What would you do for love? Or rather: What wouldn't you do? When Nathan loses Anna â his vibrant, bursting-with-life soulmate, the one girl who completes him â to depression and despair following a vicious rape, he vows revenge against the trio of scumbags involved. Rather than waiting for a justice system he doesnât believe in to act, he becomes Judge, Jury, Executioner. He hunts down the rapist and those who aided and abetted him hoping this will bring the Anna of old back to him. Instead, much to Nathanâs shock and pain, it has the opposite effect, driving her even further towards a dangerous precipice. Will true love be enough to set things right? One thingâs for sure: no matter what happens, true love is forever. Mitchell P. Jones presents the reader with Nathanâs cold, clear-eyed view of the world and all its faults, a place that hardly has room for love. But, in this world, it is love in the end that rises above all else, turning the coal of daily life into a sparkling diamond.
What would you do for love? Or rather: What wouldn't you do? When Nathan loses Anna â his vibrant, bursting-with-life soulmate, the one girl who completes him â to depression and despair following a vicious rape, he vows revenge against the trio of scumbags involved. Rather than waiting for a justice system he doesnât believe in to act, he becomes Judge, Jury, Executioner. He hunts down the rapist and those who aided and abetted him hoping this will bring the Anna of old back to him. Instead, much to Nathanâs shock and pain, it has the opposite effect, driving her even further towards a dangerous precipice. Will true love be enough to set things right? One thingâs for sure: no matter what happens, true love is forever. Mitchell P. Jones presents the reader with Nathanâs cold, clear-eyed view of the world and all its faults, a place that hardly has room for love. But, in this world, it is love in the end that rises above all else, turning the coal of daily life into a sparkling diamond.
Nathan wakes gently and, rubbing his eyes, instinctively turns his head to look at the clock. Not that it is really necessary. The cloud of glinting dust particles dancing in the piercing rays of sunlight that stream through the cracked window of his apartment is as good an indication of the time of day as any.
Still groggy, he strains to look at the clock through his half-closed eyelids. Until he is certain that it is time to get up, he is reluctant to rub them and potentially dislodge the rheum that he can feel resting there. The glowing digital display informs him that it isnât even midday yet and, it being a Saturday, there is really no reason for him to get out of bed any sooner than he desires. But as he rests his head on the pillow once more, his eyes returning to the white sheets from the clock as he does so, he feels his physical awareness of his immediate surroundings increase in spite of himself, promptly followed by an uncontrollable rise in his cognitive function. And a very unwelcome one at that. He can sense something.
The hairs on his arms stand on end as time seems to have stopped, the desolate void in the room gripping his aching bones long before his eyes can identify that emptiness. But then they do, the revelation striking him like a blow from a sledgehammer. His girlfriend, Anna, is gone. He canât believe that it has taken him so long to notice. Hit by a wave of almost unbearable anxiety, his gut wrenches as he extends his hand under the sheets to touch the slight depression where she had been lying. The sheets are stone cold.
He sits bolt upright in the bed and reaches for his phone, barely able to contain the fear building inside him as he unlocks the screen. In the past Annaâs absence in the morning might not have alarmed him. She liked to rise early and take in the fresh morning air. However, his concern for her mental health and wellbeing have been steadily rising as her nightmares increased while the amount she ate and the words she spoke decreased. Day by day, Anna had become more emotionally withdrawn, a shadow of the once vibrant and confident girl that he knew and loved.
Desperate to distract her from the depression into which she was sinking, he had tried everything to help her. Going for walks. Talking to her. Even just sitting together in silence. Just looking at each other. Anything was better than watching her slumped in the chair, staring blankly at the wall as if she were standing on the edge of a mental precipice.
But as hard as he tried, helping Anna to overcome her inner demons seemed beyond his reach. The next step had been more out of desperation than any real faith in a positive outcome. Professional help. An expert. Although the extent that their expertise stretched beyond separating the patient, or rather customer as they were perhaps more aptly described, from their financial means was not entirely apparent. Despite a string of visits to a psychologist, Nathan could honestly say that he had seen very little improvement in Annaâs psychological condition so far. The dent in their wallets, on the other hand, had been far more pronounced.
What worries him most is the simple fact that there is really no reason for her to have left the apartment at all, let alone so early and without telling him first. Up until recently, there wasnât a single weekend that he could recall that they hadnât woken up together to spend the day engaged in some very simple but personally satisfying activity. Today should have been just like any other day. A little slice of paradise doing just about anything with the girl that meant the world to him.
