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He shakes his head “I didn’t know she was schizophrenic; I don’t have shit that’ll help her.”.
My head spins as I realize he’s right.Fuck!
“Mom, it’s me,Vicente,” my brother pleads, his unshaven face making my eyes squeeze shut. “José is dead, Mom.”
“LIES!” Her scream is loud like a banshee’s and as unhinged and broken as her mind. “You will say anything to save yourself.Hijo de puta!”
“Alma,” Romero says, his gun never wavering, even as he slowly slides to the side to block my brother with his body. “That isnotJosé, that is yourson. The year is 202—”
“Shut your mouth! You’re just like all of them, protecting your master, protecting amonster!You’ll not have me! He killed my Carlo,and now he will pay.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, what do I do?
“She’s gone mad,” Darío growls. “She’s going to kill someone.”
“Alma!” my mother snaps crazily, calling me by her own name. “Come with me, now.”
“Mom,” I try in a soothing tone as I step closer, “please, you have to calm down. This is my family, my men and Vicente is my brother—your son.”
I take another step forward when I see her eyes begin to uncloud a little, blinking rapidly even though she continues to hold her guns up.
“That’s right,Mami, this is not your childhood. You are not going to be hurt and neither am I.”
I take another step, getting hisses and growls from Alvaro and Romero when I begin to pass them.
“Vi,” Vicente hisses, moving quickly to grab me, “you’renotdoing that again.”
It was exactly the wrong thing to do. My mother sees him grab me, pulling me away from her, and all reason leaves her. I jump in front of my brother when she quickly adjusts her aim on him. Time slows as the sound of a shot echoes in my ears and a sharp stabbing sensation hits me right in the gut. I watch with a scream in my throat as my mother flies backward, multiple red blotches blooming on her chest and stomach. We fall to the floor at the same time.
But unlike my broken mother, arms surround me and stop my fall.
The sorrow and pain overtake me, pulling me into the sweet waters of oblivion where my mother’s embrace welcomes me.
Mi pobre madre.
THIRTY-EIGHT
VICENTA
“I Choose Me” Amanati & Roniit
It’s been five months since the night I watched my mother die. I spent a few weeks in a recovery room afterward, healing and mourning. As I was prescribed bedrest from having pieces of my intestines removed and stitched back together again, I watched my mother being buried on a fucking iPad. I cried when my father was found dead in the basement of the Banderas mansion, his body so mutilated that it took forensics to make sure he was who we suspected him of being. Both of my parents are dead. My brother and I are both dead inside. Where familial love once took place in our hearts, there is now only anger and resentment.
Since being back at the cabin, I’ve asked Romero and Alvaro to leave me alone in my time of grief, but they refuse to leave my side for long. They are always there, always asking me questions, always fucking trying, and I’m losing my mind.
I can’t breathe.
Despite my best efforts, I can’t look at them without seeing my mother’s death. I can’t hold their hands without feeling her blood dripping from their fingers. I can’t hear their voices without hearing the echoes of their guns taking her life.
I don’t care that it was to protect me or some other bullshit. Maybe it was, but the ends do not justify the means in this case. Not for me. My mother was sick, she needed help, not the cruel slap of death.
Still, I love them. God, I love them…but I don’t want to. Not right now.
I need to get myself back. I need to find the girl that got lost in them.
I need time and I need space, but it seems that I’m not even allowed that, not while I mourn, not while I heal, not even while I sleep! They’re always in my unconscious mind, nightmares of losing them, nightmares of walking away, dreams of love and silk sheets.
Always fucking there.
