13 days earlier
My eyes drowned in tears, my mind controlled each bone in my body. I fought my hand, desperately trying to let go off the knife.
"Conn, what are you doing?" Father gasped with his hands in the air. "Father, I—-" he took a step closer to me, but stopped when I pointed the knife toward him. "Don't come near me!" I yelled. "Okay, okay. Just let go off the knife, let your mother go!" He looked down at mother, who looked at the floor. Her body looked soulless, as if she had accepted her fate. "Conn, give me the knife, now!" Father's eyes widened, he scared something inside of me. He was angry.
He moved his legs aggressively toward me and fetched the knife out of my hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't know what I was thinking." I whispered as I fell on the floor. "Conn, go back to your room." Father's voice was weird, he had unusual vocals in it, an unusual feeling with each word he spoke. Something so strange and hard to define, something unfamiliar. I looked up at him, with my palms on the floor, ready to stand up. "Eva," he grabbed mother and made her stand up on her weak feet. Mother wasn't processing anything, neither was I. "I know what you did," he whispered in her face aggressively, a loud whisper that made my mother lift her eyes and look him in the face. "What?" She said in an emotionless tone. "I know about the affair.." I observed the knife in his hand, his grip tightening around it, his veins ready to explode out of his face.
"I know about you and Archibald."
Mother gasped. My eyes wandered around at both of them, back and forth. "No, no, it was years ago, Alexander." Mother explained.
"It doesn't matter."
"Yes it does, I love you. It was a mistake!"
"It doesn't matter when it was, you slept with my best friend!"
"Alexander." Mother almost kneeled again. Her legs were shaking with fear. All I could do was just stare, observe and think. What should I do?
"Conn was right," father said all of a sudden. I raised both my eyebrows. "You did put a curse on us." I stared into father's soul. If he had heard that, it means that he had been in the house while I threatened mother with her life. It means he heard everything and let me almost kill mother.
Father's breathing was shallow, I could hear his heartbeat racing. Both of his hands trembled, but the one with a knife even more. It looked pretty close to mother's stomach, an inch away from entering into her skin. "I loved you, but you.. you betrayed me." The tip of the knife touched mother's shirt. Father grabbed the knife with the other hand and pressed the blade right through her skin. I could hear mother's flesh being pierced. She gasped for air while her shirt drowned in blood. She took her trembled hand on the wound, but blood still ran down. Drop after drop fell on the floor each millisecond that passed by. Mother moved back and forth a while, trying to stand on her feet, but eventually fell on the floor with her hand on her stomach. Father's eyes went dark as he heard the cries of mother being in pain.
"What did you do?!"
I walked on the floor and reached her body with my hand, which quickly drowned in blood.
"Mother, my mother." I cried with my eyes closed, I couldn't bare to see her like this, her face pale and her palms cold as the sea. "My swan, my swan." I cried loudly, trying to fill whatever hole my heart felt as I held her hand. "Forgive me, mother." I opened my eyes again, looked her deeply in her eyes. I rubbed my fingers across her cheek, wiped the tears that had cried because of me.
"Conn, I didn't mean to." Father put his hand on my shoulder, which I wanted to slap away, but I was numb. I couldn't feel a thing nor could I think about what to do next. Should I stand up? But that means I'm letting go off her. Should I shout at father? But that wouldn't bring her back to me. Or should I just turn it all off, not only for this moment, but forever.
From that moment on, I never felt like a human again.
Feathers grew out of my skin, they cut right through me and bloomed out drained in blood.
I waited desperately for the night, the night where the moon had moved in its orbit, making the earth stuck in between the moon and the sun; I waited desperately for a full moon to collide with my soul, so that the feathers from my skin disappear. However, even the moon had to vanish, to go to its own scene. As soon as the world saw less of the moon lit by the sun; I turned back into a swan, I felt every feather rise out of my flesh; from the old scars that the feathers had left.
For from the pain, beauty unfurls, as feathers grew out of my skin, everything unfolds. A gentle ache right into my bones; feathers unfurls and take shape into wings; from ember to burn.
From the moment mother vanished, the curse became real—-mother was the only one who could truly make the curse disappear.
YOU ARE READING
Swan
Mystery / ThrillerConn's mother had just passed away and his father wanted to start a new life somewhere else. All he had left of his mother was his name; a name from a mythology about the children of Lir.
