he said. I simply nodded and was more under his control than ever before.
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After that, he aged quickly, and after effect of being five hundred years old. So, over the next few years I attacked towns for him, killed for him and made him young again.
I began to get a name, The Shadowed Killer. I liked that and often introduced myself before I killed everyone. I also often left one or two alive to spread the world. I became famous for all the wrong reasons, and yet I reveled in it.
Often, I would slip out at night before he woke and attack a town or village. When he found out, he simply nodded at me.
"Feels good, don't it," he would say. And I would nod, it was true.
One day, ten years after I had first attacked that town, I was in the middle of a town, my wolf hidden in an alley, waiting for the right time to strike.
I was making my way to a scaffolding, I like to be high to see the chaos and destruction I brought. Upon reaching it, I quickly scrambled up, shoving a worker to the ground.
Standing on the highest point, I looked over the people.
"Hello citizens, I am The Shadowed Killer!" I shouted, holding my hands above my head. People began turning to me, muttering under their breaths and gasping in shock and fear. "I am here to destroy you!"
Behind me, long practised, my wolf began to grow, giving me a shadowed backdrop. I lowered my arms and my wolf leapt.
Suddenly, a blinding flash of nearly knocked me off the building, and a voice shouted, "Roger?!"
A huge cat made of light stood beside my wolf, both were slowly shrinking. And beside the cat, a heavily pregnant woman stood, holding the hand of a young boy and with a man behind her. Nearby an older boy ran towards them.
Older now, but still as beautiful, Flora stood, her eyes full of sadness, sorrow and pity. My anger grew even more. How dare she make a family with one other than me! How dare she have children that weren't mine! How dare she look so lovingly at them behind her. How dare she!
Even the presence of her cat wouldn't calm my wolf now. It grew to the size of the building I was on.
"Roger, please don't!" Flora shouted. The man behind her gripped her arm and tried to pull her away. She shook her head. "Roger please!" she cried as her
husband dragged her away. I ignored her cry and focused all my anger into my wolf.
A single paw felled the family of my beloved, killing all or most I didn't know, or care! My anger blinded me and I struck out, killing and destroying. Finally, my anger was spent, and for the first time in years I felt the remorse I should have.
I hurried down the scaffolding on the only building left standing, and rushed to where Flora was. I knew that her husband and younger son were dead, but she and her older were still alive.
"Why Roger? Why!" she asked weakly.
"I-I. My anger. Flora, please I'm sorry." She just looked at me, sadness in my eyes.
"If you had only come back," she whispered. "I only loved you. I'm sorry Roger, I'm sorry." And then she breathed in a ragged breath. "I'm sorry," she whispered and breathed her last.
I collapsed over her, sobbing and crying. It was my fault! My fault! If only I hadn't run from her! If only I hadn't agreed to the man's mission! If only I hadn't let my anger control me! If only!
"Come boy, let's go," I heard a rough voice behind me, and saw the man, twenty years old. "You killed too many. Let's go."
I looked up from Flora's body, my face tear stained and grubby.
"No," I said.
"No? After all I've done for you! You say no!" he cried.
"You've done nothing for me but make my life missable! You've made me a monster!"
"You already were a monster! Look at how many you have killed!" He gestured wildly around him.
"Then one more death won't make much of a difference." I bent down and picked up a piece of broken glass. He stepped back, fear in his eyes. I threw the glass at him, and it landed in his chest. He stared at me, anger, fear and hate in his eyes.
Then, sinking to his knees, he cried.
"My wife! My children! Ahhhh!" Then he fell forward, dead.
I dropped to the ground, tired and exhausted. Tears slipped from my eyes as I looked at Flora. I picked her up and carried her through the town.
I was near the outskirts of the town when I heard a voice.
"Mummy!"
I turned and saw Flora's son limping towards me.
"Mummy?" he cried. I lowered her body to the ground and the boy ran to her. "I-is she okay?" he asked. He looked about seven.
I knelt down beside him.
"Look, kid. I'm sorry, but....... she's....she's dead." He stared at me, horror in his face.
"What! Mummy!" he wailed.
"What's your name?" I asked. He sniffed.
"Roger," he whispered. Roger. His mother had named her first born after me.
"Well, my name is Jason, and I'll look after you, okay?" I told him.
He nodded weakly.
"Okay," he whispered. I patted him on the head, forcing a smile.
"Let's bury your family, and then I'll take you to a place to live, okay!" Again, he nodded, and I lead him back to the town. As we did, I saw the black shadow of my wolf bound off. Beside it ran Flora's cat, both as small as kitten. I wished them luck where ever they went.
"Jason, who are you? Mama said never to talk to strangers," Roger said.
I looked down, startled.
"I'm an old friend of your mother." I knelt down beside him. "I can be whoever you want! I'm going to start a new life, with you."
Roger looked up.
"Can you be my friend?"
So that was what I became, no more Shadowed Killer, no more man, no more shadow wolf. I took him into the batch that I had lived in with the man. I had a new name, a new life, and I should have been happy.
But often, late at night when Roger was in bed, I would look at the stars, and think of the shadow wolf and light cat playing together and thought of Flora. I thought of the family I would have with her if I had just!
So many things I regretted, and yet I couldn't change them. So many things I wanted to change, and yet I couldn't.
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So now you know what I regret. There are so many things I wish to change, so often at nights my heart aches with all the regret.
Now listen carefully, and I'll tell you what I did wrong. I didn't think before I acted, I didn't ask if I would regret what I did.
Please, please, please pay heed to what I say,
think. Think before you explode, think before you let anger get the better of you.
I know from experience, and I hope that you won't learn that way. Pay heed to my story, and don't make the same mistakes I did.
