Paranoiac by Attikus Absconder Page A

light. I heard sobbing from within. This
was all too familiar and way too bizarre. I peeked through the
crack in the door. My dad was sitting in a chair on the right side
of her sick-bed. He was holding my mothers' hand and sobbing. I
looked over at my mom and she was staring at me. At first I was
startled until I saw the slack jawed expression on her face. She
was dead and gone. Her body was practically sinking into the bed.
It was a horrific site to behold. Then as I was staring at her
emaciated shell I remembered it all. This was the night I ran away.
This was the real night I ran away. I’ve always lied to myself,
told myself I ran away because of my dad, that I took off before my
mom died.
     
    The door in
front of me swung open and standing in front of me was my father.
As he towered over me I truly felt like an awkward teenager again.
Tears were running down his puffy swollen face. It’s so strange
seeing a grown man cry, especially if he’s your father. My dad, for
as long as I knew him, never cried before this night. I always
thought seeing him like this would shock me but I felt nothing. I
was numb and my mom finally lost her battle. My dad’s features
twisted into anger and he grabbed me by my shirt and slapped me
across my face. “It was you! You killed her!” He yelled, specks of
spit flying into my face. Falling to his knees, he hugged me for
one of the first times in my life and sobbed.
    I
smiled with a wide grin at this gesture. Not because this moved me
or touched my heart in some endearing way. I was smiling because
it was my fault she was dead. I
killed her out of mercy and it scared me how easy it was. It broke
my heart that she died by my hands but it made me indescribably
happy with how much it devastated him. He always blamed me for her
sickness. He beat me, tortured me emotionally and fractured my
soul. Every time he terrorized me, he tore out and killed a piece
of my humanity. I smiled, tears budding in the corners of my eyes
as I recounted my dark and irreversible deeds.
    That night, I heard from my room a whispering, dry plea in
the form of my name. At first I couldn’t tell if I was hearing
things or if someone was actually calling out my name. The more I
heard my name called out in between rasping breaths the closer I
got to her room. The door was already open when I got to her. She
laid there, her eyes almost bulging out of her tiny, shriveled
skull. She was motioning for me to come closer, to come into the
room. I hated seeing her like this. Her hair was once beautiful,
full and shiny. Now it was more wiry, patchy and lifeless. Her skin
used to glow and now it hung off her bones loosely. She was barely
human and this wasn’t how I wanted to remember her. She kept
motioning for me to come in but my legs were shaking. “Zac, come
here,” She said in the most weak pathetic voice I had ever heard. I
stepped into her room and slowly walked over to her bed, convinced
that if I walked any faster it would somehow break her.
    The room smelled awful. I could smell rot, dead skin and
antiseptics. I couldn’t fathom being this sick, lying in my own
filth, being able to smell myself die and decompose, being so weak
that just the will to stay alive was an insufferable pain. As I
walked closer and closer to her, the smell got worse and worse. She
looked up at me when I got to the side of her bed. Her eyes, oh
god, those pitiful eyes. She grabbed my wrist with more strength
than I thought she had but it didn’t last long. Her hands were icy
cold and her nails were sharp and untrimmed. She looked me straight
in the eyes and dryly said, “Isaac baby, I want you to kill me.” I
was shocked and had tried to take a step back but she tightened her
icy grip. “Isaac, you are going to kill me. You have
to.”
    I
didn’t fight back, staring at her face in awe. “Mom, I know it’s
hard but I just can’t. I’ve never hurt anything,” I said to her
avoiding the piercing eyes that focused on me.
    “