Sparrows Song

Prolouge

Blake had lost the only thing in the world that gave his life meaning. Jane. She was beautiful, and so good, so innocent, but so, so naïve. And he, he was a monster, and he had almost destroyed her. He had never wanted anything more than he wanted to possess her, and briefly he had, but he had almost consumed her in the process.

He had always been completely selfish, ensuring that he got what he wanted above all else, but in the end he had given her up because it was better to know that her light still existed without him than to stay and have it be extinguished by his darkness. And he had always known he didn't deserve her. Now he felt nothing but cold, empty, and useless.

After he left her, he did nothing. He didn't touch his laptop, which he had often used before to hack into small companies networks or unsuspecting individuals computers, sometimes stealing money from them. He called into work and used up the weeks of vacation time that he had been accumulating. For a moment he considered hurting someone, but the thought repulsed him now. Unlike before everyone had a face now; they all could have been Jane, or they could have been a friend of Jane's or a family member.

He went to the store and bought the largest bottle of vodka that they sold, brought it home and drank it from the bottle without even bothering to mix it with anything. Blake never touched alcohol as a rule. His father had been a violent alcoholic, and he feared that he might have inherited the same genetic tendency for drink. Besides, he was afraid to lose control, not knowing what he would become. But now he found the numbness pleasant, and he got himself so ridiculously drunk that he might have killed himself. He didn't care if he did.

When he emptied the first bottle, he drove himself drunk to a gas station and bought more. Blake kept himself drunk for several days, until he woke up one afternoon feeling like he'd been run over by a truck. He had such an awful headache, every muscle in his body felt sore, and he was so nauseous that he couldn't bring himself to drink anymore, so he poured the rest of the alcohol down the drain.

Blake consoled himself that if he couldn't have Jane, he would just hate her instead, but he couldn't muster up the energy to. He told himself that he would get revenge somehow, but every time he thought about it he could only remember the pained expression on Jane's face the last time he saw her. Maybe he had been getting his revenge on her since the day he met her.

Eventually, his vacation time had been all used up, so he went back to work because he didn't know what else to do. Over time, the pain lessened a little and some of the first words Jane said to him came back into his mind, repeating themselves over and over again. 'But I am a bad person', he had told her, and she had answered, 'You don't have to be. You have a choice.'