Loved

September 9, 2025

They were coming. I could hear them. Heart pounding, lungs aching, I sprinted from the cover of the forest into the tangled field. I trained for this. I trained for this. I willed my breathing to slow, my mind to focus. Guilt battered at the edges of my thoughts, but I pushed it aside. Focus. She knew the truth, and she would believe me. I just had to make it home. I had to see the one who knew me, who only had to look me in the eye and say my name, and my soul remembered. I drew strength from speaking her words to the pounding of my heart.

Your past does not define you.

You are a good man.

You are loved.

I could see the house. Sitting on the edge of the village, glowing like a beacon as it reflected the dying sunlight. Hope and tears welled simultaneously as I stumbled on. I heard their shouts behind me; the roar of their truck crashing through the forest, destroying everything in its path.

Destroying everything.

That’s what they say about me now.

I stumbled up the steps and crashed through the door, locking the deadbolt behind me and praying I hadn’t been seen. Everything I had hoped for assaulted my senses - the indescribable but familiar smell, the way the evening light hit the entryway, the wobbly old coatrack with the missing branch.

Everything but her.

I called her name, frantically. Desperately.

Silence.

I felt the walls in my mind begin to crumble. Fear seeped in first - first a trickle, then a rush that overtook all my senses. What if she was gone too? I didn’t think it could reach this far. No. No. It couldn’t. I made it. I should know.

But I hadn’t known.

With dread, I felt a darker, more suffocating feeling beginning to ooze in like tar.

Guilt.

I made it. I should know. I should have known.

I remembered. I saw the buildings crumbling. I heard their screams. I tasted ash and metal. I tried to scream too, tried to tell them to run, willing my voice to carry through the screen.

Your past does not define you.

Cities destroyed. Everywhere. And I made it.

The darkness was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe.

You are a good man.

Where had she been when it happened? Home. She was supposed to be home. I tore through our rooms, looking for any sign of her.

There it was. A note, written in that graceful, familiar script on the bathroom mirror.

My love,

Gone to the city for a meeting today. See you tonight.

V

The city. A sob caught in my throat. There was no date, but I knew. It had been fifteen days. Fifteen days since I clocked my morning run in record time and downed a cup of bitter coffee on my way to the plant. Fifteen days since I felt a snag of fear at the unveiling of my work. Fifteen days since my fear turned to desperation as they voted to commence testing despite my warnings. Fifteen days since I watched that screen in horror before it went black.

You killed thousands, maybe more.

The new voice was low and sinister, spreading the suffocating darkness through my mind. I remembered stumbling through empty, rubbled streets, masked and ashen. I remembered the blame-shifting, the price on my head. And I remembered running. Running, desperate to find home. To find her.

You killed her.

I couldn’t hear her anymore. I jerked and swung, clutching my head, wild-eyed and desperate to escape this voice. I heard the truck grinding by outside, and pictured throwing myself in front of it, giving myself up to this guilt I felt.

I felt sick. I grasped wildly at the sink and knocked a small dish to the floor. It shattered, and with a jerk my mind stilled. I stared at the shards on the floor. As my mind focused, I saw a small heart-shaped locket on a chain, lying among the splinters.

You are loved.

Her necklace. Stooping to touch it, I heard her voice again. Racking sobs began to shake my body, and in every fiber of my soul I knew it was true. She loved me. She loved me still. I carefully snapped the heart open and stared. Shaggy hair, my favorite sweater vest, and a carefree, crooked smile. I saw myself as she saw me.

And suddenly I knew the words she would say to me now, and I knew they were true.

I am now a man on the run. A man whose own work destroyed so much in one day. A broken man. I don’t know what comes next for me. There is much guilt to be accounted for, and there are many answers yet to be found. But I hear her voice, and this I know to be true:

My past does not define me.

I am a good man.

I am loved.