Deafening Memories

The man shouted, kicking at a can on the side walk. How dare she treat him like this? Like /he/ was the bad guy. Forget all the expenses that brat caused, all the time he stole, all the pain it brought them. It didn’t matter to her; she didn’t care about anything but that demon. The boy’s red eyes burned into his soul; the eyes of a demon and not of a boy. He cursed his misfortune, thinking back to the small, forgotten, Icelandic village they came from. He missed his home; he hated the city and its hardships. He longed for the quiet, secluded life he was raised in. He would have stayed there with his wife if they hadn’t birthed a demon.

He remembered the horror on the faces of the nurses, the doctor swearing. They were banished from the religious town and sent away. The memories caused him to swear again, turning down an alley to head towards the bar he had commonly visited. He didn’t have enough money to get drunk there, but at least he could achieve a buzz, a buzz that could get him through the night. It was common occurrence to leave his child and wife at home, to escape her nagging and the boy’s demonic stare.

Why couldn’t she have just sent the boy into the system? They were in no shape or form in condition to take care of a child in this new environment. If not for his past in medicine, they’d have lived on the streets. He entered the bar with a bang, obviously in a rage to the bar tender and visitors to the establishment. Taking a seat at the bar, he ordered a drink, the cheapest and nastiest beer they had. He could gain a buzz from it though, so the taste didn’t bother him.

He left within the hour, a small amount of money on the counter for the bar tender. It annoyed him that they lived in this trashy city. Gone were the mountains of his village, now replaced with dingy and depressing towers of steel and glass. He shook his head, cursing under his breath as he continued up the alley to the side walk. He would go home and go straight to bed, ignoring his wife’s pleading gaze and the boy’s wales. He was always sick, always needing help, all he did was cry. The man huffed as a group of people blocked his way up the road.

The night was dark, street lamps where the only way one could see through the darkness of the night. The man swore loudly, yelling at the people. “Get outta’ the way, trash!” he yelled in an obviously tippy tone. The men only laughed at him in response, their supposed leader walking up to him.

“Awe, come on. We’re jus’ loitering around is all.” he said in an amused voice, one that only infuriated the man as he swung his arm to punch the leader. The leader staggered back, his eyes going dark as he called over his men, grabbing the man’s arm and flinging him into the nearest alley.

The man shouted, trying to get up before the men came and started beating him, laughing and throwing curses and insults at the man. The man struggled and swore even more before the leader stepped up, pointing something at the man’s fore head.

“Hope ya’ like hell, trash.” the leader said in a disgusting voice before firing the gun. It was in that second before his death that the man saw the two people closest to him. His loving wife with her blonde hair covering her weak frame, and the son he called a demon. Gone where his demonic eyes; now replaced with the innocence and pain a child harbored against a neglecting parent. Too little to late was what described this man as the bullet broke through his skull, shattering the weak brain behind it. He became limp and was no more as blood flowed down from the bullet hole on his head. The men laughed and left the body to rot.

It wasn’t until the next morning that a trash man stumbled across the body, yelling and running off. The police and forensic teams came next, securing the body and hauling it off to the morgue. It wasn’t a secret that the current gang pestering the city was the cause of this, commonly shooting whoever crossed their path with nary a word nor scuffle on the deceased’s part.

This didn’t matter to the wife or son though; her delicate frame sobbing into her son’s hair as she held the whimpering boy close to her. She was terrified and didn’t know what to do. She had never worked; she would have to get a job. How would she provide for her son? How would she make sure he would prosper in life? She didn’t know, but these thoughts didn’t cross her mind now. She was alone, and the death of the man she bore child with created a gaping wound in her heart. She didn’t know how she’d recover. But she had to for her son.

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The maiden ran, screaming as she clutched her hat in her arms. She was terrified, fear exploding within her eyes as tears cascaded from her eyes. The monster was closing in, its hissing and clicking resounding off of the walls in the maze of a house.

