𝐅𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍; 𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍

36

Frantically searching the castle you lost yourself, you couldn't find your mother anywhere for that matter. Perhaps it was Jean's doing to raise your worries and make you feel helpless. Do you feel estranged from the life you created for yourself at the mere age of seven or was it six? You never realized this. Oh god... who even are you? As you stood in the lonely corridor, a tear slid down your cheek. You don't even know who you are. Perhaps it is a memory locked away like a Pandora's box. You irritably wiped the tears from your eyes and briskly walked away. You'll find out one day, just not today.

———

Eren stood before the grave of his mother. The wind was blowing south, just like the day he remembered seeing the body of his mother being submerged in the soil. It was a treacherous day for the prince. Watching his father's stoic face, the cold-skinned man lowers his wife's blue body into the dirt. Eren slowly got to his knees and held the tombstone of his mother and cried and there slipped out from the satchel he hid away from you.

That godforsaken book.

His fingers dug slowly into the dirt as he hastily dug through the loose soil, looking back between each shoulder to make sure no one kept a watchful eye on him he hastily dug more and more into the dirt until his fingers scraped the broken ends of the wood. The tips of his fingers bled. He jolted up in a gasp and looked down at his hands that dripped blood and back down toward the coffin. Why was it some old dirty coffin... he does not remember such a thing during his childhood. He shook with anger and heaved the broken coffin out of the dirt. The smell of decay and bugs filled his nostrils as he felt himself want to vomit, but gained his composure and covered his nose with a soil-ridden hand.

"Putrid ass smell." He spoke under his breath and ripped off the coffin's top straight off. The wood itself was so overly decayed it crumbled within his grasp and there lay the body of his mother. He stared intently at his mother's sunken decayed face. A face he knew himself would not leave him any time soon. He knelt to her and wearily grasped her oozing hand and teared up. "Look at you... you used to be beautiful, but now you lay wasting away cause of the damn plague. Venus comes here often doesn't she mother?" He smiled and looked up at the castle and laughed. "You are fond of her... aren't you? I am too..." He chuckled and held his knees against his chest as tears slid down his cheeks.

"I think you knew I loved her... didn't you? It feels quite odd to say it aloud, but it is very much true... I love her. With every bone, vein, and capillary I possess I love Venus. Yet Father wants to marry me off to this witch! This fowl mouth woman is not worth my time or seed mother!" He choked up on his tears and held his body close to himself. "I suppose I just... miss you so very much... I tend to remember the most random of things from my childhood mother, when I was upset you would always sing me a lullaby and rub my head, Father said that was for the male venery. Damn bastard, what an ass father was and still seems to be a mother." He looked over his shoulder at the maggot-filled body. Places oozed puss, her eyes sunken in so far that it was obvious not much flesh she seemed to possess. Eren sighed heavily. "After all this... mother... what has come of you? From a well-spoken.. well-loved queen to this makeshift coffin and critter-infested body." He gripped his mother's hand and ripped out a chunk of rotten flesh from her abdomen and looked down at the maggots that sprawled out.

Tears filled his eyes once again as he squished the oozing flesh between his index finger and thumb.

"Did you possess such... power Mother?" He turned to face his mother's corpse and a part of him shivered as the breeze blew past. "I wish you would answer me, but I am sorry. I must find a way to escape. To escape my fate. My goddamn destiny." He spoke up in a fit of rage. "I want to be able to keep my kingdom safe! My people! I want Venus to be safe, I wish for her to love me as much as I love her mother yet I am too much of a stupid fool to never say it to her face. I am a coward mother! I am sorry!" He yelled in a fit of rage and bit down on the morsel of rotten flesh. His eyes widened as he gagged with all his might and instead continued to chew. He felt his urge to vomit. To erupt in a fit of heaves and groans and there lay his mother watching on with sunken eyes as blood oozed from the holes where her eyes once were and down onto the grassy floor of the cemetery. His greed for power consumed him. Maggots and worms dropped his hand as he kept fighting the urge to puke, perhaps he might. Perhaps he won't, all in his brain were the consistent words of power and greed as he continued his feast for such power the book stated such were true and he was a fool to believe the ink and quill. A fool to believe it could have been true and not a farce.

He kept eating any morsel he could get his devilish hands on. Some even slipped between his lips and fell into the open cavity where his mother's heart once was. Tears welled up in his eyes as he heaved and cried frantically stepping away from the rotting corpse as he felt the world around him spin. Perhaps it was the toxins, or was it pure fear and animosity?

He hated himself.

He knelt on the ground and cried out as he frantically did his best to cover up the damage he did. Pushing the coffin aside he dug her grave. The wooden coffin cracked and snapped under the body's weight. The top cover almost turned into wood specks so easily. It horrified Eren as he hastily pushed the dirt back onto his mother's grave. trying his best to make it look untouched.

"I AM SO TERRIBLY SORRY MOTHER!" He screamed out at the tombstone and held his head and rocked back and forth and his own mother's blood smeared his lips and chin. "FORGIVE ME DAMMIT!"

꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒷꒦︶꒦꒷

𑁍┊-TiredBunBun