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“Is that when you saw it?”
The room gets so quiet, waiting for me to talk, but I don’t see or hear them anymore. I’m transported to that street, frozen in fear. And then everyone starts walking…frightened…needing to know.
The horrifying crash echoes, creating chaos. The shocked cries and screams resonate all around. I feel disorientated, unable to move for a moment. Incapable of denying the pull, I walk towards the disaster.
My brain shuts down, my arms are covered in goose bumps, and my heart tingles with chills. I feel cold breath coating my lips, and my fingers become fisted icicles that I can’t straighten. My shocked body fills with a heaviness that drags me down to the ground. Only my legs won’t stop. The eyes desire to see, and the brain needs to know.
A surreal image of disaster meets my eyes. The dark blue car is mangled into a tin can. The sight doesn’t make sense to me until I see someone’s shadow moving inside, screaming.
“Mummy….!” The voice, filled with horror, reaches my ears. The invisible thread’s pulling me by force, and I run towards it.
Nothing matters in that moment, except instinct urging me to get to the boy, to help that voice to stop feeling scared. I don’t notice someone grabbing and pulling me back from behind. The delayed screeching sound of the braking car from the right side of the road almost hits me.
“Mummy…I am scared, please! Aaaaah!”
I try to wiggle out from the hands holding me back. The child’s trapped in a mangled car, begging for help, but the furious red-faced driver aggressively jumps out of the car, shouting obscenities, distracting me.
“Stupid bitch, what are you doing?” All of a sudden, he stops, as if someone cut his air in mid-sentence.
Dark eyes lock on me, filling with compassion. I look at the stranger, with no concept of why I see empathy. I start to move towards the screeching sound again. The boy calls for his mother. My anxious heartbeats are trying to get to him.
Suddenly, the same angry man picks me up like a sandbag. I am dizzy, confused. He carries me away from the mutilated tin can. Over his shoulder, I see a small little face squashed, as if in a glass jar, one eye open and the other bloody mess. His little hand twists around his head. The green coat he wore... The sickening red substance paints the horrible disaster.
“Oh, dear God, there are children trapped,” someone cries out.
My heart painfully squeezes and twists. I look for the logical explanation but find none. Soon enough, I start to feel sick and dizzy, with emotions pickin
g me apart. Dismantling everything in its wake, I begin to drift. It is a nightmare. Wake up!
“So much blood,” they whisper, crying.
“Mummy, Mummy, please!” The voice grows weaker, getting further away.
The unbearable heart-wrenching screams calling me are not real. They can’t be! I reason with myself, as I start to move away from the sidewalk, trying to escape the twisted horror.
My mind becomes numb and I walk further away from the nightmare, looking for shelter to hide. I refuse to accept or understand. I’ll wait for my husband to come for me. Sam will bring back my children.
Then my little one finds me and leads me home. I smile.
I walk, and walk, and walk, finding the park, where I fall asleep, letting myself surrender to the darkness. I lay near the old tree, with leaves covering my body, like a blanket thrown over me, holding onto the memories.
“I left them there, I walked away,” I whisper, horrified, afraid to voice it out loud. A wrenched shriek releases the screams, the gruesome memories ripping through me until the emotional hurricane leaves me twisted and empty. I fall to my knees, defeated.
I lay my head on the floor, shaking. Agonizing howls rip through the silence. In the fetal position, I wait for the anguish to tear me to pieces. I don’t deserve to live, or be loved. Oh my God, what have I done? How could I be so cruel to ignore Nate’s desperate cries?
I look at Logan, who’s kneeling next to me. I tell him the truth that I was too selfish to admit. “You should take the twins and give them the life they deserve, away from me. They never will be safe with me. I know now how twisted I am. How selfish and dark. I don’t deserve you. I am an awful, worthless human being.”
I look into his shocked, tortured green eyes as I lay on the floor in surrender, the painful truth ripping away the last thread of will to live. I’m fighting the grief of the woman who walked away from her dying child’s helpless cries.
Nate left the world with his screams echoing around the street, calling my name to save him. Next to his twisted doll-like little brother, and his unconscious father.
How sorry I am, that I couldn’t follow you to the same end, I tell Ethan. My little bunny, forgive your mum, please. Once I hear the sorrowful cries of Nate, I close my eyes. I fall, enveloped by a heavy blanket of guilt.
How wrong I was to protect Sandra. Too scared to look in the mirror and face the truth. You are damn disloyal and weak, bitch!
Worthless.
Now you know, Sandra whispers. A sob catches in my chest, and we both merge the gap I wedged between us to feel this storm of agony and guilt. The truth binds us, the torment of loss merges us, drowning me, undoing.
