The Catharsis

Chapter 3 - Helena

So Long And Good Night

By Amethyst Turner

It's always subliminal

When you realize you're a criminal

They look at me and say

Her people

Hurt people

But what can I say?

From the day

I was born

I was raised a time bomb

Who called herself my mom

My first memory from my years-long plight

Is my mother whispering

"So long and goodnight"

XXX

The downward spiral started there, for Libby.

She wanted nothing to do with her daughter. She didn't give a damn when children were supposed to start crawling, or talking or eating 'semi solids'. All she wanted was a bit of peace and quiet, and for that goddamn baby to shut the hell up.

And that baby cried all the time, from the confines of the dresser drawer that was quickly tightening around it's arms and legs. Whenever Libby lifted her out to change her diaper or feed her (Formula -- she couldn't have cared less what her mother had to say about it) the baby had red marks on her limbs from rubbing against the chipped paint of the bureau.

September became October. The baby began to crawl.

Libby was forced to face the fact that she was irreversible. It -- she -- Amethyst -- was not a mistake written in pencil. She was etched into Libby's life in permanent marker. She wasn't erasable.

Unless she was.

The baby was rolling around on the living room floor. For a moment, it began to choke on it's own spit. Gagging, it fixed it's pleading eyes on her.

Oops, wouldn't it be easy to say? She choked. When I got to her, it was too late.

She fell down the stairs. I tried to catch her.

She crawled under her blanket and suffocated.

Oops.

It seemed like a plausible option, as she watched the baby recover, flipping over on her stomach with a little baby giggle.

Richard swore it had smiled at him first. Libby didn't give a shit.

It was the seventeenth that day, and it took Libby almost five hours to realize that it was her birthday. The realization brought her no joy. Yay. Twenty six. Another year gone.

She tried to remember her dreams. What had she wanted to do with her life? Had she ever had a dream? No. There was the second grade fad, when everyone wanted to be a veterinarian. There was the middle school fever of I want to be a rock star, I want to be a fashion designer. The was the high school determination: I want to be somebody.

Was she somebody?

Who was Elizabeth Turner? There'd been Elizabeth Miller. She was a simple girl with simple friends and a simple family and a simple path to take. Elizabeth Turner, however, was none of those things. She wasn't Vita's daughter anymore. She didn't belong to anyone except the child giggling on the floor in front of her, a carbon copy of everything she hated.

Twenty six. It was just a number. Nine months. What was nine months compared to Twenty six years? Nine months, Libby had carried that thing inside her, and now, for nine months, it had been destroying her from the inside out.

It was worth it, wasn't it?

Something quick. Prescription pills ground up in the formula. Small toys with choking hazards to play with. A heavy, thick blanket to fall asleep under . . .

Yes, that was what she would have to do, wasn't it? There wasn't another option that Libby could see.

She knelt down beside the baby. Her skin was translucent, almost sickly looking. Malnourished, Libby supposed. It was tempting to grab those little wrists in her hands and slice them open with her fingers nails. Her skin was so thin, Libby didn't doubt it would tear under her fingers.

No, that would look too suspicious. Perhaps the blanket was a better idea.

Libby glanced at the heavy quilt on the couch behind her. Many times, she herself had crawled beneath it and let the heat close in on her until she couldn't breathe. That way, when she came back up, air felt like a privilege.

That would be the way to do it. Painful, but accidental.

Libby scooped the baby off the floor, ignoring her shrieks of protest as she stuffed the baby back into her bureau drawer. It stared at her with glassy blue eyes, begging her not to. Libby felt like crying, not because she felt bad for the baby, but because of what she could have been.

Attitude is everything, isn't that what they say? What if, Libby wondered to herself, I loved this baby? Could we have been happy together?

Too late now.

She draped the blanket over the child.

"So long and goodnight."

XXX

Burning on just like a match you strike to incinerate

The lives of everyone you know

And what's the worst you take 

From every heart you break 

And like the blade you stain 

Well, I've been holding on tonight


What's the worst that I can say?

Things are better if I stay

So long and goodnight

So long and goodnight

-Helena, My Chemical Romance