She chose the house because it looked safe, it appeared to be a haven from the beast that was now chasing her down, but she had never been more wrong in her life. The house turned out to be the labyrinth of the monster itself, a deadly trap that could have been avoided easily if she had simply gone home. She cried as she turned another corner made from the victims of the monster. She had never felt this much despair and terror before.

She took one more turn before skidding to a stop, dropping her hat as she banged on the wall. It was a dead end, and the monster was closing in on her. She began to panic, picking her hat up and covering her face with it. She wouldn’t look at the beast, if she didn’t see it, her death would come quickly. She cowered behind her large hat, screaming and crying in terror, regretting everything she had done in her short life. She felt the beast’s claw touch her hair.

She screamed as the monster attacked her, killing the maiden within an instant. Her limp form hanged from the monster’s claw; its large mandibles tearing the hat off of her face. It seemed to sneer at the dead maiden’s life less eyes, the terror and fear still residing in them. If it could laugh, it would, as the monster laid the maiden against the corner of bones. It wanted the maiden to feel fear forever eternal. It produced a wisp and put it into the maiden’s gaping hole in her chest.

The maiden awoke under a tree, sitting upon a tuffet. She looked around, dazed and confused as she noticed her meal splayed across the ground. She had no knowledge of what had happened, and only stooped down to pick up her bowl as a looming figure appeared within the tree’s branches overhead.

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The woman cried, looking down at her son’s pale form. She couldn’t stand to look at him this way, his arms bandaged and face so much more paler than usual. She could barely notice him against the clean, pristine sheets of the hospital bed. Her son had never seemed so frail before, and she couldn’t stop crying as a result of it.

She felt guilty that she hadn’t noticed sooner, the pain her son harbored. She didn’t want to believe her son felt like a burden, that he was truly happy with life and could continue on. She cursed herself at her aloofness and wistful thinking. How could she have been so stupid? To not notice the brokenness of what was most important to her? She couldn’t stand the thought and shook her head, tears streaming down her face once again.

The doctor said it was a miracle her son hadn’t died of blood loss. There were more cuts on his arms than one could count, an anomaly one could withstand the torture of doing that to oneself baffled the psychiatrist that visited the boy and his mother. She brushed her son’s hair out of his eyes, her lip quavering as she felt his cool skin. She couldn’t believe her life had led to this. To her son lying on a hospital bed due to a failed suicide.

“Mm… Mom…?” came the weak voice of her son to her ears. She cried out, throwing herself onto her son as she hugged him. She cried into his chest, wailing in joy that he was awake, and sorrow that he did this to himself. She didn’t let go, and the boy weakly brought a hand to his mom’s arm. “… I…” he said before his mom looked up at him.

“I will always love you… N-Never, never do this again.” she said through sobs and watery eyes, returning to hugging her son. “… You were going to leave me… Leave me all alone, Nilo… Please… Please don’t do that again… I love you too much…” she said in a whisper as a nurse came in to make sure everything was alright. The nurse sighed and put on a smile, calling the doctor and psychiatrist to the boy’s room.

He looked over at his mother though, a look of true anguish on his face. “… I’m… I’m so sorry…” he whispered out before the two men entered the room. He didn’t know what he was sorry for, but he was going to change for his mother.

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Like the maiden, the boy had entered the labyrinth, and was now desperately looking for a way out. He continued to run into dead ends, and was then forced to go through it again and again. He didn’t know how he would escape, but he knew he had to, or relive the torture that plagued his mind. What plagued him was the key to leaving the tortures labyrinth, but the boy didn’t want to face it. And so he would continue through the labyrinth until he confronted the beast that lay within; the plague that had corrupted his mind.

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The boy woke up with a shout, sitting upright in bed. He quickly glanced at the door, hoping he hadn’t woken up his mother. He sighed, the humming in his head slowly returning. He didn’t remember what he had dreamed about, let alone why it scared him. He sighed and shook his head, glancing over at the puppet that was now looking directly at him. He gave it a lop sided look before yawning and falling back to sleep, murmuring something to the puppet before sleep over taking him. The puppet continued to look at the boy whilst he slept, its vacant stare never leaving him.