Numb: The Genesis

IV. Mind

Mamma was ordered to leave. This news had brought her to sobbing fits. She was going to be a mother who had to leave her son.

"May I just say goodbye to my baby?"

"Perhaps, you ma-" Pappa wanted to allow her but was interrupted.

"No, Sigmund. You cannot allow that. The boy needs to forget her existence."

"Yes, Viola, but he will yearn for his mother not knowing where she went. You see, absence leaves the heart to grow fonder. Annika telling him goodbye will officially notify him that she is ceasing to exist in his life."

"Fine."

"Annika, Hans should be done with his lessons by now. Bid him farewell, and I want you gone from the Southern Isles in the next forty-five minutes."

Gone. Mamma was going to leave and be gone. I remembered running down the halls, searching for somewhere in isolation. I pushed open my bedroom door and sat in the corner with my knees to my chest. I hit my head sideways periodically against the wall. I couldn't feel it. I was numb. The pain made it feel that way. I was just... Used to it. Suddenly, my front faced the wall and my forehead kept hitting and hitting the wall. I wanted the tears to stop flowing. My lungs gave out as I constantly kept bashing my forehead.

"Hans!" It was the voice of my mother. I felt her arms wrap around my waist, pulling me away from the wall. I turned to see who it was, but I snapped back to the reality of the present. It was Princess Anna. Her arms held onto me tightly, constricting me. I saw a tray of bread on the ground after being dropped. Anna's eyes were shut tight. I looked in front of me. My hands were pushing against the stone, and in between them, blood was smeared all over the surface. I felt the thick blood dribble over my brow.

"Anna, I mean, Princess Anna?"

"Hans. I came to bring you some breakfast and..."

"I thought you weren't allowed down here. Kristoff said you wouldn't want to come visit me anyway."

She started picking everything off the ground and placing the bread onto the tray. "I knew you were here. I wanted to come and discuss some things with you," she raised the tray up, "And I needed an excuse to do so."

I started to wipe off my forehead carelessly, and I could tell Anna was concerned- her eyes were glassy.

"Why?" she asked, "Why are you hurting yourself?"

I smiled, "I've simply lost my mind." I could tell Anna was perturbed by my self-harm. Rather than feeling sympathetic, Anna felt angered by the look in her eyes.

"You deserve it... All the hurt others are giving you... Especially what you're doing to yourself. Since I met you, a-and since what you did to me-"

"Anna."

"No! Let me talk! I've been holding it in, and finally I have the chance to tell the person who ruined me. Who broke me. Who just tossed me despite every feeling that was shared- or feelings that I thought were shared." My breathing became slow as she set the tray down. She stood far from me, with her fists clenched at her sides. "I don't know who you are, Hans. Do you even know who you are? Look at yourself and who do you see? I see a man... A man of many faces masked by this one façade."

"You're right. But I can't give you an answer. I just... Don't know who I am... But I do know that I came here because I want to be redeemed. I know what I did was wrong."

"Do you really? For you to do something so mindlessly, and yet you are so mindful that you were in the wrong? I got to tell you, Hans, I wish that were believable. I was so gullible then. You have given me doubts after the Great Thaw, and now I can't look at everything the same anymore."

"I'm sorry, Anna, but-"

"You made me believe I was in love! You made me believe I was loved! And the worst thing of it all is that you had it all planned... And for what?"

"You wouldn't know..."

"Know what? What it feels like to be in your shoes? How it feels like to be left out? You forgot about me. I know. You are being painfully selfish, Ha-" Instinctively, I grabbed her wrists and brought them up to her ears. For all I knew, I was enraged.

"Really? You know? You know how it feels like to be abandoned by the only person you've ever loved when you needed them the most? To have the only people that ever loved you, taken away? How ab-"

"I know! I was shut out! I had no one to love me!"

I tightened my grip on her wrists. She writhed in pain as my foggy breath brushed her cheek. I inhaled to speak, "I had many, more than one, who were capable of loving me. They chose not to. Do you know the feeling of being able to have something but can't have it? So close, but so far?" I loosened my hands and so her arms lowered to her sides. Anna looked down in sharp fear.

She backed away from me and lost all eye contact. She turned away, shakened, and said, "I was right," she glared, "I don't know who you are."