Cursed By Rebirth? – Installment 9

Cursed by Rebirth?

By

D.M. KURTZ

Installment 9: This Is How It Ends?

The days that followed Jason’s poetic but rash proposal had been a flurry of rapid planning. He and Amanda had both decided that they wanted to be married as soon as possible, though neither of them had enough friends to warrant a large ceremony. Even so, they didn’t want to completely forgo the traditional wedding, so Amanda arranged a week of paid vacation, and they bought tickets to a resort in the mountains of Colorado. The morning of their scheduled departure, they piled their luggage into Amanda’s sporty, dark blue Hyundai before they themselves clambered inside.

“I love you,” Jason remarked as they left Amanda’s humble home behind them. He squeezed her hand, and she gave him a glance with that smile he’d so grown to adore.

“I can’t wait to be married to you.” Her cheeks were just the faintest hint of rosy red, and Jason practically grinned. His current joy hardly seemed possible, considering his accident and his painful recovery of both physical and mental acuity, but despite all he’d endured or perhaps because of it, he felt truly incredible. The selfish, angry side of him was still there, occasionally clawing to get out, but so far he’d been able to stave it off. His affection for Amanda certainly served as a powerful motivator for changing from the scum he remembered and despised to truly becoming the man that she deserved.

Everything was beginning to fall into place. With her help, he had regained access to his old bank account, sorted out his finances and lined up several job interviews, which he would attend once they’d returned from their honeymoon. For the first time in what he could honestly say was many, many years, his life had a clear direction, with purpose and meaning.

“Amanda Sharpe…” he mused. “It does have a certain ring to it.”

“Certainly better than Amanda Brown,” she added dryly. “I mean, for real, who chooses the name ‘Brown’?”

“Overzealous UPS driver?”

She chuckled at his weak attempt at humor, which he appreciated more than he could rightly express. Even at their best, Evelynn had never thought that his wry satire was even the slightest bit amusing.

Probably at least one factor for how quickly the relationship failed. Fragile from the start. He smirked at the thought, for it wasn’t the first of such ideas about his now desolved marriage. Looking back, he had begun to see some of the blame that Evelynn had shared, and those realizations helped him to cope with his own guilt. He’d even wondered what had attracted him to her in the first place, though for all his efforts, he couldn’t recall any reasons.

With Amanda, however, it was quite the opposite. Every day, he discovered something new about her that he cherished. From her captivating smile to her quick wit, her compassion, empathy and even the way she held a cup of coffee in the morning: it all served to fill his heart to the brim while simultaneously driving him to completely shut down the jaded beast he had once been.

“You know, I – ”

*Crunch!*

He was cut off suddenly as pain and fear shot through every fiber of his being. Though it happened in seconds, he experienced the accident in an almost surreal sort of slow motion. Amanda was thrust toward him when her side of the vehicle was impacted. The force of the opposing truck sent them into a nearby curb, which served as the catalyst that sent the Hyundai flipping several times before it ran hard into the concrete building that ended the sudden movement. Smoke rose from the wreckage while broken glass littered the street, and Jason fought to retain consciousness before his mind started to slip and his vision of Amanda, slumped and bloodied, faded from view…

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