Loveless Ages

Chapter Four

I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot lately. Maybe it’s because any day now, I am due to be a mother myself. I am now nine months pregnant, which mean I can go into labor at any given time. I’m more swollen than ever and I can’t wait to give birth already and be done with this whole pregnancy thing. I can’t wait to see my baby. I wonder what she will look like. She’s going to be a girl. I haven’t even met my child yet, but even now, I can’t ever imagine abandoning her the way I was abandoned by my own mother. I didn’t spend much time being angry at my mother during my lifetime but now, every time I think of her I feel enraged. Was I really that unimportant to her? I simply don’t understand. She knows where we live so she knows where to find me. The fact that she hasn’t come back must mean she doesn’t want to. But I want to see her. Now more than ever, I want to see her. Even though I don’t exactly know why. It’s been too long. I’m walking slowly through my neighborhood. The men that used to sit outside of my house in the dark car with the tinted windows are no longer there. Ever since I caught that one guy snooping around in my house a few months ago they haven’t been around. I find that I am curious to see if there are still any Enforcers waiting around near Xander’s old house. When I arrive on the residential block where Xander once lived, I see that things have gone back to normal around here. There are no longer any Enforcers parked outside. Have they abandoned their find Xander mission? Or have they finally figured out that he wasn’t coming back here? As I get closer I see that the house has been broken into. The windows are shattered and the front door looks like it has been kicked down. They did this. I walk into the house and listen carefully, making sure there is no one still inside. I step over the scattered pieces of the door on the ground and walk further into the house. It is a mess in there. The small amount of furniture that Xander had is thrown around. It is as though there was a robbery in the house, however I know that the Enforcers were just looking for something, anything that would give them a clue as to where he was. I walk as fast as I can to the back of the house to see if they found Xander’s secret room that led to his secret basement. Everything seems to be intact in the closet. Xander did a good job at hiding it. And even if they wanted to get into the room I don’t think it would have been possible. Xander was the only person who could unlock this door. A laser scanned his eye to identify him and that was the only way it could open. I wish that I could go downstairs to the basement that he used to spend his time in but I can’t. I step back and find myself walking upstairs just to look around. Most of the rooms upstairs are just as messy as downstairs was. They destroyed his house. I hope they didn’t find anything that they were looking for. I almost gasp when I see that his guitar is thrown on the ground in the hallway. It nearly breaks my heart. Xander loved that guitar. It meant so much to him. It had belonged to Kalila, the girl he loved that passed away at the young age of sixteen. I attempt to bend down to pick it up but my very large, round stomach wont allow me to do so. I reach out and pick the guitar up. It takes much effort for me to kneel down and sit in a comfortable position. I run my fingers over the polished surface of the instrument and I suddenly wish that I could play it. I can remember the song that Xander played me that night clearly. It was so beautiful. I remember how he laid out on the couch that night with his fingers moving along the frets, his eyes closed, and his hair pushed back. He was beautiful. Absolutely perfect. That was the first night he kissed me. It was not even a year ago yet it seems like this all occurred in a different life. When I close my eyes I can still remember the way he tasted, the way he brushed his nose against mine, how his touch made electricity flow freely through my veins. I push the guitar slowly off of me and I hear something. It is a light sound, like something is knocking around inside of the guitar. I look into the hole that leads to the hallowed out part of the instrument and see a small object inside. I stick my hand into the whole in an attempt to grab whatever is on the inside. It takes me a while to fish the object out of the guitar. When I take it out I see that it is some kind of memory device. I quickly look around even though no one is there and stick the device into my pocket. I wonder what it is. Xander left something inside of his guitar. I wonder when he put it there. It must have been before we went on our whole adventure. But why would he put something there? I walk back home and see that my grandparents are there. My grandmother is in one of her states and is painting the kitchen wall and my grandfather is on his computer. I need to get to a computer. I go upstairs to my room and insert the device into my own portable computer and some type of program opens up.