Building 11 “Mother”

I just don't understand, but I am trying to put it together, even though I don't really want to know how it ends up looking, when it is all laid bare. He didn't seem angry. He didn't seem sad. He was just horrified when he realized I had found it. Why didn't he just burn the note? Couldn't he have just burned it? Or was it the fact it was some of the last words my mother had ever written, rendered out, enough for him to simply shut it away and try not to think about it again.

He didn't like her birthday...Maybe he really did feel like he had lost a wife and I had lost a mother. Maybe it made him feel guilty. I don't...I cannot say that I know the why, but I know the how. I have had the how burned into my brain for years now, the image of her body on a steel table, bruises clear upon her neck. He...

He is calling me now. He has been calling me for hours now. It has taken me so so long to get all of this down, but I am managing. I finally know why someone wasn't caught. Without a body, what evidence remained to prosecute?

That...thing that smells of sewers and ink and something fouler than I could imagine...it is...no...it cannot be.

I don't want to find out, though I know I need to know the truth. I need to know why I feel the way I do, why we are dropping like fucking flies, and why the world is rotting. I am not alone in figuring it out, and for that at least I am thankful. Because outside of you, Ariana, and my work, I have nothing.

He...admitted to it.

And now I am moving out.

No.

I was already going to move out. But the note was burning in my pocket. And so I asked him about it. Instead of just leaving.

I didn't have to talk to him. I could have just explained to him what was going on, or simply told him that she needed a roommate or something simple like that. I had mentioned the possibility of course. Of moving out. We had both talked about it and most of the time it just didn't make sense.

But I couldn't wait any longer, not with the threats so clearly around us. And it would have been the good choice to leave him with questions unanswered, knowing full well that anything he could tell me would be something I would already know, and something I could easily have found out.

He saw the note as I handed it to him, and I never thought I would ever see someone visibly pale. But he took one look, and his eyes bulged and his skin lost color, his mouth becoming taut with a grim grimace, as a cold sweat broke out on his brow. We sat in silence, him I am sure wishing to ask the normal questions. Where did I get that? Did I read it? How much do I know?

He wanted me to make the first move, but I waited. He wanted me to make it my fault. To make me ask the wrong questions.

But I waited.

He told me.

My blood froze in my veins as my head began to swim with confusion. I knew what he said, and I tried to figure out a way to see what he said that didn't lead to the conclusion that I was arriving at. But try as I might, running it through my head, the conclusion was final and concise. And as I arrived at the conclusion and let it sit long enough for me to gather myself, a deep rage began to well up inside of me.

My jaw dropped. It was all too much. I wanted to scream, to rage, to smash his fucking face in! But all I could do is run, and I just...I couldn't stop running. I was screaming. I was crying.

What the hell have I done?! It's all gone. I threw it apart just so I could know. I had to know.

I needed to know.

Mom...a cycle. It is...

I don't get it!

“I did what I thought I had to...I didn't know that she would come back.”

Killed....he killed Mom. And he said that he did it because he felt he had to. He didn't know she would come back, and he killed her to stop there from being another monster in the world, even along a stretch of road where something like that isn't truly all that strange. And...I am feeling calm now. I feel very far away, and that is okay. It makes writing this so much easier.

He strangled her, and he killed my mom, but monsters don't die like that, and so she came back. And now I know why one of them always sounded sick...no...not always. I just feel like it was always. Or maybe it wasn't, or things like that changed too, the way the houses and the people have shifted around. And she isn't sick.

He crushed her windpipe.

It wasn't enough, but I am certain that it hurts.

And the fact my mom is...alive.

That doesn't make it better. The fact he failed doesn't make it better.

Years ago, my mom was murdered by her husband and dumped under the ice that covers the sinkhole during winters chill. The sick fuck hid her body and left it like that, unwilling to admit that he had done anything wrong.

Is my mom back?

Maybe...my mom is back. Returned into something awful.

But my dad is dead.

And I won't ever forgive him for what he took from me.

I love you.

I just want to be happy again.