Swan

Chapter seven: The Lost Swan

12 days earlier

Chicago

The ceiling kept moving, lights kept flickering, my lips kept bleeding; my teeth so deep inside that I could almost feel them trying to break out of the inside of my mouth.

I started seeing shadows each time the room turned into darkness, each time the light flickered on the dark. I didn't know what else to do, but shout. "No!" I yelled at each shadow I spotted. "Honey, honey!" Mother kept shaking my body, in hope for me to wake up from the nightmare; that felt so alive. "It's not-it's not real, Conn!" She cried over my body. I was paralysed. I wanted to tell her; I believe you mother, I do. But my mind took easily over each time I fought it. I felt like a doll, controlled by something disgusting; an organ that had power over a whole soul. "Snap out of it, snap out of it!" Mother's voice entered into my brain, and all of a sudden; everything stopped. What I didn't know was the fact my brain had just decided for its next prey, the next person who'll suffer. Mother's eyes widened, she sighed a deep and long sigh, her breaths told me she was relieved. "I'm sorry," I whispered with a mouth full of blood. "It's okay, it's okay. I'll go call sometime, and then your father will be here and we can all talk about this, about how we'll all be happy." I nodded to her words, I cried tears out of them. But deep inside my brain, there was a voice that kept telling me; such an arrogant person, such a gullible one.

Mother left to make the call she said she was going to make. I was too scared to be in the room alone, so slowly behind her steps, behind her shadow I followed.

I heard the phone ringing, I heard her nervous breaths waiting for someone to pick up. "Hello, how do I register someone in IOP?" IOP, as in intensive outpatient program?

"Mother," I said, standing right behind her. "Hang up, now." I ordered her. "No, no, Conn this is for your own good." She cried. I could hear a voice from her phone asking if everything was okay, but she was busy sobbing into her hand.

"Hang up now or I'll.." I looked over at the kitchen counter and grabbed a knife. I put it against my neck and pressed it hard enough for me to start bleeding a few drops. "Fine, fine!" She cried and slowly fell on her knees.

"Please don't hurt yourself my child, my little swan." Her voice broke in a way that broke me; at least the outside of my soul, the eyes of mine that cried.

"Stop calling me that!" I shouted in her face and pointed the knife toward her. "You did this to me!" Tears ran down my face. "What, I--I didn't do this to you Conn, you're sick." She explained, but her explanation felt like a big lie to my mind.

"Yes you did, the day you named me Conn, after one of the children of Lir, that was the day this curse started!" She shook her head and disagreed. But I was so sure that it was her fault.

"Conn, you're schizophrenic, you're imagining things--your thoughts are taken over, your sight is not what you're seeing now." I pressed the tip of the knife against her skin as words flew out of her mouth. I could feel her vocals moving, I could feel the knife vibrating and sending signals further to my body.

The knife in my hand started pressing against her sweaty skin harder and harder with each word she spoke; "I love you, please don't do this." Her voice made my hand shake. "I love you." She repeated, but this time in a lower tone, a whisper, one that didn't send vibrations to my body.

"You see, Mother," I took the knife a few inches away from her neck. "You thought you'd be the hero of this story, the hero of my life, the day you decided that you'd name me Conn, but the truth is," I stopped once again. Not because I wanted to, rather because I didn't know what my mind was really about to say, I felt completely disconnected from my brain. "The truth is.. you're the evil stepmother in the mythology, the one that cursed them all!"

Mother cried, cried and cried. She wouldn't stop, but I knew that this had to end, that I needed to make her quiet. If I kill her, the curse will stop, the visions and sounds I hear late at night; they all would stop. That's what my mind told me, that everything started with mother and would end with her.

"I named you Conn because I love swans, because I knew you'd become as beautiful as one, not because I wanted a curse upon you." I listened to her soft voice that trembled through the room. It made my eyes realise something for a second, but I forgot it instantly. It was as if I felt something, but it vanished right away.

The knife in my hand meant I had two choices; kill her and get rid of the curse or, live with the curse, at least that's what my mind was telling me.