Inhumane

025

PAIGE

It was sunny the day my mother went missing. Funny to think I was only nine, maybe ten years old. I hadn't a clue of what would follow that day. The time that made up the next day felt distant and irrelevant at that age, it could have been a million years away. My mother had always stretched out her days with me, always making sure they were crammed with learning and adventure and fun. She treated me less like her daughter and more like her best friend whom she cared for and loved with all of her heart. She had a big heart. Big enough for me and my father who made it hard to really love anything.

And I did believe that she loved him. In a twisted way she couldn't manage to untangle herself from. My father loved her too, but in a different way. He loved her the way you love something beautiful and pure and fleeting. So he showed his love by being controlling and aggressive. Like a rare bird, too risky to share, he kept her caged in his home, unable to see the world beyond the backyard. She wilted, it was obvious she didn't belong in his home. So he gave her a girl, who she held so closely to her heart and gave all her love to.

I knew only the version I believed in. That my parents were both perfect and normal. I believed that my mother's occasional paranoia and frantic moods were just how mothers were. I believed that men were supposed to hold you by the throat and tell you to stop fucking leaving the damn house when I am working. She cried a lot, I knew because I would cry with her. But it wasn't all bad.

So it was sunny the day she went missing. It had snowed the night before, but the clouds had cleared and left us with a beautiful blue sky. My mother took me out to make snow angels and throw snowballs. Bundled up in all of our Winter gear, she looked like an angel. Her hair was pale and long, hanging nearly to her waist. But her eyes were tired, I realized. Tired and sad.

Eventually, I was tired and cold. She made me hot cocoa inside and tucked me into my room with a movie playing softly on the tiny box television on my dresser. I fell asleep to the gentle hum.

When I awoke, my mother was gone and my father was standing at the end of my bed. It was dark out then, and I noticed he too looked unbearably tired and somewhat sad. I could feel it in my belly. Everything was going to change.

I started to cry, though I wasn't sure why yet. He broke the news, that my mother had gone missing and he didn't know where she went. Then he left me alone to cry in my room because he was a fraud and didn't know how to comfort a grieving girl. A week later, he told me that the wolves had killed her. That same day, he began amping up my training.

Looking back, the mental images Cody had passed me still fresh in my mind, I tried to put together a timeline. When did he shoot her? I knew it had to be my father, but it was also hard to believe. I felt like I was trying to put together a puzzle with only half of the pieces. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried hard to remember the last day I had seen her. But, in the end it didn't matter. She had died, whether from wolves or from men, she was gone and had been for years. I was the one who hadn't moved on. I was the one who was placing the blame on everything and further hurting myself.

Damon loosened his hold on me, trying to push me away slightly to get a look at my face. I didn't want to look at him though. The shame was hard to swallow. I had actually tried to kill him. The thought had new tears streaming down my face.

Again, I was struck with the terrible yet deserved sense of self loathing that I had always carried with me. Except in that moment, it was so unbearably potent that I thought I might actually choke on the sensation. It was unbearable, sitting there in his lap, thinking of trying to kill myself or being killed. I could have been a million miles away. I knew one thing for certain: I did not deserve that wolf.