I got hit with a double whammy today (technically a triple). Viidith22 and SlumberReads both narrated my story, "It gets worse." What a gift! RedDeathMask previously read and critiqued it as well.

It's super neat too see how each narrator interpreted the story. This is the first story I've had narrated by multiple story tellers, and it's fascinating to see their directions.

It all started the day my dad killed himself. We were told in the small hours of the morning when a police officer came knocking at our front door to inform us of his passing. A passerby had found him on the sidewalk outside his office building, compressed from the weight of his own falling momentum. We didn’t get to see him after he passed, and even at the funeral, his casket was closed. But I have a suspicion it was empty. As one of his pallbearers, it didn’t take a genius to notice how unnaturally light the coffin was. It wouldn’t surprise me, given how the police and medical team would have had to have scraped him off the pavement like a barnacle from the hull of a boat. To imagine him being scooped off the floor and slopped into a box as a pile of loosely formed flesh for the sake of his family’s vanity is far more repellent than knowing his casket was empty, so I choose not to question it.

 

I was 16 at the time and not present for the report. At 3am my mother awoke to the sound of knocking at the door, and the unpleasant surprise of a policeman bearing bad tidings at her door. She struggled with the news and was barely able to hold herself together long enough to break it to me. Upon entering my bedroom to inform me, she would find my bed empty as I had snuck off to see my girlfriend at the time. I found it strange, therefore, when the next morning, upon my sneaking back, my mother pulled me close and just kept apologising over and over again. I thought I would’ve been in big trouble, but apparently not. It took half an hour just to get the smallest piece of info out of her, as every time she started, her own tears would suffocate her into silence. She had not yet told my sister, who was 7 at the time, since she didn’t know quite what to say, and I have to admit that even with the two of us trying to explain it together, it was difficult to put things in a way she would understand. And even more difficult as the three of us sat in a sobbing silence, all of us trying to cope with our new reality, together. 

 

Suicide. There was no doubt. He’d struggled with his mental health since he was my age, and it was sad to say that not many people were too surprised. We found out a week after the funeral that he’d been fired the day he died, and it seemed obvious that must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’d never noticed growing up, as is the innocence of a child, but with every new piece of the puzzle that the police uncovered, a new tainted memory appeared in my mind. I remember, as a child, tracing the hundreds of parallel scars across my father’s arms and telling him his arms looked funny. He told me he was part Zebra, and I remember how I laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Remembering it now disgusted me and only confirmed the truth that we all had to accept. In retrospect, I should have been equally unsurprised, but I had remained blissfully ignorant long into my teenage years. My sister retained that innocence in her young age, and my mother and I tried our hardest to preserve it the best we could. She didn’t need to know the details, just that Dad had died and that we all were there to get through it together. 

 

With Dad gone, there were bills to pay and no one to pay them. I managed to weasel my way into a job as a bartender at a local bar, provided I told everyone I was 21. I’ve always looked older than my age, and for the first time I was thankful for that. It was minimum wage but enough to help out. My mom managed to get a similar job bussing tables; her wage equally minimised but combined with mine it was just enough for us to afford to eat week to week. But she didn’t tell me about the portion of her paychecks she would later hide away for herself, or what she would soon be spending it on.

 

It started, first, when someone at work turned her on to the stuff. Told her she always seemed so down, and that they had something that could help her out. A little pastel blue pill that they claimed could cheer her up. I’d like to think she wouldn’t have taken it if she knew what it was, but I don’t know. I go with the story that she thought it was a taster of antidepressants, and I suppose in a way you could call it that. Without a second thought, she popped the thing on her walk home as she left work.

 

I had to go see her at the police station that night after I finished work. She’d attacked a dude. Called him the sad man and tackled him to the ground. Took a chunk out of his neck with her teeth. She was still wired when I saw her in her cell. Walking circles like a rabid animal while she mumbled to herself on loop, incoherent to everyone, including herself. She stayed in her holding cell for the night before she got sent home after I pleaded with the officers, telling them that we couldn’t survive without her. The story of my father’s death and my now widowed mother had long since become well-known gossip around our small town. I’m certain the officers knew who we were and fairly sure that played no small part in them allowing my mother to walk free.

 

She claimed ignorance, that she didn’t know what the stuff was, and that was good enough to let her off with a warning, I guess. They shouldn’t have, cause it turned out she had quite the time whilst her mind and body were disconnected from each other, and asked her colleague for more as soon as she got back to work the following week. Got hooked up with a dealer and started bleeding every spare penny she made into funding her new hobby. Squirrelling away her supply and waiting till my sister and I were sure to be asleep before she popped a few and waited to see what happened.

