Sin & Savior

CHAPTER 9, PART 4

"MOM!!!! MOM, ANSWER THE DOOR!!!" Seraphina hollered as she banged on the door. She knew the information she was priming herself to share would break her family into brittle fragments for the night, but there wasn't any way she could keep the situation secret from her mother after what had happened. "MOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!" she howled at the top of her voice, beating the door with as much power as her forearms and biceps would sanction.

The door opened as her evidently sleeping mother softly peeled the hinge back from its frame. "Seraphina... what on earth is happening, honey??"

"Mom...." Seraphina bleated poorly before falling to her knees and sobbing into her hands, then falling face-first onto the concrete earth beneath her.

Her mother fell down onto the ground with her, without any capacity for discerning what had happened, but enough to know that her daughter was grieving and that something serious had occurred—something she needed to be supportive around. "Sera...." She said, gripping her tightly in a hug that enveloped all of her limbs. "Baby... tell me what's wrong..."

"MOM...." Seraphina prayed, pleading and professing her sins with a loud, moaned surrendering of the self.

She wound up telling her everything—from the beginning of her relationship with Broderick to that very second where she'd elected to release all of it from her heart and into her mother's lap. After breaking down and spilling every piece of her soul about what had happened and unfolded, she—far and beyond—was not anticipating what would come next from her mother's mouth. Particularly after she'd submitted herself to the very level of vulnerability and emotional access she'd unfolded, soft and slow like origami art onto a porcelain plate seconds before.

"I always knew that you were going to ruin my life, you pathetic bitch."

"W... what??" Seraphina stuttered, in complete disbelief of what she was hearing. Her eyes widened as she felt the unerring shock stimulate every nerve in her body to stillness.

"I ALWAYS fucking knew this was coming. Exactly like your worthless, walking shit-stain of a 'father'... You've always been exactly like him. Aggressive, competitive, quick to anger—too intelligent for your own good. You..." she whimpered, with tears in her eyes. "Filthy... worthless... bitch..."

Seraphina felt her flesh weaken and her blood boil: a disconcerting combination of sadness and anger flooding the fluid in her joints. She couldn't believe what her ears were hearing. Her mother—the woman who'd loved her to live every day since her conception—was regarding her with the disrespect commonly reserved for one's lifelong enemies. But... why? For all the gifted thinking with which she had been blessed, she couldn't put together why her mother would say such horrible things to her. She understood in a moment of high emotion that she might be angry about Alexander's fate, but normally, her mother was the calm in every storm of life—an intentional election of peace in the midst of muddied and perturbed waters. But now, here, this tactless lashing out wasn't like her whatsoever. She had always felt that her mother showed her the highest form of love that she was able, and never felt as though she had projected more or less love onto either one of them. She'd always felt equally attended to, and loved her mother for the care and attention she consistently showed her and her brother through all of the ups and the downs. 

"Mom... I know that—"

"SHUT UP, BITCH!!" her mother howled, cutting her off mid-sentence.

"I hate you. I have always hated you. Since before you were ever born. You were never meant to be here. Your father made you—created you—not me. I was just a hotbed—a host for his abuse. Did you know your father? That he sexually abused ME? Hmm? That your life and birth are the byproducts of my OWN rape at knife-point, Seraphina?!? Your father FORCED me to remain loyal to him—tied and attached to him.... He was going to kill me if I ever decided to leave. THAT is how you fucking got here!! And I have done my best—my VERY fucking best—to love you in spite of the fact that all I have ever felt towards you is hatred. My Alexander... I chose him. He was the only thing I was ever allowed to choose. And he chose me. I loved him as a mother—with all of my heart, body, mind, and spirit. And...I tried to treat you the same as I treated him. But I was NEVER sincere in that, no matter how hard I tried to pull myself out of my own flesh or feeling and changed how my mind framed you! I have hated you since the day that doctor slapped your ass and you inhaled your very first breath. And I have been fighting the GOOD fight EVERY day to feel ANYTHING authentic towards your accomplishments, your emotions, your EXISTENCE—but I CANNOT, Seraphina...I never have....and I don't think I ever could...

And now... now you've taken the only thing from me that I ever actually cared about since your father made me into his personal punching bag... since he branded me," she said, lifting up her shirt and flashing a keloid scar that ran across the length of her ribs. "Since he told me that if I ever planned on leaving him: I might as well jump off of the bridge myself because I belonged to him and he was never going to let me leave him—before he spent the next two and a half decades making good on his promise... abusing me in so many disconnected ways I lost count. I've been cut, cursed out, gaslit, water-boarded, chained to a wall in the basement, starved—and so many things you and your little perfect fucking basketball life could NEVER COMPREHEND—and you!!!!" She broke down in tears sobbing into her hands.

"You've taken my Alexander away from me..." She said, head in her hands, allowing her cascade of tears a free-flowing path between her fingers and trickle down beyond her forearms.

Seraphina stood there speechless, weeping a river of tears from her own eyes—unsure of how to feel or what to say.

Just then, her mother howled and she found her words: "Mom..."

"I'm... I'm sorry." She coughed through a basin's worth of mucus and thoroughly salted eyelashes.

"He was..." her mother whined "the exact opposite of your father in each and every way. Calm, soft, sweet, protective, pacifistic, my perfect little boy...and somehow you find a way to wrap him up into your drama! I TOLD YOU to leave that young man you were dating alone over and over!! Why are you always so hardheaded?!?!?!"

Seraphina collapsed in faint following the emotional overwhelm; in the moment: it was all too much. It wouldn't be until she arose from her unfortunately-timed incapacitation that she'd awaken and find her mother on the kitchen floor in a similarly comatose state—covered in blood, viscera, and gore—with a blade half-heartedly clenched within her left hand and forlorn emotion leaking from her trachea and gullet.

"........MOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!"

She tripped over her own feet falling toward the hard tile floor searching frenetically for her phone, and punching in the name "Dr James" into her contact's search. She text him

 "S.O.S. Please hurry to this address. My mom might be dead."