Can You Forgive Me? – Sort of Short Stories

By Harry Watts

Dedication

For every parent who has carried the unbearable weight of loss,
for every heart shackled by grief and rage,
and for all who dare to believe that forgiveness,
even when it feels impossible,
is the only key that can loosen the straps.

Epigraph

“Forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us…”
— Matthew 6:12

Chapter One

The Witness Chair

Jason Miller sat in the death house of the state prison, in one of sixteen witness chairs bolted to the floor. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant and something metallic, like old blood scrubbed from tile. The walls were a dull institutional green, the kind of color meant to calm nerves, though it did nothing for his. The hum of the fluorescent lights pressed down on him like a low, endless note.

His palms were damp. He wiped them against his trousers and forced them back onto his thighs, pressing hard as if to pin himself in place. He had promised himself he would not tremble. He would not let anyone see the fracture lines. Especially not Maurice Stokes.

Ten years. That was how long the straps had held him. Ten years since Melissa—Mel, his girl—had been stolen. Ten years since he had taken her last call: Don’t wait up, Dad. Love you. Ten years since he had felt the first leather strap cinch tight across his chest, binding him in grief and rage.

He closed his eyes and saw her face, not as she was that night, but younger—seven years old, running barefoot through the sprinkler in their backyard, her hair plastered to her cheeks, shrieking with delight as he chased her with the garden hose. He had lifted her up, dripping, into his arms, and she had wrapped her skinny arms around his neck, whispering, Don’t ever let me go, Daddy.

Now, a decade later, he had not let go. Not of her, not of the grief, not of the hate.

Chapter Two

Shackled by Memory

The story of her last night had been told and retold in court, in newspapers, in Jason’s own restless mind. Melissa had just finished her shift at the cell phone kiosk. She was saving for her own apartment, had been talking excitedly about painting the walls yellow. A coworker remembered her laugh, how she always stayed a few extra minutes to make sure the kiosk was neat.

That was when Maurice Stokes saw her.

He had been caught shoplifting in a store near the kiosk. Security footage later showed him circling, pretending to browse. Then he approached her. She was patient, explaining features of a phone he would never buy.

When he asked her for coffee, she smiled kindly and declined. “Thanks, but I have a boyfriend.”

Jason had memorized the clerk’s testimony: how Stokes’s face had darkened, how he muttered under his breath as he stalked away.

But he hadn’t left. He waited, hidden, until she walked toward her car. He followed. The knife appeared.

Jason had imagined that moment thousands of times. Her fear. Her plea. Her trust shattered. Every time, he felt the strap cinch tighter across his chest.

They found her hours later in the back seat of her car, parked in a deserted lot. Bruised. Broken. Her throat cut. The knife still in the grass. DNA under her nails, inside her body. The evidence told the story her voice never could.

Jason had buried his daughter. And hatred had buried him.

Chapter Three

The Trial

The courtroom smelled of old wood and dust. Jason sat stiff as the prosecutor addressed the jury.

“The evidence will show that Maurice Stokes followed Melissa Miller from her workplace, forced her into her vehicle at knife point, and drove her to a secluded location where he assaulted her and cut her throat.”

The words blurred together, each syllable another buckle pulled tight.

When Jason was called to the stand, he placed his hand on the Bible. The oath bound him. Sworn to tell the truth, he was shackled again—to memory this time, forced to relive every detail.

“Mr. Miller,” the prosecutor said gently, “when was the last time you spoke with your daughter?”

Jason swallowed hard. “She called me after her shift. Said she was headed home. Told me not to wait up. Said…” His voice faltered. “Said she loved me.”

“And was that unusual for her?”

Jason shook his head. “No. She always said it. Every time.”

The defense attorney rose. “Mr. Miller, you weren’t present that evening, were you? You can’t know what happened in the car?”

Jason’s throat tightened. He wanted to scream. Instead he answered carefully, “I know what the evidence says. I know what was done to my daughter.”

Each question, each photograph shown to the jury, was a strap pulled tighter.