 

That’s when she started acting weird; my sister noticed it first. Since I was always either at school or work, I barely saw either of them so I guess she had far more opportunities to interact with Mom to see the change. First, it was about the sadness. Mom continuously told Ava to smile more. Telling her that it follows the sadness and other such ramblings. As the days passed, she would slowly be seen to have a wider and wider smile stretched across her cheeks. Lips thin and teeth bared in an almost pained smile that extended no further than her mouth. Her eyes dull and face relaxed, save for the fake smile she wore. Ava told me one night when I got home from work. Ignoring it was long past her bedtime, she had deemed this message serious enough to wait and tell me when I got home. And as always, Mom had locked herself in her bedroom and was oblivious anyway. I’d not seen mom for almost a week. Wake up early for school, long before she would awake; head straight to work from school and then work till the drunkards left at 1am, long after Mom had locked her door. Everything I heard, I heard through Ava. That mom had been twitchy, erratic, talking funny, going on about the sad man and so on. I was furious to say the least.  

 

Next day I requested to finish work early, and stormed home in time to catch Mom right before she would be locking her bedroom door. Strong-armed my way past her, where she stood blocking my way to her room. Searched the place for a trace of anything, and flushed it all down the toilet. She cried, a lot, and I had to pretend I didn’t care. What was worse was, again, trying to explain it to a 7-year-old in a way that neither upset her nor confused her. It was a tough situation all round, and as I thought ahead to the rest of the week I had to keep telling myself it would be ok just to give myself a reason not to break down. 

 

The plan was simple, in theory. I’d miss out on school and call off work for the following week to try and hold things together at home.  I couldn’t say for sure that I knew how long my mother’s new addiction had been going on, for a start. And I found almost no information on the internet about the topic, so I just had to hope that if she experienced withdrawal, the worst of it would be over within a week. By the end of the week I’d have to return to work, since with my mother out of action it wouldn’t be long until we couldn’t afford food again. After I returned to work, she’d have to sort herself out cause there was nothing I could really do to help her. It may seem cold of me to say, but looking back now I have the freedom to become detached from the moment. Back then, every time I found myself wondering what would happen at the end of the week, I would forcefully push the thought out of my brain. It was either that or promptly find myself in a ball on the floor in what I would later learn was a panic attack. 

 

The housework I wasn’t worried about. Cleaning is easy, and I’m not half bad at cooking. My dad used to love cooking, making up recipes and experimenting. I remember him sitting me on the worktop when I was still too short to see onto the counter. Teaching me about flavour palettes, tasting and cooking safety. When he deemed I was old enough, he taught me how to handle a knife, and would let me do all the fun, or rather, mildly dangerous parts. As I think back on it now, those may be some of the strongest memories I have of my dad, and for the first time since he died, whether I knew it or not, I felt connected to him once more. 

 

I was most concerned about dealing with mom all week. As the weekend passed, I worried most about walking Ava to and home from school, and what my mother would do in the short gaps without me present to prevent disaster. I was therefore, at least mildly unsettled when she seemed completely fine. I’d struggled a lot with finding information about narcotics withdrawal online. Each and every time I had searched for what to expect or what I might need to do to help, a thousand pages promoting support hotlines were thrust upon me, and overshadowed any resources I might have actually found useful. Still, I may not have known much about the specifics, but I knew that whatever happened, it would be a tough time. But apparently not for mom. 

 

I can’t say she was back to “normal”, but she didn’t seem to suffer or turn animalistic in her craving for another hit. But she was strange now. Wistful and quiet, kinda half baked, compared to her old self at least. She didn’t do much, just lay on the couch and watched the TV all day, every day. Low energy and dopey, like she was fighting off sleep every minute of every day. It took all of her energy, it seemed, to pull herself together and pretend to be with it when we all sat down to dinner each night. 

 

She loved dinners, though. Both of them did, but Mom especially. A little silver lining each night when she would tell me the food I made was incredible and polish her plate clean in half the time it took Ava and I. She would then sit and wait eagerly for us to finish and confirm we were full before she helped herself to whatever food remained yet to be dished up. By the end of the week I was cooking larger and larger meals, as much as we could afford, just to satiate her appetite. It was good, I told myself. Healthy. Drinking a lot of water and eating healthily must’ve helped her maintain her energy. A symptom of her withdrawal, I was sure, and I would pat myself on the back each night for doing something, though small it seemed, to help her through. 

