Looking once more at the object he called scum he then bellowed out “say goodnight.”
His son screamed “no.”
He was far too late. There was already blood and his teeth on the road kerb. What a brutal thing for the young boy to see. This man didn’t care, still standing proud with his hand over the disgraceful tattoo.
Even though the blue flashing lights of three police cars were behind. It was too late, he had claimed someone’s life, he didn’t show one bit of remorse on his face as the police ordered him onto his knees. Just a smirk on his face as he left for prison, how long? That’s the question no one knew.
His tears filled up his eyes, but these tears were tears with regret. The eyes stare at the gravestone with him begging to god.
“Forgive me, oh god please forgive me”
The stranger who once insulted him going back twenty years ago is now lying in the coldness of the floor. On his knees still crying with regret, he is knelt beside the gravestone dressed in a smart suit. Perhaps this was the way prison made him, a man who taken someone’s life and now feels he has nothing to live for. Now the sky is black and the droplets of rain, which used to run off his skinhead, now gets stuck in his hair.
Thunder now started to bellow across the dark sky with lighting illuminating up the graveyard. But still he knelt beside the stone crying, screaming:
“Sorry, sorry.”
Just to think of this man crying and saying sorry twenty years ago to this stranger would of deceived people. But twenty years on and he is. By looking at this man now would think he has changed. But there will always be one thing that will remind him of that brutal night, till the day he dies himself. The tattoo. The sign which when he has himself branded was a sign of hate. Now the tattoo is a sign of his dreadful past. Every time he looks down on the awful disgraceful tattoo he remembers that awful night in which he stole another man’s life.
To me he can’t have changed, but to my astonishment there standing behind him, is a friend of his. Twenty years ago he would have called his now friend scum. But his friend is there for him to cry upon.
The rain lightened up, as he lays down the wreath of flowers with a card reading:
“Sorry.”
That’s all the card read, but that word alone didn’t bring the stranger back. As he left the graveyard with tears still rolling down his cheek, the sun emerged through the darkness of the sky and falls onto him. Was this a sign, a message from god or to signal this man has now changed? As he gets into his car half his face is illuminated by the sun whilst the other half in the darkness.