When the verdict came—guilty—Jason’s tears surprised him. When the judge pronounced death, Jason expected to feel release. Instead he felt only a harsher tug. Justice had been pronounced, but the straps had not let go.

Chapter Four

Shackles at Home

At home, grief became leather across his marriage. His wife tried to hold him at night; to remind him they still had each other, but Jason couldn’t respond. He lay rigid, bound to his rage.

One evening she stood in the doorway, arms folded. “Jason, please. We can’t go on like this. Talk to me. Let me in.”

He stared at the floor. “Talking won’t bring her back.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m not trying to bring her back. I’m trying to keep us alive.”

But Jason couldn’t soften. Each day he wore his grief like armor, convinced that loosening it would mean betraying his daughter. His wife began to retreat. A year later, she left, saying she couldn’t breathe in a house that reeked of hate.

Jason stayed. Alone. Shackled to memory.

Chapter Five

The Waiting Years

The appeals dragged on. Each new hearing reopened the wound. Jason sat in courtrooms year after year, hearing Stokes’s lawyers argue technicalities. Each time, he clenched his fists, feeling the invisible straps cinch tighter.

His days settled into routine: work, eat, sleep in fragments. Church on Sundays, though he sat in the back now, unable to sing hymns of mercy he no longer believed.

Sometimes he would pull out the photo albums. Mel in pigtails, running through sprinklers. Mel at thirteen, braces flashing in her smile. Mel in her prom dress, radiant. Each photo was a memory, sweet and brutal all at once. Each was another strap.

Chapter Six

The Death House

And now—ten years later—he sat in the witness chamber.

The door opened. Guards led Stokes inside. Shackled wrists. Shackled ankles. The shuffle of chains.

Jason leaned forward. At last. The straps were not only his.

They placed Stokes on the gurney. One by one, the leather restraints tightened: chest, arms, legs, wrist. Each buckle snapped like a gavel. Jason felt it echo in his ribs.

And then the thought came: He is bound by straps of leather. I am bound by straps of hate.

The realization made him shiver.

Chapter Seven

The Last Plea

The warden asked, “Do you have any last words?”

Stokes’s lips trembled. “I… I want to say I’m sorry. To the family. To her father.” He turned his head, eyes boring into Jason’s. “I know I don’t deserve it. But—can you forgive me?”

The words were a knife. Jason’s hatred surged, clamping tighter. Forgive? Forgive the man who had cut his daughter’s throat? Never.

And yet, in that moment, he felt the straps. The invisible ones across his chest. Ten years of suffocating rage. He wondered which prisoner was more trapped.

Chapter Eight

The Death

The needle slid in. Stokes stiffened, then slackened. His eyes clung to Jason’s until they glazed. His lips moved, maybe in prayer, maybe in fear. Another injection. His chest rose once, fell, and stilled.

The straps held him until the end.

The curtain closed. Guards murmured. But Jason sat frozen, staring at the space where Stokes had been.

Chapter Nine

The Drive Home

On the drive, he expected relief. Justice had been done. The state had kept its promise. Yet his chest still burned. The straps were still there.

He remembered the weight of Mel’s small hand in his, back when she was a child in the church pew, listening to the preacher. Seventy times seven, the preacher had said. Forgive. Always forgive. Jason had nodded then, unbound, believing forgiveness was for small slights. Not for monsters.

But the straps didn’t care what bound you. They only tightened if you didn’t fight them.

Chapter Ten

The First Loosening

At home, Jason spread Mel’s photographs across the kitchen table. Her smile. Her eyes. The girl she was. The woman she never had a chance to become.

He pressed his hands flat, as if to anchor himself. The straps of hate pulled hard. He whispered into the silence:

“I can’t forgive you, Maurice Stokes. Not yet. But I will try. Because I can’t keep living tied down.”

And for the first time in a decade, he felt something give—just the faintest slack in the bindings that had held him.

It wasn’t freedom. Not yet. But it was the first tug at the strap.

The End

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