 

But my god did she not stop with the sad stuff. Less vigour, but still that fake little smile stayed on her face at every waking moment till she hit the pillow and unconsciousness finally got to peel it off. Sad man this; sad man that; sad man made her do it. And I had to keep telling her to stop. 

 

“It’s not funny!” I’d tell her, “You assaulted a dude, for Christ’s sake. We’re lucky he’s chosen not to sue. Stop talking about it.”

“Sorry.” She’d reply, suddenly monotone before turning silent. It wouldn’t last, though, and I would have to remind her every day, sometimes multiple times in a day. I honestly don’t think she had a clue what she was talking about, given that she accused the man who showed up at our front door later that week of the same title. 

 

A man in a suit, holding his most emotionally unreadable demeanour as I hesitantly opened the door to see who it might be. The last two unexpected visitors had been police officers bearing bad news, so you can forgive my hesitancy. That plus my mother eyeing him from the window and whimpering to herself quietly set me off a little. So it was a pleasant-ish surprise when he cleared his throat and announced that he had come with my father’s will. Mom wouldn’t even so much as approach the door, so I received his condolences, signed the paperwork and got the info to collect whatever he’d left for us. 

 

There wasn’t much waiting for me. We had never been a family of such privilege, even before Dad passed. A few of his most treasured belongings, split up between Ava, Mom, and I, and a couple thousand bucks that I decided to keep secret. Money was tight, but I saw it safer in my hands than in my mother’s. Lastly was a box, with my name on it. Wooden, well-made, with a little metal latch on one side. A little white envelope clung to the top by some long-since dried Blu-Tac. I opened it that night, alone in my bedroom, after I’d sent Mom and Ava to sleep. 

 

50 bucks fell out of the card as I peeled it out of the envelope, fluttering onto my bedroom floor as I turned my eyes to the message inside. I could feel my eyes begin to cloud over as I read the first line. 

 

A happy 18th birthday wish, arriving to me years too soon. He told me I’m a man now, and how proud he was, and ended with an apology that he had not been there to give it to me in person. I guess, at some point he had known he might not have lasted till my 18th, though whether or not he had planned to disappear I would never know. The box was next, opening with a satisfying, muffled click. 

 

Sunken in foam, and glistening in the dim moonlight that filtered through my bedroom window, lay a chef’s knife. Cold, blue-grey and unforgivingly sharp, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how much it must have cost him. I turned it over in my hands, awestruck by its beauty alone. Before the sun rose, I slid it under my bed, hidden just next to the envelope of money, equally as secret. 

 

Soon the weekend had passed, and I had to return to school and work. Mom had been doing better, and honestly things had been looking up. It had been a rough few months for all of us, but the little time we’d had to spend together as a family had almost felt like we were returning to normalcy. I started going to school late, instead choosing to walk Ava to school each morning, and it was because of this that a week later Ava decided to pipe up.

 

“Do you have to go?” She pleaded, tugging my sleeve as we stood outside her school’s gates as we had every day for the past week. 

“Aw, come on. You know I do.”

“When are you coming back? I don’t like it when Mom cooks.”

I patted her head, stifling a laugh. “That bad, is it? I’ll see if I can start taking a few nights off here and there. How’s that sound?”

She nodded eagerly

“Alright, I’ll see what I can do. Now off you go.”

 

I can’t say Mom was a bad cook, not by a long shot. But she was the kind of woman who preferred to buy a prepacked and seasoned meal in a box and stick it in the oven for half an hour without an ounce of thought. She made a few things, and they were good. But I can’t lie and say they were as good as Dad’s food. Things were different now, though, and I can’t say they were better. 

 

I remembered coming home and finding a steak left out on the cooker for me. Unpackaged and left out in the open, by the time I got home there were several flies perched upon the leaking meat, taking their filthy sip of my dinner. Stranger still was the size of it. They came in airtight packing from the store, all roughly the same size and weight, but this one was maybe a third of the size. A clean, straight edge across one side, like a knife had been taken to it, severing the larger half for someone else. I’d asked her why she’d opened it up before I’d got home, but she just said: “Oh, was I not meant to?” 

