Numb Pain

Chapter 25

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Her smile is almost sickening, and I immediately find myself biting back the torrent of screaming that pushes itself into the roof of my mouth. This is the woman who ultimately began Jai's suffering. She didn't deserve him. I don't care if he abused me. No one deserves treatment like that from the woman who is supposed to love them more than anyone else. Someone that is supposed to love unconditionally. My mind flicks briefly to a young boy with dark hair, his eyes pooled with tears as he sits on the bottom step of the stairs with the Mother's Day card clasped between his tiny fingers. I avoid her gaze and cast my eyes instead to the floor, the heat rising up to my cheeks as I realise I have to be civil to this woman.

"What do you want?"

I said civil. Not sugar-dusted sweet and lovely. She waves a hand, pushing me to the side of the corridor and striding in, her stiletto heels scuffing the polished wooden floor. My tongue begins to bleed as I push on it with my teeth, forcing back the bitter words of resentment, waiting anxiously for her departure. She twists on her heels, looking at me with a suddenly cold stare. 

"Jai's dead." She states the obvious, and the anger continues to rise in my throat, not to mention the churning of my stomach. "Personally I think it had something to do with you, but that's not the problem." I nearly shove her through the still agape door there and then, though part of me wants her to stay, merely so I can see what else she has to say. The woman progresses into the kitchen, propping herself up on one of Ethan's barstools and starts to stare me down with a glint of menace in her wicked eyes. Enraged, I twist back to slam the door shut, halting the steady flow of wind that whistles through the hallway. I step carefully into the kitchen to face Jai's mother...and possibly all of my fears.

"What do you want?" I ask again, swallowing the copper taste of my tongue's blood and keeping my face steeled and cold. How dare she walk in here like she owns the place, then demand some sort of messed up stand-off with the subject of Jai's death the prime matter! It's not even my apartment! Ethan isn't here and thus I'm alone with the witch, miserably trying to keep cool in her presence. The woman slips from the barstool and strides confidently towards me. She stands a little taller, towering over me in her four inch heels which could well be sharpened to a lethal point. 

"As I understand, Miss Smith," she says my last name as if she is spitting it from her lips with utter disgust. What did I do to her? "Jai left you a rather large sum of money before he...left." The tears bite at the back of my eyes as she dismisses Jai's tragedy to such a simple phrase. He left. He chose to die, yes, but to say he left is as if he did it willingly. Perhaps he did, though I refuse to believe it. Behind all of the depression, anxiety, hate and desolation, does anyone really want to die? No. I'm positive that would never be the case, for as much as he felt love was lacking on the outside, deep within his heart, I think Jai knew how much he had to live for. He didn't leave, that much was certain. My gaze hardens, boring deep into the witch's eyes as she continues to address me with her desires. "What I want, Eleanor." again, my name leaves her lips like she is ridding herself of something foul. "Is that money." Her words do not surprise me. She's walked in here, stilettos permanently marking the floor, inviting herself in to the kitchen and helping herself to the space of Ethan's apartment. Not once have I met a more disgusting person, and she's even worse than I remember her being. Of course she'd want the money. Ten thousand pounds is a lot, and she probably expected it to be promised to her when Jai died anyway. My solid stance does not falter as I raise my brow in a deeply sarcastic manner.

"Really?" I probe, my aim to make Jai's mother realise how stupid and unreasonable the request is. "You want the money that is promised by your dead son," I pause, putting a pained emphasis on the word dead, grinding wounds into her mentality. "By the law." I add on, adding another complication to the system and hoping that, if nothing else, the woman would be sensible enough not to commit a crime. She smiles. A deep, devilish smile that, though I wouldn't have thought it possible, only makes me resent her more. Her face holds too many of Jai's features, his nose, his lips, the colour of his hair. At least I do not hold memories with her that may further freshen Jai's death into my scars. She only opens new gashes. I haven't met with the woman in years, though she never liked me much. But now that I stand with her, face to face as she requests impossible things, I can see how she did everything to her boy. Of course, I do not understand how any woman could poorly treat a son that she had birthed and raised as her own, but she did. And the heartless stare of her blackened eyes makes me just more sure that she deserves none of my compassion. 

"Yes. We both know the money should be mine anyway." I grimace, for what she says is true. Despite Jai promising it to me, I am only young. At such an age, the money, in the eyes of most elders, would be better off in the hands of the dead man's mother. But he promised it to me. It's mine. And Ethan's. I deny even giving her a considerable amount of the sum, for she deserves not a pound of it. Though tears brim over my eyes, and Jai's mother laughs and sneers as she watches them drip onto my cheeks, I steel myself. 

"The money will never be yours."