Shadows on your side

Roaming the corridors of The Emerald Hotel, had left me with plenty of time to grieve and reminisce over the past decades, trapped in this internment. The decaying wallpaper that filled the interior, the crumbling facade of a once elegant establishment, and the countless memories of a much simpler time would be forever cemented in only history. The Emerald would be in ruin, leveled to a mere parking lot. The thought of not knowing what would become of me had pervaded through me a great deal of terror. I began to ponder just what might have been of a young Wendell Christensen, had he not set forth in the Emerald Hotel on that day in 57’.

I was twenty-five then, young, stupid, naive, the whole nine yards. To believe in such a thing like love made me a fool, perhaps it was his Dartmouth background, or his immense fortune that drew her eyes. Foolish, I thought, that was over sixty-years ago. You! You did this to yourself, you were the one that downed all that alcohol, you were the one that had adorned the rope in the hotel room that fateful evening, not her. This was the same debacle that I had argued with myself for the last sixty years. The shadows of the long, abandoned hotel had left me no room for change all these years. Alas, the day had finally arrived, the Bull Creek Demolition crew was about to start work on what would be my final demise. It wasn’t a fast and painful blow, but a slow and well-planned destruction. Determined, yet stricken with anger and sorrow, I waited for the building to level.

I don’t remember necessarily all of what happened with the building, all I distinctly remember was her. Surely I couldn’t be dreaming, for there is no rest for the wicked, I thought. The image of her became clearer, in more vivid detail, I could make out something beautiful. The greatest thing I had ever seen was before me, I could see heaven in her eyes.