A Mirror of Eden

Chapter Sixteen: When the Monster Breaks His Claws

Leonardo Marcé Sovrano

Pulling into the driveway of the small home in a conscious and unassuming place on the outer areas of the city made my heart stutter more than an old car. It felt hard to breath, and the tightness of the air fighting it's way through my lungs hurt like hell.

With every inhale my lungs shook with a fight to prevent letting anything else in. It was like I could hear them squeak hard and uncoiled as they rattled and screamed a distant, "No! Please no more!" It was too much, and it felt worse than drowning because the pain was rustling and dry.

The exhales were no better. The exhales still felt entirely too full because there was no hope or chance for the air to leave. It was a desperate push for something, anything, to come out of me but nothing worked. Nothing gave a big enough push to take what was trapping me out.

I brought the car to a stop and the silent purr of the engine somehow made a whisper of sound echo in my otherwise ringing ears. I could hear too much to not sense anything at all while I stared emptily at the house before me. The house didn't invoke a god stricken fear in me. It was who was inside of it. I couldn't believe who was inside of it, but she was and I was here trying to decide to go up up there and give that visual verification to myself.

Give it to the seven year old me that hugged her corspe to my chest with a pain I was too young to process or explain. I wanted to give him his mother back. I wanted to free him from the pain he'd spent the rest of his life carrying, but the me in this moment was trying to protect him; absolutely terrified that in searching for something seemingly impossible I would wreck him even more. I didn't think I could stomach such a loss for either versions of myself.

My head went back into the seat with my eyes closed as tightly as my fist on the steering wheel. It was starting to hurt, and I was overthinking everything. I had to find the courage in myself to make a choice. A choice to walk up to that door or a choice to put this car in reverse and speed away never to come back. But a part of me knew that if I made that choice, and if that women inside those brick walls is really my mother, she'd come find me again. She wouldn't let me go.

I didn't want to be let go.

I don't think I ever knew how much pain I had harbored in my soul until I saw her eyes before mine, and I couldn't deal. I never learned how to actually deal, and this was a bit too late in the course for me to figure it out when she was back and now enforcing a new wave of trauma onto me that I couldn't begin to process or navigate through or from. I shook my head silently about to put the car in reverse and go far away from here when my phone pinged and the message played through the car system before I could help it.

"Trust your heart sweet baby. The Lord gave you this second chance. Capture it, and don't let it slip away. I love you, and she does too," the text read and when I looked at the screen and saw Sienna's name I cursed at how she always came in saving me from myself when I needed regardless of if she knew it or not. I owed her my life as my hand eased off the gear shift. I took a breath and let my mind stop long enough to do as she said and follow my heart: a task I didn't do often.