64 Hours

Memory // MUST READ

AHH. Round 1 of exams completed. I just finished my science and math exams (they did NOT go well) and that's just the beginning. I managed to squeeze this in tho ^.^ This part is imperative, and yes, it IS part of the story. WOW, we're almost at 40 hours! Twenty four hours to go.

{BRIEFLY EDITED }

"If there was an answer, a meaning, would it make you any happier?" -Coda, The Beginner's Guide.

The worst moment of my life was when my mother decided that she had enough. 

We were in Philadelphia, at home. I was about eleven or twelve, with thick framed glasses and puny arms. I was friendless at school, suffered from daily fights with my mom and Aria about useless things, and constantly watched TV. 

It happened at around 3 AM in the morning. Only a few hours before that my mother and father were bickering, screaming, and throwing things at each other. At around 12 my father stormed out of the house, leaving my mother audibly sobbing through her bedroom door. 

Before he left it was impossible sleep. The sounds of my parents relentlessly hating each other against my will was like igniting a fire over scorching lava. All I wanted to do was sink through my bedsheets, through the ground and out of existence to block out the horrible screams and swears. 

Aria was in her own room, and I was in mine. So after 2 AM, we both heard this keening noise from the master bedroom. Then I heard slamming, then a thud. It was Mom.

Groggy with sleep, it almost felt like I was sleepwalking when I padded into my mother's room. The room was eerily dark when I dared push the ajar door wider. Then I heard a jerky scream and scrambled breaths. 

Blood was everywhere, pooled around Mother's hands, and spilled across the floor like red ink. She was screaming like a madwoman, face flushed, the color of rage sparkling in her eyes. Her dark brown hair was plastered to the sides of her face moist with sweat, and droplets of deep red were flecked on her nose and cheeks. 

The first thing that came to my mind was that my mother killed someone. That was the only explanation, right? Where would all this blood come from? 

Scarred, I noticed something gleaming in her hands. It was a sharp kitchen knife, covered in red. Horror stuck in my stomach. No, she was trying to murder herself.

"What are you doing?" I screeched, my voice thick underneath Aria's horrified shrieking. 

Usually, if this were a movie, I would inwardly urge the character in this situation to back out and run away. But now, all I feared for was my mother's life. 

I dashed forward to stop her, curling my fingers over the warm, slippery handle of the blood-concealed knife. Suddenly Mom flinched it away like she was hanging onto it for life, causing the edge to violently tear my hand.

I backed away in terror, staring at my own bloodied skin. The flesh across my palm was sliced open. I tried to recognize this woman who just hurt her own son, and was now sinking the knife into her bloody arm, just where her veins were. This wasn't my mother. 

This was an animal. 

All I could do was yell in her face, scream at her thrashing body, "stop!" But alas she never listened. 

The last thing my mother did was release a final wail, a mix of a brawl, cry and a screech. Then she let go of the knife. Sank into a sitting position against the wall. Gazed at me with dead, glazed and colourless eyes. 

Then that was it. She was gone. No dramatic, "I'm sorry," or, "take care of Aria." Just gone. 

I wept. Bathed in her own blood, she died in her own house in front of me.

Why did she do it?

Until today that's the question I keep on asking myself. So did the police. 

After an hour, Aria called the police. They came immediately, followed by an ambulance. When the police arrived they instructed us to wait outside the house while they investigate 'the crime scene.' 

Those three words made me shudder, chilling me to the bone. That's the last time I saw my mother in flesh. 

We were taken to the police station. The police asked us when it happened. Who was there. What happened before that. What happened before we called them. 

And we answered truthfully. 

Then the police officer took a look at my bloody hands. The cut across my palm was still inevitably bleeding all over the place, oozing onto my now stained T-shirt. Then he cautiously told me that they would have to 'run a test on me' before I could clean myself up. 

They took my stained shirt into the Laboratory. I was then required to report to the medical office, where they took pictures of my wound and rinsed it off in a strange way, saving the wiped blood in a plastic bag. 

I may have been twelve, but I wasn't an idiot. They were checking for evidence - evidence that maybe our mother didn't kill herself. However crazy it seemed, I was sure of it. 

It didn't make sense. I replied to all the police officers honestly, and so did Aria. She was sent into an interrogation by herself, then came out an hour later with a beetroot face. I asked her what happened in there, but she just shook her head. 

It had been hours and still no Dad. 

They called him several times. On the seventh ring, according to the police officer, he replied to his phone in a drunken state, and was taken to the police station, escorted by the police themselves. 

The whole time Aria was crying about the loss in the waiting room. Over and over again random police guys walked to us and apologized for our loss, but then I noticed one thing; they only tried to sooth Aria. Not me. 

It was probably because I didn't cry. I felt nothing. I was like a cold slab of emotionless marble, staring into dead space, unable to push away all the blood swimming in my thoughts. I heard it multiple times in my head: Mom was dead. But I felt nothing. I didn't even feel a tingle of remorse or sadness. 

As I grew I thought there was something wrong with me. That I didn't even cry over my own mother. But it made sense. I would've wailed all year if someone killed her, but she made her own decisions, and I guess it just doesn't work with people like me. 

If it wasn't enough, I almost despised it for her. I would shrug the strange feeling off, telling myself it was utterly bitter and selfish, but I couldn't ignore that it was just there. 

So I just sat there until it was morning in the waiting room with area, fiddling with the buttons of my pyjama. I was exhausted, and I couldn't wrap my head around what just happened. 

Three hours into the morning my father came. 

Isanely, when the devil himself saw me, no one ever glared at me with such hatred before like he did. 

And I felt it - the first connection I had with my dad in years. 

~for those who don't understand, this is a filler chapter/flashback kind of chapter. This is useful for the storyline. I wanted to put this into one present day hour, but it was too long :P. The next chapter is a normal hour-chapter, so don't worry.~