His heart pounds. He can feel the blood pulsing through him, the veins bulging on the sides of his forehead, signaling an alarm that reverberates violently within his skull. An emergency that belittles anything that he has known to date.
Even as he tries to calm himself and think logically, he simply canât prevent his hands from shaking in response to his bodyâs barely controlled panic and his thumb trembles as it pounds the phone screen to initiate a call to Anna.
He takes a deep breath. And holds it as the phoneâs ring tone repeats itself. He breathes out. Come on, Anna. Pick up. Come on. But the phone continues to taunt him with its blaring and his stomach sinks a little more with every additional ring.
âCome on, come on.â
Nathanâs foot matches his pleading as it taps the floorboards. The flow of horrific scenarios generated by his imagination doesnât help. And then the phone clicks and he feels the breath catch in his throat as his spirits skyrocket.
âAnna, where are youâŚ,â he gushes into the receiver as his face cracks into an overjoyed, almost crazed smile.
But his relief is quickly extinguished by the automated message echoing through the line, a message that is all the more disheartening in that it bears Annaâs voice:
âHi, itâs Anna. I canât take your call right now. Maybe itâs a bad time. Maybe I just donât want to talk to you.â The sound of her provocative laugh echoing through the line sends chills from his head to his toes. âIf you think I do, then leave a message! Ciao.â
âFuck.â
He takes another deep breath as his brain weighs the sense in following the seemingly pointless instructions. Several seconds of silence have already passed and uncertain of what exactly he should say in the limited time that remains his raw unprocessed words simply spill out.
âAnna, Itâs me. Nathan. Are you okay? Where are you? Please, call back, straight away. I need to hear your voice. Iââ
The automated response cuts his bumbling off.
âFuck. Fuck,â Nathan shouts in frustration and throws his phone down onto his bed. He stares at it for a moment in anger but almost instantly reconsiders his rash action and picks it up again to redial. An instinctive response almost entirely based on his desperation and the fact that there is no other obvious course of action. His overly optimistic side perhaps hopes that those few precious seconds would somehow change the outcome. This time it would be Anna at the other end and not the soulless message.
But redial as he might â and he does so again and again â the only thing that greets him is the ringing followed by the same infuriating recorded lines.
He holds the phone out in front of him and stares at it desperately. As if willing it to weasel its way through to Anna of its own accord. To get his message to her: âAnna, please come home. Please. We can work this out. No matter what it is, Iâm here for you. Iâll always be here for you. You donât have to do this alone.â
But the phone is silent. Dead. He squeezes it in his hand as if that might compel it to be more cooperative. Dead. The anxiety assaults him and sets his hands and feet shaking again, a rhythmic drumming to match his apprehension.
With the life draining from him by the second, Nathan shuffles to the window, gripping the small device in his hand as if his life depends on it. His lifeline to Anna. Surely it will ring at any moment and he will answer it to find her poking fun at his concern. Telling him how stupid he was for worrying when she was simply out for a walk or shopping. If only that were the case. But something in his gut tells him otherwise.
âAnna, where are you?â A cold shudder runs the length of his body as he mutters under his breath, his eyes staring blankly out the window. He lowers his pupils to the phone screen once more, waiting for the inevitable flash and vibration of an incoming call. Â But to no avail. The phone is as good as useless. For now, barely worth more than a paper weight.Â
Judge, Jury, Executioner by Mitchell Jones is a love story mixed with tragedy, where loving someone more than life takes on new meaning. Nathan has finally found his dream girl. He can't believe that this beautiful girl actually wants to talk to him tomorrow, a trip into the coffee shop he never imagined turning out so well. Anna seems to fall in love with Nathan just as easily. Both individuals believe in working hard, so meeting Anna's parents who are extremely rich does not excite Nathan or bring him any expectations, except Nathan's father does seem genuinely accepting of his daughter's new love. Anna's mother is another story.
Nathan and Anna have become completely intertwined and when Anna comes home from her work party battered and shattered, Nathan knows something bad has happened and that he is the one who must try and fix things for his Anna. It doesn't take him long to figure out what must be done to the people who have hurt Anna so badly; all while losing Anna to the depths of her own silence and suffering.
When Nathan has taken care of the problem he reluctantly tells Anna what he has done, hoping to bring her vibrant, fun self back to him.
I gave this story four out of five stars for its "to the point" plot and easy readability. I wish I had learned more about Anna, as she seemed to be an interesting character with many facets, but we don't learn much more than what is recounted by Nathan. This is definitely a story that could be added to and made into a novel of some length, pulling the reader in despite its shorter length.