The Prisoner Project

SEVENTEEN

The bed was now splattered and stained with the blood and tears of my mom.

On the floor beside the mangled sheets, my mothers hand gripped her stomach wound. It was a violent wound had dug itself into her skin. Hugh hadn't killed her, no, he had made her suffer the lengthy pain of a gunshot wound to the stomach.

The lengthy pain similar to the one he had received in his own lifetime.

Her eyes were bleak, barely focusing as she found me. She lifted her other bloody hand from Diana's face and weakly beckoned me over. But I couldn't move. Diana was sobbing loudly, cradling my mothers head in her trembling arms.

I stood statuesque still and tried to cease the incessant pain I felt. I'd been broken for months and my mother was the one who had pieced me back together. And now she was breaking me again, more violently than before. Through no fault of her own.

"I...I'm sor...." She tried to speak but I could tell that the blood had begun clogging her throat.

I looked away immediately, momentarily blinded by the violence I had experienced and seen all day. My heart was beating, my chest felt concaved, my throat was sandpaper dry and my eyes were an endless stream of bleakness.

I wanted to end her pain.

"Aria where are you going?! Let's take her to a hospital! She needs you!" Diana cried as I spun around and began to walk away from the grievous scene.

The hospital couldn't save her. She wouldn't make it there in time. None of us could drive. Hugh had cut the telephone lines. The next house was miles away. The police would arrest Diana for killing Hugh, we would end up worsening the situation.

The only thing I wanted to do, the only thing I thought of, was putting an end to the deep, sunken, pit of pain I had seen in my mothers eyes.

All of a sudden, as though I were possessed, I wanted her gone.

Perhaps I was forming excuses, perhaps I wasn't thinking rationally. Perhaps I did want her to die. Perhaps I just wanted to have a life where I wasn't living in constant fear of Hugh, or constant fear that my mom would suffer the consequences of every action I took. I violently wanted freedom.

I leaned down beside Hughs corpse and kissed his mangled cheek. My final goodbye to the darkest part of my life. I knew that killing him was truly the opposite of what Diana thought would be best. Because killing him meant unnerving guilt, it meant that the image of the gun splitting his face would be seared in my brain, it meant nightmares, it meant criminal charges, it meant running away from him forever.

I picked up the gun Diana had used and stiffly walked back to the room where they were. My sobs had begun to cause my entire body to shake. "I..I'll help you, mom. I'll stop the pain."

"What the hell are you doing?!" Diana screeched as I lifted the gun shakily.

I couldn't hear over my own sobs. I could only notice that my mom's eyes were closed and she was lolling her head from side to side. She was becoming demented from the maddening pain. "Let me help you, mom. You're suffering."

"Stop!" Diana was screaming.

"She's suffering." — was all I could manage. I was repeating it like a litany, nothing else crossed my brain.

In that moment, my thoughts were void.

"Do it and you'd be just like him!" Diana cried, snot mixing with tears and saliva. A disgusting imagery that perfectly portrayed what each of us felt in varying degrees.

"He made us suffer." I whispered, cocking the gun with no expertise whatsoever. "I'm ending it."

I didn't want to think about what I was about to do. Her pain had become my pain.

My hand gripped my stomach, as though the gaping wound was etched on my skin. I mentally willed my mom to open her eyes and see me, see that I was the one doing this. My fingers wouldn't let go if not.

I had tuned out Diana's crying and screaming and gagging and choking and sniffing.

And just as I thought I was sinking back to sanity, one word finally left my mothers lips. "End it."

She knew what I was doing.

That was all I needed.

So like a fuse had exploded and busted a light bulb, I let go off the trigger and darkness settled.

Darkness and stone cold silence.

A/N:

Big reveals! So she killed her own mother as well?

Double update so keep reading guys!