Ethereal | Twilight |

019

Ever since Sora was eight, watching his mother so profoundly, almost pathetically, obsessed with his father before he disappeared—died, vanished, whoever truly knows—it settled deep within him that the commitment and loyalty of his mother's obsession far exceeded whatever love alone could provide, at least in his eyes.

 The living room, the one he has now, in the very same house, the table that today is littered, no—brimmed—with bottles, at the age of eight certainly hadn't been. Back then, flowers grew instead; wherever his mother walked, flowers seemed to bloom as if her footsteps nourished the ground, and she made sure the house exhaled their perfume into every room. All because his father adored the idea of femininity—delicate, soft, ornamental. And, tragically, he claimed his mother was anything but that.

He used it as an excuse, a pitiful justification, to bring other women into his orbit when his mother wasn't home.

Regardless of the obvious betrayals, his mother never batted an eye—never flinched—until Sora was alone with her, whether it was in the car, driving the long stretch of road home from school, or in the dim glow of the living room where, in quiet resignation, she allowed his father to wander into the arms of other women while she sat, suffering in silence. 

It was in those moments, behind the wheel or curled in the crook of the couch, that the truth of her devastation bled through: the delicate cracks in her voice, the tremor in her fingers, the way her eyes glistened just a second too long. She had sculpted herself into a shrine of patience, of tolerance, but Sora—sharp-eyed, too perceptive for his age—saw the ruin underneath, the quiet disintegration of a woman who had built her world around a man who had already left.

On occasions like those days, he'd stand in his room, in the middle of it, while his mother didn't allow him to take off his own clothes, she took them off herself. Her eyes brimmed with a harrowing blend of agony and obsession, gazing at him as though he were not only his father but, devastatingly, a reflection of herself.

 She would render him vulnerable and bare, her hands sliding slowly down his small, delicate arm, trailing over his lanky thighs and narrow feet—her touch a spectral caress, hovering just shy of transgression, a haunting touch at the edge of something unspeakable.

He never comprehended the impetus behind her actions, but in Sora's young eyes, the rare sight of her smile—a fleeting rupture in the unyielding fidelity she reserved for his father—felt like the only currency of love he had ever known. A smile from her outweighed anything the world could offer; it was salvation, however brittle. Yet over time, loyalty became the first creed he mastered, its contours shaping his boyhood like wet clay—until it curdled, no longer mere devotion, but an insidious fixation, a mirror of her own unraveling.

Like a mother, like son.

The night unraveled in jagged convulsions as the first creature surged forward, its torso convulsing, jaws yawning wide, gums retracting in a grotesque ripple to reveal yellowed canines slick with spit. A guttural, bubbling shriek erupted from its throat, cleaving through the hush of the dark. Sora intercepted it midair, his jaws locking onto its shoulder with a nauseating crunch, bone fracturing in a brittle snap between his teeth. Beneath the crushing force, the creature's skeleton quaked, splintered marrow rasping like dry reeds in a restless wind.

He felt the creature's softened flesh yield, his teeth punching through skin, muscle, cartilage with sickening ease. Its blood struck his tongue like acid—sharp, metallic, foul—churning his stomach, but he held fast, twisted, and drove it into the earth with a thud that sent a tremor through its bones. It shrieked, a jagged, feral sound caught somewhere between beast and human wail, so piercing it lanced through his skull.