The Curse of Water

Chapter 17- The Great Depression

Chapter Seventeen – The Great Depression

I have no idea when and how I left my mother's room. Not even how they managed to tear her from my last embrace, but it's the next day and I'm finally awake.

Another knock on the door. I've ignored four attempts made by the beauty teams, but this one does not wait for an answer. Gershon's foot harshly kicks the bottom of the door that a trembling guard to his right opened.

“Ah, you're still alive.” He says with a cool, emotionless tone, probably wishing that I had just committed suicide and there was no further need to deal with me. It was only because of my mother that he managed to bear having me around.

“For a while yet...” I say lifelessly, dragging my body out of bed. “You're back.”

“And you stink. Though from what I hear sleeping next to a decaying body for hours will do that for you.” He leisurely walks over to my desk, his fingers running over the cover of the sacred book my dear mother cherished so much. The book I couldn't even honour her with reading before her passing. A flood of guilt sweeps over me but I have enough presence to lunge over and snatch the book away before he has the chance to open it.

“Look, I understand that you're mourning and this must be a hard time for you.” Yeah, right, like he cares about anyone but himself. “But would you mind showing a little respect? She was my mother and she was your wife. I don't even want to think about what sort of marriage or relationship you two had but she was by your side all those years. Everything she did, she did out of love, alright? So could you just give your cruelty a rest, just for a couple days at least?”

His expression shifts from an insulted surprise to a casual 'sweep it under the rug' smile. He gives a relaxed chuckle to buy himself time to repay me for our last fight, at a time of weakness, devastation and misery.

“Of course this is a hard time for the likes of you boy. You almost convinced me that you had the strength and bravery to make it through...well...something. I'm sorry to see you're not quite there.”

My knees weaken but I will not be shaken, not this time. If for nothing but my mother's honour, I must stand my ground. His gaze once again intrudes on my vision and my weak self stares back at me for yet another time. But underneath the river of tears, a different flame burns. The flame of love that she left with me, a small injection of fuel that helps me not to buckle and to keep staring ahead.

“I will see to it that you get some rest. I only came here to tell you that this room will always be here to shelter you. And that I had made arrangements to dump your mother in the well while you slept. But you rest. You're here...alone...no one will bother you...sleep...safe in your shadow...the shadow of your reflection.” He closes the door behind him and the book flies through the air as I chuck it towards the spot where he was standing and it bounces off the entry with a loud smack.

My rage and sorrow send me to madness as I throw myself on the ground next to my gift, wailing and pounding at the floor like an insolent, spoilt child throwing a tantrum. Except while a burst of emotion like that for a child can be fixed with a new toy, there is no treasure in the world to distract me from my pain. It's not enough that he talks to me as if I were 5 years old, but even on a day of mourning his evil power cannot quit. A shadow haunts me. A reflection that follows every step, and she is no longer here so that I can have an escape. He even took away my right to a final goodbye...

***

I wake up on the steps by the door from a deep, disturbing dream that left me in a worse mood than before.

In my dream I did get to say my final goodbye. I was standing at the edge of the well. Though it didn't quite look like it usually does. It was clean, like the great ocean, and its edges came not to a concrete wall but to a sandy and rocky beach. I didn't quite look like myself either. I felt a little taller, older, and the only reason I suspected it was the well was that I saw my mother float by. She was sleeping peacefully, and it was only when I ran in to pull her into my arms that I realized (I suppose again) that she was dead. My heart shattered to a million more pieces as I held her lifeless body and wept.