Parallel: A Story Of Two Universes

4-Mother

They forcefully dragged me across the compound, all the people that I had seen, both those who hated me more than anything and those who cared about me immensely were completely mortified at the sight. I heard gasps, saw jaws hanging open, and felt a wide range of emotions. From satisfaction to surprise to pure terror, it seems everyone felt something completely different about the situation, but I really only felt fear, nothing else. They finally got to my family’s hut. The place in which I grew up, the place in which I have made a large number of my memories, is also the place that at this point I least wanted to be near. I guess sometimes we just need to get away from our past, even if we loved where we were at the time. They slid the curtains to the side with insane force, and with how flimsy those things have always been, I knew it would only take their exit to possibly snap them right off. It takes lots of force to open and close those, and maybe that’s how they plan to ensure I don’t escape, but if so then they really shouldn’t damage the things so badly. They threw me to the ground, my knees scraping across the thin layer of felt as I sled across the floor. I managed to slowly get up as I heard those fateful words and looked up towards none other than my mother, sitting in her chair like she was so innately superior to me. “My child, it is time that we use the last resort. You must be fixed, son, and I am the only one who can do it.” I knew exactly what this meant. She was going to use bloodletting to purge the visions from my dreams, the Keeper has told me that it’s one of the most horrific things they do to anyone who strays from their path. Tears began to slowly fall down my face, even though I had always held them before, I couldn’t keep away my fear any longer. Ever since I’ve had memories I’ve had visions, and in a way, I’ve always had the knowledge that I wouldn’t be treated like someone on the path. I would always be kept back from a righteous life, and when I first started to tell my parents about it, their reaction just reassured those fears. When your whole life has been nothing but a vehicle for the greatest enemies of everyone you know to get what they want, at least according to the very people who raised you, then how are you ever supposed to not live every second on the edge of what may very well be a waking nightmare? How are you supposed to believe that anything you’re being told is right when the path has been blocked off for you? How are you supposed to believe that there’s a path whatsoever? Well, I don’t. I’m sick of pretending as if I’ve done something wrong when, in reality, this entire group that I’ve been born into has been constructed around someone like me never existing, or at the very least never even being considered as one who is on the path, as one who should be treated the same way as everyone else who does their best to follow the rules of the overseer. I am a scapegoat, an enemy, even though I never wanted to be, but now that I know exactly how they react to an incidental enemy, I have become a purposeful one. “I do not need to be fixed, mother. You do. You have lived your life by what your visions have told you, who are you to say that my visions aren’t equally as, if not more, trustworthy than yours?!” She shook her head, I could tell she wanted me to think she was sad, but I knew she was just putting up a facade so I couldn’t see her true anger towards my confrontational speech. “Child, the overseer himself spoke with me. He told me everything I could ever need to know. If the one speaking with you was truly correct, why would he not have spoken to me? It is clear that yours is an invader, trying to plant false words of the underworld into your mind!” I writhed in pain as I turned my body around to try and sit on the floor, managing to spit out a response despite my injuries. “And how can you be so certain that the word of the underworld wouldn’t be able to come out before that of the overseer? Maybe our true enemies managed to trick you first and now the overseer himself is speaking with me to fix the errors caused by YOU and YOUR visions!” “No, that is just about enough, son. I wish to speak no longer of your demented sights, it is time we purge them forever!” She gripped my arm with immense force, pulling me towards her and making me fall right onto the floor, which hurt like hell. She reached over to her side, and I nearly started to cry when I saw that smile start to plague her face. My mother is meant to care about me no matter what, meant to be there for me no matter what, especially with my father’s condition. But no, at the slightest sign of contradiction with her group I am thrown to the side, even though I never wanted to be born this way for so long. Though after being through the wringer because of her insanity, I think I am happy to have been given these visions, I am happy to know the truth, I am happy to not be a SHEEP! I will bring down her house of lies until she has nowhere else to hide because for my whole life I’ve been placed out in the open, used as a tool for mockery, ridicule, and the making of enemies. Her very own son has been a utility to her crusade against the Parallel, showing she has lost any compassion for me. I know I should have accepted that long ago, but I can’t get past the fact that I’ll never have been granted a family who wishes for my best possible life. A family who feels like my family instead of my captors. She pulled out the massive blade, with its unfathomable twists and edges, it looked nothing like any of the other blades I had been shown. I always knew such blades were used for ceremonies. Was that what the torture of her child was to her? She gripped me once again and pulled me toward the blade. I fought back with all of my strength, but she easily cut right through much of my arm’s skin since there wasn’t much of that left. I screamed in pain as the blood came gushing right out of my arm, pouring down onto my legs and the floor as she once again reached to get my other arm. I pulled my arm away from her as hard as I could, which sent both the blade and her flying. She fell right onto the floor next to me, and I could just feel that those psychos at the door were ready to start cutting me themselves, but I wouldn’t let that happen. I used my less damaged arm to reach for the blade, then going over to my mother and planting it right up against her neck without hesitation. “You won’t do this to me, you’re my son…” She mumbled into the floor. The guards both stopped lunging toward me as I brought the blade closer and closer to her neck. I didn’t know if she was right or not, I didn’t know if I could do something like this to anyone, even if they had treated me like this. They seemed to get less nervous the more I stalled, so I had to act quickly. I lifted the blade up high and one of them attempted to tackle me, like the fool he was. I brought it down as soon as his feet left the ground and turned it to face away from me, causing him to jump right into his own grave. I have been trained for this fight my entire life, and I knew it had just begun. His body rested up against mine as his last lies attempted to claw their way out of his mouth before my still weak, but more invigorated voice interrupted him. “See you in hell.” I took the blade right out of him and tossed it toward the other one, hitting him right in the thigh. I knew that such an injury wouldn’t buy me much time, so I looked to where she had gotten the weapon in the first place; the left side of her throne. Surely enough, there was an assortment of blades all across it, and I quickly grabbed the longest knife I could find and threw it right into the bastard’s jugular. With my current condition, I truly couldn’t deal with any further confrontation, so I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. My mother stood up as I reached the door, and I stood there, facing her with my full motivation for the first time in my life. “You will never be part of the path, it will always be paved over for a heathen such as yourself.” I took a deep breath and thought of all my wounds, knowing such a saying was just another that I would fight through. “I will build a new path then, and you will be its antithesis. Goodbye mother, I’m sorry that you weren’t smart enough to stop your own downfall.”