17 Last Times

⤹14❁ Intrigued

Hey everyone! How are you today? I think I'm on fire. I haven't updated so much within one week in ages! I hope you enjoy this one!

__________

𝓓𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓪

"Do you want me to come with you?" Nathan asks, sitting the suitcase at the doorstep of my house.

I think about the way I am definitely going to break down as soon as I step inside.

"No, it's fine. I need to . . ." I trawl my brain for the right words.

"You need to do this alone. I understand." He smiles at me subtly, supportive. "Give me a ring if you need anything. I'll be on call."

I reciprocate the smile. "Thank you, Nathan. I really appreciate you picking me up. Well, I appreciate everything you've done for me, like, ever."

"Don't mention it." He takes a step back, allowing me to get on with what I have to do. "I'll speak to you later, yeah?"

"Sure." I smile again and watch him disappear into his car, which he starts up with no delay, and just like that, with a brief wave of his hand, he's gone.

I take a deep breath and turn around to face the door. My heart lurches up to my throat but regardless of the paralyzing anxiety that spawns within me, my hand clutches on the handle of the suitcase. I stick the key in the lock, afraid to turn it. I'm scared of being bombarded by my mother's rebuking voice.

Are you pleased with yourself?

Someone broke into our house to acknowledge you with the way you looked.

I'm still not over your little playboy show.

You must've really lost your plot if you started to hallucinate things.

I turn the key and push the door open, eyes shut in fear as I'm awaiting my mother's screams, but they never come. There's just silence. A deafening, harrowing silence.

I bite my lip hard, fighting the heaviness that my chest rapidly fills with.

She's gone.

They're both gone.

I shut the door behind me and place the suitcase on the floor. The clock on the wall isn't ticking, which means that I've not been here for long enough to let the batteries die.

Everything that made this house a home is dead and gone, including my parents.

The smell of my mother's air fresheners has evaporated and left this place stagnant with abandonment and something must alike, the same sort of smell that you walk back into after a long holiday away.

I potter towards the nearest window and leave it wide open. When I turn back around, my eyes find the dish rack, still full of the exact same plates and pans and pots and cups that my mother made me wash before they'd gone out for the last time.

I slowly approach it and run my fingers along the rim of one of the plates, so tentatively as if it could bite. I swallow hard and put the dishes back to where they belong.

It's difficult.

It's extremely difficult because with each single thing that I do, I feel like I am eradicating the last traces of what's left of my parents.

I shut the cupboard and give up. I let the strength desert me, which makes a waterfall of tears follow right after.

I miss them. I miss them so much and I wish I could turn back time and apologize for everything that I've done. I wish I could tell them how awful my life is without them, how bleak and melancholic, how much their presence had brought into each single day and made it less real.