Capable

🅟🅡🅞🅛🅞🅖🅤🅔

No one was awake to see the lonely car passing through the vanilla rays of the streetlamps, the motor putting along quietly on the black tar pavement.

Even had they have been they couldn't have heard the words being said inside the reclusive golden Mazda. They couldn't hear the melancholy reasonings of a mournful mother trying uselessly to explain her reasoning for the actions to follow the car's arrival at it's solitary destination.

"I'm sorry it's so late," she said, choking back a sob as she held the limp hand of the occupant of her passenger seat,"Mummy loves you, she does, don't forget that, love."

The lanky lad made no response, which was far from out of the ordinary for him. He lacked the ability to form words, and rarely conveyed what he felt.

His language consisted mostly of grunts and cries, the occasional stuttered syllable, certainly, but, above all else, tears.

And, of course, whatever people could translate from his silence and body language, the expressive green eyes that told hundreds of stories that he couldn't.

He had no grasp of what was occurring to him, even as his big cat like eyes stared out wonderingly, through the window, their color camouflaged by the darkness in strict black. His forehead left prints against the glass and one might have assumed by his lack of emotion that he were deaf to his mother's words.

He wasn't deaf to their sound, he was deaf to their meaning, though. To him, this night was shrouded in cruel mystery.

All he knew was that his Mummy was sad, terribly upset.

She'd had tears streaming down her pretty cheeks when she'd interrupted his sleep in the middle of the night to tug him out of bed, a bag mysteriously already packed beside the front door as she lead him out to their car.

"Cr-cr-y, Mummy?" the timid question caused another shower of tears down her cheeks, theough which she tried to smile, despite the fact her heart was lower than the deepest grave.

"Mummy's just taking you for a little ride, lovey," she'd answered, pulling herself together to avoid the inevitable breakdown that would follow should the boy be upset by her sadness," You like rides, don't you?"

He'd nodded sleepily, but his mind was racing now. He wasn't used to this.

Why wouldn't Mummy let him sleep?

Why didn't Mummy help him get dressed?

It's too much for him to comprehend and he clenches his fists in frustration and bites down hard on his lower lip. He doesn't want his mum to be any sadder than she already is.

The car disappears far outside the city limits now, the boy growing more anxious by the moment as he recognizes less and less. Everything is going by so fast, so scary.

"Mum-Mummy?" He whimpers, his hands coming to his head to claw at his scalp frantically, his messy chocolate curls being worked into an even greater frenzy, tears prickling in the corners of those great big questioning eyes.

She says nothing and the lad feels a few tears crawl achingly slow down his cheeks as his heart beats faster with fear. He stares at his feet but sees nothing but fuzzy blackness due to his crying.

They turn into the parking lot of an old gas station, one quite unfamiliar to the boy as he can't ever recall having been here before. Mummy's here, though, he keeps telling himself. That means everything's alright. At least, to his infantile logic, it does.

She pulls around to the back of the gas station and he frowns looking around for anything that might look familiar but he sees nothing but a dimly lit door with a dingy bathroom sign beside its grungy frame.

Theres not a single building for a long time it doesn't appear and he's frightened by the darkness that seems to encircle the small patch of light the lamps surrounding the station offer.

Mummy sighs and he looks at her, his forehead wrinkled because it makes his chest tighten slightly when he hears her breathing heavily.

She climbs out and comes around to his side, "Come on, Hazzie, " she coaxes, unclicking him from his seat and grabbing his backpack from the floor board, "Let's go potty, buddy."

Mummy directs him to the bathroom and he's so confused now, he doesn't have to go potty. Why's Mummy making such a fuss about this? He goes inside,though, and closes the solid metal door behind him. Mosquitoes buzzing around the single lightbulb over the grungy door.

Amidst his confusion, his mother senses his every fear and longs to ease his tension but refrains. She knows what she's doing is wrong. She wants to load the fifteen-year-old back into the car and drive him back home and rock him back to sleep in her arms, pretending this was just a midnight joyride.

She enjoys the thought and for a moment is half-tempted to actually do it.

Then, the face of her angry new husband comes to mind, though, the one who loves her dearly but could never accept her son. She remembers him yelling about how he ought to be able to take care if himself by now, at the kitchen table.All the while, the distraught child sobbing and fisting his curls as he rocked back and forth in his chair.

She wishes that she had anything to offer the boy without the help of the man's overabundance resources. It's in her every bone, the desire to be able to leave him and take her baby somewhere safe and sound. She can't, though.

This is for the best, she lies to herself.

So she walks away, something she's never done before. She climbs inside the car and turns the key, tears dripping onto her tshirt as she backs out. Willing herself not to go back.

She leaves her son and with him a piece of her heart she doesn't expect she deserves to have back.

-----------------------------------------------------------

When the curly-haired boy steps outside after doing his business, neglecting his hygiene a bit as he was anxious to get back to his mum, she's gone. Not just her, either. Mummy's car is gone.

He sits down on the cement slab in front of the dirty bathroom and sets his backpack beside him.

His breathing grows faster and faster and he feels like he's going to explode, but instead he sobs.

The owner of the sad little gas station walks out to find him frantically yanking on his chocolate locks and mumbling incoherent phrases through his cries.

"Can I help you?" The old gray-haired man asks, not unkindly, reaching a hand out to his arm.

The boy jumps and slaps the man's hand away. The man interprets the young lad's behavior to mean he's under the influence of some drug and has no sympathy for him.

The police are called.