My Demons

Chapter 8

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You would think it would be the heavy, still, but ever so intense atmosphere that affected me the most. Or perhaps the way the air around her seemed to be dead, clinging to her, sucking the life out of her. Or perhaps you would assume it to be the way she didn’t make an attempt to speak to me. To acknowledge my existence, the existence of her own son. Even though we hadn’t seen each other in almost two weeks despite the fact we lived under the same roof.

But I knew the bit that unsettled me the most was the look in her eyes. The only word I could use to describe them was hollow. She had a haunted aura around her, and she sat on the chair in the kitchen, a bottle of cheap wine in her hand.

“H-hi Mom.” I ventured quietly. I was expecting her to lash out at me. Yell at me. Blame me for everything. But the eerie thing was, she didn’t. She didn’t respond at all. Her face looked withered and worn, and her eyes which used to be a vibrant oceanic blue now seemed dull. Dead. Cloudy.

I knelt down in front of her. I studied her face, frowning.

“A-are you ok? Would you like some food?”

She didn’t respond. It was as if I was observing her from a photo. She sat, hunched over in the chair, eyes staring out at the wall, unseeing. Her body was scarily thin, and she was wearing a thin dressing gown. She was like a wax statue, barely even a whisper of a shadow of what she used to be. This woman in front of me wasn’t my mother. This woman was a ghost.

I touched her arm, trying to revive her from her state. Her skin was cold to touch and I withdrew my hand immediately.

“Get away from her!-You filthy faggot!” A beer bottle smashed onto my head, and I collapsed in that moment. A shard of glass was protruding from my left cheek, and blood was running down the back of my head.

From my position on the ground, I attempted to arise but to no avail.

“Are you trying to finish her off? Like you did to everyone else? Or was killing them not enough?” A sharp pain was delivered to my side and I couldn’t move, however it was the words that cut the deepest. I felt a wave of nausea and self hatred flow through me. Nothing could erase this guilt.

My face was in the ground, and I did all I could to stop the glass from sticking into my face more than it already was. I spat out a gob of blood from my mouth and grimaced.

Looking up at my Mother beseeching, my eyes silently pleaded her to make Darren stop. She made no such attempt and continued to stare at the wall as if she wasn’t aware of what was happening. It was hard to believe that this is what we had become. This was all that was left of us. Broken shards, and occasionally we would catch our reflections in the pieces of shattered glass and try to pick ourselves up. But we would cut ourselves on the jagged pieces and sink further than we were before. We were forever broken.

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“I’m sorry, I-I can’t go today.”

“Why? What happened?” Jordy asked me, disappointment lacing his words, despite the fact we were talking over a low quality public phone. I grimaced. Another person I had hurt.

“Uh...how ‘bout tomorrow? Same time, same place?” I offered, purposefully ignoring his question. I had no means of answering it so why lie? It would be so much easier to completely avoid the question.

I heard Jordy sigh knowingly. Just like his sister, there was no getting anything past him. “Alex...are you alright?”

I gingerly brought my hand up to the top of my head. There was a jagged cut running along for a few centimetres. It was still bleeding slightly despite my failed attempts to staunch the flow. My cheek still throbbed painfully and I was scared that the cut would become infected. Thankfully it hadn’t been too deep, however there were small fragments of glass I had been unable to pull out.