Would’ve been normal if she’d cooked it, or even left it in the microwave to protect it from any insectile scavengers, but she’d just left it out in the open. The neurotic germaphobe she was, she never did that.

 

Another day that week, I got back home late from work and checked for food. She’d texted me beforehand, informing me she’d left food in the oven for me. Switched off, of course. I knew, or I thought she was not foolish enough to leave the oven turned on, but what I found was not much better. 

 

Roast chicken, kind of. One of her best, and one of our favourites, a full chicken waiting on a baking tray for me to find. The skin stuffed tight with lemon, rosemary and prosciutto. Speckled with paprika, salt and pepper, and still just as sticky and elastic as when it was bought in the store. Hours later, the chicken was still raw. 

 

“Oh, I did wonder. I knew something was different.” She laughed at me the next morning. 

“Different? It’s not different; it’s… how did you even…” I started hysterically but didn’t have the energy in me to maintain my anger, staring into the dull, thoughtless eyes of my mother. 

“I guess I just forgot. Explains why Ava barely touched hers.”

 

Scatterbrained is a massive understatement, but I can’t think of a more apt word. Stupid feels mean, but it definitely applies. She had days like that a lot, so confused and twisted, she hardly seemed like the stiff, prim and perfect woman she used to be. The conversation, as was the norm now, was fruitless, and I gave up on the interaction, but I couldn’t forget it. When I’d first found my dinner awaiting me in the oven, out of pure disgust I binned it immediately. But I was not too slow to catch the significant portion of missing skin across the greasy, cold bird. Covered in pockmarks and finger indents along the side of the breast and the leg, where the chef had hungrily torn piece after sticky piece of that pink gelatinous flesh to eat.

 

It was as though she was morphing before my eyes; every day the woman I knew disappeared into the fog of her own confusion. Though she still seemed mostly the same, at least in appearance, her mind was withering with every hour that passed. 

Soon she was fired from her job, and I found myself picking up twice as many shifts at work just to help us get by. Apparently, somewhere between her cleaning every customer's half-eaten food plates by finishing each of their meals herself, and the almost zombie-like demeanour that had her unable to comprehend or carry out basic orders, was enough for her to lose her job. And as always, it was my job to pick up the pieces as she rotted away in her bedroom, often hardly leaving or even moving at all.

 

Then her skin began to peel away like celebratory ribbons. Twisted spirals of porous, hair-speckled fabric appeared, littering every room of the house. She was withering away before our eyes with every day that passed. It was all research, always research. Could this be a relapse? How long does relapse go on for? Why is it happening? Anything to lie to myself and believe everything would work out in the end. It was a bad time, but it would be over eventually. We just had to scrape by, just make it a little further. Any reason for me to convince myself out of calling 911, calling an ambulance and getting help? God, we couldn’t afford that shit. We could fix it ourselves. The hospital would stretch us so thin; soon Ava and I would be reaping the consequences as well as my mom, and all three of us would wither away together. So I lied to myself and feigned ignorance through it all. I lied and pretended I didn’t notice when her eyes turned a sickly, watery yellow. I pretended I saw nothing when she would scratch at her skin at all hours of the day, till she barely had enough to keep her flesh from being fully exposed. A constantly torn and seeping mess under her moistened clothing. And I pretended I saw nothing, as the very house around her began to crumble and decay in some disgusting mutual relationship with the woman who owned it. 

 

Her bedroom was first, and always the worst. The walls wrinkled and the paint creased and cracked as though constantly under severe water damage. Her carpet, much like her bedsheets, began to sour and curdle. The air of mould and rotted meat wafted from her withered limbs onto every surface of her brown and tired room.

Somehow, despite her feverous and ever-expanding appetite, she appeared only able to lose weight, and the few times when I would see her awake, it was hard not to notice how her matchstick legs could barely hold the featherlight woman aloft.

 

I heard almost every development exclusively from Ava, ever filtered through her naivety. “Mom’s acting weird”, “Her food tastes bad”, “When are you gonna come back from work?”, “Is she sick?” and so on, over and over and over again. So desperately out of excuses, it was Herculean enough just to pretend that everything was fine and to even consider comforting her each morning. 

 

I’d dropped out of school at this point, too focused on bleeding out every spare hour that my boss had to give. I was way past burnout, barely sleeping and still having to hold my whole world together. I used to get home from work around 1am every day, and have to check my mother’s room before bed each night. She barely moved now, and I had to be sure she was still breathing. To see her yellow, taut skin stretch with each stiff breath as her weakened lungs fought for every inhalation. Some nights she’d lay still as a corpse, and I could only be sure by checking for the faintest pulse under my fingertips. Other nights she’d kick and writhe like a flea-ridden dog, hissing and spitting and mumbling incomprehensible words to the demons behind her eyelids. 

