Astral Lovers

CHAPTER 5

WARNING!

This chapter contains
-disease
-death
-assault
If you are sensitive to those topic please don't read.

Thanks and enjoy the story!

Lily POV

Five days had passed.
Five horrible days.
With my father, the situation was stable.
We had been ignoring each other since the morning of the fight.
That same afternoon I headed to work in a very bad mood.
Not even my favorite music could cheer me up.
In five days I will have listened to the entire Coldplay and Bruno Mars discography hundreds of times.
Yet my mood remained on the ground.
Thinking about it, I could have avoided that discussion with my father.
I sigh.
What did I think I was getting?Assuming he'd let me go, pure utopia, what exactly did I think I'd find in New York?
Did I really believe, even for a moment, that this trip could be the solution?
Did I really think that when I get to New York I will find some trace of Steve?
Am I really so desperate?
So pathetic?
Steve doesn't exist.
I have repeat it to me like a mantra for the past five-day.
Every night for the last five nights, I went to bed hoping to dream of him again.
I've read hundreds of articles on Google about lucid dreaming.
I took notes.
I have tried relaxation techniques.
I meditated.
But none of that worked.
Quite the contrary.
The nightmare is back.
Harder.
Scarier.
More real.
Always the same nightmare since my mother died.
She has passed away, after a long agony, in a hospital bed.
Glioblastoma.
This was the report that was given to us just two months earlier.
The doctor was keen to point out that unfortunately this was one of the most aggressive forms of brain tumor.
The hopes we were given were minimal but the doctors would do everything in their power to save her.
She underwent surgery to try to remove the tumor mass and then began with radiotherapy.
Following by chemotherapy.
At last the woman on that hospital bed was no longer my mother.
A skeletal face and dull eyes were what I saw every day.
But I was putting up with it because I would never forgive myself if I missed one of the last few moments she had left.
The smiling woman, with long curly black hair and green eyes like emeralds, was gone.
Every day she cried because she didn't want to leave me, she didn't want my last memory of her to be that.
She pass away one morning in early spring.
The hot days had begun to replace the cold ones.
Flowers and plants came back to life.
The animals woke up.
While she was leaving instead.
I had spent the night with her.
She seemed to be doing a little better.
She had even managed to drink some soup.
She smiled at me.
The next morning, when I awoke, she was there staring at me, the shadow of a smile still on her lips.
But something was wrong, she was too stiff.
Property.
At that moment I understood.
My screams filled the still silent and empty corridors of the hospital.
A nurse followed by a doctor rushed forward.
Her death was confirmed.
My father arrived ten minutes later.
He found me with my head resting on my mother's lap.
Her hands clasped in mine.
He literally had to tear me from her lifeless body.
Two days later there was her funeral.
I wore one of her favorite shirts that day, the Black Sabbath one.
I quarreled with my father.
He yelled at me that I was indecent.
That I was the shame of the family.
But I didn't care about his words.
I knew mom would approve.
I didn't want to mourn her death that day.
I wanted to commemorate her life.
Remember her for what she had been.
The woman who taught me the values ​​of love, respect and trust.
The woman who taught me to put on lipstick.
And to tame my curls so similar to hers.
From the night of the funeral I started having that nightmare.
And it's always the same.
It's me and my mother.
Locked in a dark place, buried in rubble.
The room is in the gloom.
I only see smoke and fire.
There is only death and destruction around us.
She keeps telling me to stay calm.
That we will come out alive and together.
Then I lose consciousness.
I hear my mother begging me to fight.
To fight hard.
And I do it, for her.
When I open my eyes I see a man hugging her.
He cries.
I don't see his face.
I don't understand who he is.
He is only a shadow but his cry is desperate, from his lips a continuous litany.
"Forgive me, forgive me Sophia"
I understand immediately what happened.
And usually, that's when I wake up screaming.
My therapist used to repeat to me that this nightmare was the dream representation of my grief.
Of the pain of my loss.
The room we're trapped in represents my mother's illness.
I who remain stuck under the rubble symbolizes my feeling helpless in not being able to help her.
The man who suffers is my father, who has become a shadow for the pain of having lost his life partner.
Two years of therapy and in the end that damned nightmare was still there.
I stopped with the sessions.
I lied saying I'm fine.
I was doing better.
I actually couldn't stand being told that everything would be fine.
That I would be fine again.
Bullshit.
My mother was gone.
I would never be well again.
I was just surviving.
I just survive.
But I'm not doing it for me.
I do it for her because I know she doesn't want me to stop fighting.
She would have liked me to go on and make all my dreams come true.
Now I'm back home from work, I had to replace my colleague again today so I had to cover another afternoon shift.
I find myself walking through the dark streets with my inevitable Airpods in my ears.
The words of You Are The Reason by Calum Scott rang in my ears.
I reach the porch of the house, open the door and go directly to my room.
But I stop abruptly in front of the kitchen door.
The light is on and my father is there.
He is setting at the table, table full of every good thing.
Filled with Chinese food.
My favourite.
I look at him dazed.
Almost dismayed.
I take off the Airpods and I clear my throat.
He turns to me and gives me a half smile.
Immediately afterwards he exclaims "Truce?"
Pointing to the laid table.
I can't help it but smile.
It is the first nice gesture he has made towards me since time immemorial.
I sit at the table without ever taking my eyes off of him.
"Truce" I agree.
He sits down too, tie loosened and shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
His hair is smooth and pulled back, a sprinkle of salt and pepper on his temples.
His eyes are gray, hard.
Timeless.
For a while we eat in silence.
His voice brings me back to reality.
"I'm sorry to be like that.You have all the right to hate me"
I feel guilty.
"Dad I don't hate you..."
"Don't interrupt me please" the shadow of a smile appear on his lips.
I make the gesture to lock my lips and then I make to throw the key behind me.
He laughs.
"As I was telling I'm sorry.I know I'm tough and unaffective.I want you to know that everything I do, I do it to keep you safe.I don't want anything happen to you.I lost your mother.I can't lose you too.I can't..."
At the end of the sentence his voice breaks.
I see his eyes, they are always hard but I can see that they have become wet.
I feel guilty.
Almost.
I can understand his thinking, now that he has given me the opportunity to know it.
Even if I don't agree with it.
We continue to eat.
When we both finish I get up to clear the table but he stops me.
"I'll take care of it, you go to rest" he says.
I nod in response but before leaving the room I hug him.
"I'm sorry too, I know I'm difficult at times!You know, after all, I don't particularly care about going to New York"
Lie.
"Brookville isn't that bad!"
Big lie.
He just returns the hug.
He is like that, I don't take it.
I go up to my room and throw myself on the bed.
Even if it weighs on me, I have to admit that I needed this.
His words makes me feel less alone.
Maybe I'm not the only one grieving my mother's death.
With a full stomach and a light spirit I fall asleep.