All Men Are Not The Same

Worse Than It Seemed

Maddox leaned against the window trying to figure out who was in the red car. Even if the rain calmed down, the bright headlights made it difficult for him to see properly.

As the window panes were becoming misty due to Maddox' s heavy breathing, he swiped his hands across them to enable himself to see clearer.

At that specific moment, the headlights went off. One of the doors of the car was pushed open and Maddox could see the dark figure of a tall man getting out from the driver's seat. The man closed the door behind himself, opened the gate and entered the yard.

Maddox squinted his eyes and he recognised that man rushing towards the door. It was Mr Howard.

The latter entered the house, his loud and heavy footsteps echoing all around the living room. He snapped the lights on and saw Maddox who was still standing near the window.

"You are not yet asleep?" He asked in his hoarse voice.

"I am not feeling sleepy," Maddox simply replied as he did not want to tell his father that he was afraid or that he was missing his mother. The long years he spent with his father were enough to make him realise that Mr Howard was too heartless to understand such emotions.

Maddox was now a ten year old boy but he still needed his mum around all the time. His mother, his new best friend, meant so much to him.

Since the night of his seventh birthday, Maddox did not ask Miranda about the bitter truth again even if he desperately wanted to know about it. He never raised that topic again, not only because she would not want to tell him about it, but also because during the past three years that went by, Miranda has been falling ill frequently and he did not want to stress her up.

Miranda would often wake up in the morning, suffering from high fever. At times, she would suffer from chills and the next moment she would sweat excessively. Her condition was getting worse over time and Maddox did not have the least idea of what was happening to her.

One morning, when Maddox entered the kitchen, he saw Miranda near the sink, bending her head down and holding her nose.

"What's wrong mum?" Maddox asked as he approached Miranda and peeped into the sink.

"Blood?" he exclaimed. "Are you hurt?"

Miranda gestured to him, asking him to bring her some tissue paper which were lying on the small dinner table. The boy's face went pale. In a state of panic, Maddox quickly handed her the whole tissue paper roll, his hands trembling.

"Mum, what has happened to you?" he wailed.

"Nothing much to worry about honey," said Miranda, giving Maddox a comforting smile. "My nose is just bleeding."

"But how? Why?" Maddox shrieked.

"I was having a headache, and then I saw blood flowing out of my nose. But, this happens. It is nothing dangerous." Miranda said as she wiped the dark red liquid off her nose.

At that moment, Maddox remembered the first time he saw blood gushing out of Elisa's nose while they were busy picking wild flowers from the nearby garden. He felt a strange kind of pain which he wanted to share with Miranda, but he kept his apprehensions to himself.

Since the day Maddox saw his mum with a bleeding nose, it became a routine to see her in pitiful states. Miranda was ill nearly everyday and her illness would grow more severe as days passed by.

She would regularly go out to visit her doctor but would pretend that she was going out to buy foodstuff or to visit her friends. She did not want to give her son any kind of pain or worry. But Maddox knew that something was wrong. He felt that things were worse than they seemed to be.

And he was absolutely right.