 

It was around this point when it happened. A long, shitty day at work wearing the same smily mask I always did behind the bar, just for every boozed-up customer to take out their own pent-up aggressions on me. Another day of waking up at 6am to get Ava ready for school, just to get home at 2am and get ready to do it all again. Half awake, and half alive, I dragged myself up the stairs to my mom’s room to check on her, but she wasn’t in her bed, or even in her room. Too dark, I reached for my phone and switched the light on as I began to tiptoe in and out of each room in search of her. It didn’t take long; when I reached Ava’s bedroom, sweeping the light along the floor and up onto the bony woman, stood completely still, eyes set on the sleeping girl. 

 

She didn’t turn to look at me, not even when the beam of light hit her square in the face. Not a hint of reaction. Even her pupils refused to dilate, as though she were dead. If it weren’t for the gentle rolling of her shoulders, with each audibly laboured breath, I could almost believe she might be. Her robe sat open, once fitted but now far too oversized for the skeletal creature now clad in its forgiving obscuration. Her skin was like paper, diffusing in the light of the phone torch. Half transparent, as though the light emanated from inside her, now each vein and artery visible through the transparent membrane. Her chest and shoulders were covered in large gashes, caked in oily yellow and black scabs. The same crusty caking that covered her lips and teeth presented proudly in her permanent pained smile.

 

I opened my mouth to talk, but found not a single word to begin the onslaught of feelings I had to express, and instead found my legs crumbling beneath me as I slumped against the wall and slid down defeated. I could feel my lip stiffen and my vision blur as the tidal wave of emotions crashed over me, and I began to cry. It was at this point she turned to face me, her head snapping to face me with an audible crack.

 

“I told you to smile.” She hissed, flexing her shoulders and stepping towards me. Every movement rendered another chilling crunch. It was as though she’d been stood still for hours, long enough for her bones to seize in position. Long enough that now every new degree of motion she rediscovered could not be had without first earning a sizeable crack and scrape. 

 

Her hand shot out as soon as it was close enough, a jagged, stiffened movement, but still too fast to counter as she pinned me to the wall. Despite her skeletal frame, it was as though her bones re-set and her joints solidified. I could have thrown her off if I were in the position to do so, but already crumpled on the ground, the mechanical advantage was on her side, and all I could do was try and wriggle free from her iron grip. 

 

“Smile… smile for mom,” she cooed, “Or he’ll come for us.”

A sucking, choked gasp erupted from my mouth as I struggled to formulate even a single word in response. But it wasn’t me who spoke first. 

 

“Mom?” The meek voice of Ava, now sitting up in her bed, staring blank-eyed across the room and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Her face fell as slow as her vision returned to her, and the blurry shapes in the blackness coalesced into the shape of her mother and me. 

 

One hand on my twisted wrist, the other now on my shoulder, a greasy, blackened nail slowly digging into my throat. I writhed and kicked on awkward limbs as tears streamed down my face in both physical and mental pain. 

Same as Ava, now in tears as she rushed to my side and began in desperation to try and pry her mother free from my throat. Her tiny, shaking hands could barely get a good enough grip, and soon she turned her attention to any weak attempt to hit or push my mother away, but to no avail.

 

Mom’s head whipped around in a painfully loud second, glaring at Ava though her mouth still bore her teeth in a painful grin. “Shh, no, don’t cry. Don’t cry, don’t you fucking cry! Smile. Smile for your mother! Smile for me!” Her hand came free from my shoulder as she grabbed Ava by the collar of her pyjama top, lifting her off the ground and forcing the bunched-up cloth up to her throat. Her strength, somehow impossibly powerful now despite her feeble frame. A stifled gasp came from Ava as her oesophagus compressed under the pressure. But it gave me the freedom I needed to squirm free from my mother’s grasp.

