AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hurt, maybe even badly, but alive.
And, of course, accidental.
But then there she was.
In the nicest outfit she owned with an empty bottle of wine perched on the edge of the tub.
The knife was still tucked in her hand.
After it had sliced all the way up her arm.
Hard.
Deep.
Purposeful.
It wasn’t a cry for help.
It was an end to the suffering.
“Mom?”
The sound that escaped me was foreign. Small and boyish. As I fell to my knees beside the tub, what was left of my heart splintered apart in my chest.
I guess in my youth, in my naiveté, I had figured that getting away would heal the both of us, would eventually wipe away all those years of suffering.
Then again, all I knew was my own pain, the suffering I had endured. What my mother had gone through was her own story, her own scars, her own demons that whispered in her ear at night.
Back in the present moment, Sylvie’s hand moved out, covering the top of mine, giving it a squeeze. Then staying there. A soft, yet firm, presence, offering a little strength as I let myself relive that day for the first time in, fuck, maybe ever.
I’d been numb after that.
I was hardly even in my own body and mind as I turned back out of the room, as I went to the bed area and called the police.
I’d dropped down on the edge of the bed, waiting for them to arrive, answering their questions with as few words as possible.
Then I watched as the coroner showed up, tucked my mom’s body into a black bag, and wheeled her away.
“She didn’t have shit in life,” I said, voice rough. “So I worked my ass off to give her a nice burial.”
I don’t think I slept for ten full days, taking every single job I could find, socking away that money, adding it to the funds I’d set away for the apartment I was hoping we would get to start over.
Then I dropped all of it on a nice dress for her to wear, the kind she had always loved, but never wore. I got her the nicest coffin I could, a tasteful funeral. Even if I was the only one there.
Then I saved up some more and got her the best headstone I could.
This was where my past and Sylvie’s ran parallel.
My Ma’s gravestone only had two words as well.
Beloved mother.
She’d been the only thing in this entire hideous fucking world that I’d loved. So what was left of my heart was buried in the ground with her.
“What did you do after her loss?” Sylvie asked.
Worked.
I’d worked.
Moving around, state to state, never settling anywhere too long.
It was all the same old shit.
Life was all shower, rinse, repeat.
“You never had any friends? Relationships? Nothing?”
“No,” I told her honestly.
No one wanted to be friends with a battering ram, and that was what I was, what I thought I would always be.
“Well, until you came here,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’d been working as a junkyard dog at the time, and—“
“I’m sorry, you can’t just breeze past ‘I was working as a junkyard dog’ like it’s no big deal,” Sylvie interrupted.
“I mean… it was what it was. I was working overnight security at this big junkyard that was constantly getting broken into despite the razor wire and security lights and cameras.”
“Why didn’t they get an actual dog?” she asked, shaking her head at me.
“Some valid shit about animal rights, they said,” I told her.
“Oh, so, it’s not okay for a dog, but it’s okay for a human?”
“A human can consent to the job,” I said, shrugging. “Nitro was a junkyard dog that was being treated like shit. I stole him from there.”
“Oh,” she said, considering this for a moment. “Okay. You’re right on that, I guess. So… you were working as a junkyard dog…”
“And I came across some fucks—several of ‘em—trying to beat the shit out of one guy. You can see why my past means that I don’t like that shit.”
“So you saved him.”
“Yeah.”
The problem was, that crew was bad news. Bad enough that Valen had made it clear we needed to get the fuck out of Dodge.
So that was what we did.
And on that journey out of town, he told me about Navesink Bank, about the club, the job, the family he was anxious to get back to.
“And I dunno… for some reason, something he said made me want to come here, to prospect, to see what it was that he was so eager to get back to.”
“And?”
“And what?” I asked.
“And how did that experiment turn out?”
“I’m still here,” I said, shrugging.
“That’s not an answer,” she said, giving me the best eye roll she could muster with just one working eye.
I honestly didn’t know what to say about it.
At first, it had just been a job. A somewhat overwhelming one at that. So many new faces, inside jokes, old stories that needed to be learned. All the while adjusting to a career shift that didn’t let me slam my fist into something every single chance I got.
