HEART'S SHADOW

He's Never Gonna Change

Hood left the store as casually as he had appeared and ran down the street, keeping in the shadows. The diamond was as yellow as bananas. It wasn't the kind of diamond you would buy. Not if you were in your right senses. It looks priceless. The old man saying it's a kohinoor the first time he clapped his eyes on it was about right.
Hood never saw his mother wore it even though she claimed she liked it,but he had caught her looking at it like an anxious schoolgirl more than once.

In his sober moment, he went looking for his mother when he got home to apologize for his shocking behavior. He blamed himself for losing control. He loved his mother dearly and cursed himself for causing her pain. He had never spoken to her so rudely or so harshly.

He stood at her bedroom door and waited for a few minutes to make sure that she was asleep, then came in and, after he kept the diamond necklace where he had found it, he collected a couple of blankets and covered her, pulling them right up to her chin. He turned off her lamplight before leaving the room, feeling the pain of her pain; he hated causing her worry, but he liked knowing she was worried about him. Anger at himself battled with sorrow deeper than he could have ever imagined. He felt the weight of being alone all over again... his entire life and outlook shaped by his father abandonment. It was such a hurtful, confusing time for him. He went through a lot when he dumped them, leaving him confused as hell trying to make sense of how his father could just opt out to go live in a lovely house in Mexico with that stupid, snobby, horrible bitch.

God may forgive him but I never will. Never.

Whenever he thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed him; sometimes he was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes despondent and bewildered by the multitude of miseries that had overtaken him, It makes him so dizzy that sometimes he's not sure what he's doing or where he's going, and that makes him so miserable that he wants to scream. It had toughened him, made him a maladjusted cynic, defiant of all finer feelings, unable to love and be loved. It turned him into a cold, squalid monster. His heart was full of hatred and his soul demanded revenge. He tried desperately to lock out or stifle the thoughts creeping into his brain but it kept whirling around and around.

Fourteen years.

Fourteen years of willfully permitting his life to rot away. The Marina night clubs were a tonic; the activity, the crowds, the color, all helped him to lose a sense of identity of which he craved to rid himself. Numbed with grief and angry at the world, he hadn't cared who got in his way or who got hurt.

There was a big white moon like a grapefruit hanging in the sky, no stars, and it was blowing a gale and bitterly cold. Hood lay on a sofa on the rooftop even as he was white as a freshly laundered sheet, his bones aching and shooting pains in his skull, knowing if he stayed out in the wet long enough, perhaps all night,he'd get pneumonia and die.
His phone rang from his pocket, dragging him from his cloud-sodden gloom of despair. Damn!he really couldn't be bothered to answer it---he wasn't in the mood. The ringing started again. He took out his phone and saw Betty's number. It seemed to ring for ages before he picked it up.

"Hi Betty!"

"How's about coming over in fifteen minutes?" She asked. Her calm,quiet voice had a soothing effect on his jumping nerves."I just bought a box of king sized prawns."

"Nay, Betty, I can't come....Thanks all the same,"he said."I've got a chill or something." He listened to her commiseration,then hung up.

*****

Shortly after, the police caught up with Hood. They took him to the police headquarters and interrogated him for hours, after which they locked him up in an empty cell. Before they took him away from home, they had thoroughly searched the whole place. Fortunately for him, he had learnt to hide the drugs he sold and used in a place where no one, not even the best of detectives, could discover them.