This story is by DeAnna Shae and was part of our 2025 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
In the end, there was more blood than body. More of her staining my skin, than was left inside her. The crimson pool bloomed across the pavement, coating my calloused palms, soaking my worn jeans. A centimeter or a foot, it didn’t matter; I was drowning in it either way.
I told myself stories before I even stepped out of the truck.
It was dark. That was my first excuse.
The rain was my second.
Maybe an animal. That was my third.
Never once did I admit it was my eyes. Closed for three seconds too long.
Three seconds—hiding a blink, or an eternity.
My headlights burned through misty rain. The truck engine still hummed. My door hung open. The radio whispered a lullaby I didn’t remember turning on.
When the sirens came, I told myself I was awake. But the small body in my arms would never wake again.
No laughter.
No lungs.
No breath to blow out five candles.
Her mother, she had breath. To scream. To wail. To cry.
I didn’t see her then, not through the rain and the blur of panic. I hear her now in every nightmare, calling for her little girl to stop. Voice cracking when the dog broke free and ran.
She was there. Suddenly beside me, trembling, rain-soaked, striking my chest with small fists before falling to her knees. Trying to dry the blond pigtails floating in the crimson pool. Her tears fell like a hurricane.
Another ocean I’d drown in if I could.
Not that night. Not ever that night.
And not today. Never today.
This day, once a year, when brilliant blue eyes stare through me and say words I can’t stand to hear. Words sharper than the knives of the inmates who torture me just the same. Torture me with whispers as they carve another shiv, while I pick another fight, and curse the guards who drag me to isolation. Concrete and iron keep my demons close. Welcome friends I cannot leave.
I deserve it, I tell them.
The demons agree.
We talk about that night as if it’s tonight. What I’ll do differently. How I’ll drink an extra cup of coffee to keep awake. Call my wife, let her know I’m working late. Send a kiss for her belly, and a lullaby for the little one growing inside.
My demons laugh, a low cackle I can’t escape. “You cannot undo it. It’s already done.” Perhaps they tell me the truth.
I brand myself with words of my own:
Stupid. Drowsy. Workaholic.
Inked on my forehead if I dared to look. But I don’t, for fear I’d see it. The truth I buried that night in blood, in rain, in three stolen seconds.
“You weren’t tired,” the demons hiss. “Don’t you remember? Remember the truth?”
The truth that visits me once a year, in glacial blue eyes. Ready to serve as judge and jury to condemn me. As if I need that.
The golden soul I sent to heaven is the leader of that tribe. With a torture all her own. Her rain boots, no longer splashing through puddles as she hops from one to the next.
Hop. Hop. Hop. No more.
They sit in silence, hollow with loss. No warm feet to fill them. No legs to run them in happy chase. Only the puppy curled upon them, still waiting for his blond-haired girl. The one who, reaching for him, ran into the street, and was swallowed by it.
The street where I closed my eyes for three seconds too long.
My demons chastise me with their own words.
Stupid. Stupid. Liar.
A whisper of what I try to forget. It wasn’t sleep that blurred my eyes, but brandy in my cup, to keep the night young. No thoughts of home and lullabies. My lips pressed on a belly soft and flat, pierced with a jeweled ring, not round with life.
They play back the laughter. A woman’s, not my wife’s.
My demons are cruel, but they don’t lie. Not about that night. Not about the sound of tires on wet asphalt, relentless and final. Not about what could have been avoided. They love to do this. Flood me with truth in drops and waves alike, drowning me in small pools without rain, without mercy.
But it never works. I’m as alive as a soulless person can be.
I’ll pay. And pay. And keep paying. With knives and fights, so I’ll never get out. Never see the end of the blue eyes that haunt me.
Just like the letters stacked unopened. I can’t read her words. I already know the sentence.
The sentence she delivers once a year, when she sits across from me. Judge, jury, ghosts. Reminding me with those eyes that speak volumes without saying a word. She doesn’t need to; my demons tell the story for me.
How she turns the radio off when her daughter’s favorite song plays.
How pancakes sit cold on Saturday mornings.
How the white Sunday dress still waits in a box, wrapped with a bow, never to be worn.
Because I took it all away.
Her tears fall. Another pool I drown in.
Still, every year she comes. And every year I tell myself this will be the last time. I’ll find a way to end it.
Then she walks in.
And the room stills.
This time, she isn’t alone.
A small hand clutches hers. Innocent blue eyes, unclouded as spring water, watch me with wonder. Her mother’s eyes hold the storm I made. My lungs seize. Even the hum of the lights fades. My demons fall silent, slipping back into cracks as her mother steps forward and gives me the words I never learn how to hear.
“I forgive you,” she says.
Who would say that? To me? Why won’t she just let me rot?
The room tilts. The world narrows in. Her and the child beside her.
Spring eyes blink, and the small voice slices through what’s left of me.
“Daddy, please come home.”
The words land soft, but cut deeper than any blade.
And I understand.
Buried beneath the alcohol and the lie is this: forgiveness drowns deeper than guilt. Mercy hurts more than punishment.
The blue eyes of endless waters will forever maroon me in bars and concrete. The cruelest grace of all. She sees me as what I can never be.
I clench my fists. Swallow the words. Because in the end, there was more blood than body.
A centimeter or a foot, it doesn’t matter.
I’ll keep drowning in it either way.
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