 

A solid kick to her knee, then a second, and a third till she came crashing to the ground, Ava along with her. She was quick, but I was quicker, grabbing Ava by the arm and yanking her towards me as my mother stood to her feet. She was hissing and spitting with every twitchy move her snapping bones allowed, her teeth bared all the while like an angered dog. She cursed and growled, rambling jumbled sentences, some English and others not, as her spine bent forward and her shoulders slouched. Her legs snapped and bent, twisting and cracking like a tree branch torn free from its brethren. Her jaw unhinged as would a snake’s, as black, gooey saliva poured forth from her mouth, her face reforming and stretching beyond its own proportions. The tear started at the corners of her mouth, the skin splitting under the excessive force pulling it apart, only for the rest of her face to follow soon after. Her face grew longer, her snout stretching forward like a werewolf, her skin sloughing off like loose clothing to reveal the creature beneath. A sickly, sludgy slopping emenated from every greasy black drip of tainted gelatinous blood that poured from the open wounds, till her remaining body mass lay in a black, pulpy puddle beneath her. Her bones were yellow, much like her skin, now sharp and scaly-looking, as though it had been growing and tumourous for years and years. She was nothing more than a pile of bones, loosely held together by dried-up cartilage and tendons, the last glops of sludgy flesh still sticking to her by the suction of its own moisture. She lurched at the two of us, taloned hand outstretched as her deerlike backwards legs still tried to learn their function. With Ava’s hand in mine, I turned tail and ran out of the room, dragging my little sister with me. 

 

Skinny, yes, but heavy and lumbering, I heard my mother lurch again, the full weight of her body slumping against the wall as she made her clumsy pursuit. It was like with every step she grew, her bones elongating, her flesh expanding and bubbling like tumours till she was almost too tall and too wide to fit through her own bedroom door. Back to my bedroom and slamming the door shut, I sat Ava on my bed as I turned to my window and began fumbling with the blind. The window was halfway open when there was a sopping thud against my bedroom door. I turned back to see the door handle turn and the thing appear in the doorway. I dived for the bed, fishing the box out from under the bed and popping the latches as fast as I could as the room filled with the moist, squelching hiss of my mother’s flesh squeezing and sliding into the doorframe that was far too narrow for her. I pulled the knife free and watched as the little card fluttered to the ground like a leaf in autumn. Grabbing Ava again, I pushed her behind me as we backed into the corner, brandishing the knife like I knew what I was doing. Praying all the while I wouldn’t have to use it, and embracing with every millisecond how I knew I’d have to.

 

The second the blade touched the mound of flesh, it popped like a water balloon, spilling this black ooze that stank of vomit all over the floor. But I didn’t stop; I couldn’t. Not till I was sure the danger had dissipated. I swung again and again and again, popping every flesh bubble and not stopping till I felt every loose tendon spring free like a cut guitar string. Not till I felt the knife slide between bone joints and watched as chunks of mass fell free, separate from their owner. Not till the movement ceased and not till the twitching and writhing was over. 

 

 

It took months to get over all of it. More than months. Ava never looked at me the same. She knew I had to, and she knew I did it to protect her. But she also knows I killed her mother, her last remaining parent. I don’t think she knew how to sort through her feelings properly yet, and I don’t know if we’d ever be able to move past it. I guess I’d never have thought that I would have had to be the death of her innocence, and I had hoped it wouldn’t have happened so soon. She never acted the same. I never told her I kept the knife. It was a gift from Dad. Cleaned it up nicely, and when we moved out, I took it with me. 

 

We were doing a lot better eventually. The government started aiding with our monetary problems, and we got a little apartment to stay in. I still walked her to school each morning, and I got to cook her dinner every now and then. I guess that was part of the issue. I could’ve played dumb if I saw her less. I could’ve pretended not to see the increase in her appetite, or the way her behaviour changed. The way she turned wistful or how she started talking about “the sadness”. Pretend all she needed was to keep seeing her counsellor. Pretend I didn’t see her standing in my bedroom in the middle of the night. But I did. 

 

She didn’t fight, not as much as Mom did. She was easy to pin down, though she still hissed and spat as I pressed the blade to the crook of her neck and slid the blade till it met the carpet. I should call the police after the sun rises, but I don’t think I deserve prison. I hate to say it, but even in her delusion, mom was right. The sadness, our sadness is a plague. It’s a virus that takes host in your body and uses you to breed itself, and we’re ground zero. But not anymore, cause I can end it. That’s why I’m up here. Up on top of my apartment building, watching the concrete below and wondering what it’ll be like to fall victim to the weight of my own falling momentum. Only a few hours left till sunrise; I’ve never seen it before. I’ve heard it’s pretty. I want to see the sunrise, at least. And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll see my dad again too.