Unmarked

34. Facing What I Really Am

Six months earlier...

Musty and sour, these smells remind me of my mum. It's a similar to when clothes haven't dried properly so they start to release a rancid vomit like odour. The smell wasn't the clothes she wore. It was her. The foul scent seeping from every pore. She was rotting from the inside.

I never knew what set it off. After weeks of not touching a drop of alcohol, she'd crumble and spiral into an intoxicated mess for days, sometimes weeks, until she eventually passed out for days after which she would return to normal. For a short period anyway. I was always anticipating those inebriated periods, waiting to return to the smell, the chaos.

This time was different, I'd returned but the smell was faint. It should have been strong judging by the gathering of bottles in the corner. It was her twenty-sixth day of drinking. This is the longest she had gone without becoming unconscious.

It was dark outside but the glimmer of a new day was starting to rise: not quite night, not quite day. Entering the shop, I should have been greeted by the strong odour of my mum's toxic liquid diet but it was absent as was my mum. She had ventured outside.

Searching those streets, my mind kept wondering what would be the best option: finding her alive or dead? Shortly after, I found her pinned to the floor by an Official. She'd been caught. Leaning over my mother's limp body, he kicked her in the stomach, hit her with the end of his gun, smashing it into her face, her skull. He was going to beat her to death, he was going to kill her right there while I stood and watched.

No one was around. We'd chosen our lodgings a little too well this time. Surrounded by derelict warehouses meant no witnesses which can be both an advantage and disadvantage depending on the scenario. I ran towards him, grabbed his arm to stop him but he flung me away, tossed me aside like a piece of rubbish.

Pulling out my switchblade, I ran towards him aiming for his side. The sound of tearing skin and agonising pain sliced through the empty silence. I'd like to think I only intended to stop him from hurting my mum, shock him so we could escape, but as he crumpled to the floor I didn't stop. I stabbed, again and again, only stopping once the warm flowing blood saturated my hands. There was so much blood, too much for such a little knife. Had I wanted to kill him? No. Yes.

I'm realising it doesn't matter because I did, and I watched as the life drained from him. Red metallic energy gushing onto the ground, pooling around my feet. I stood and watched, unable to move, helpless and unhelpful. I was a murderer.

The gurgle of fluid and rasping breath had brought me back. My mother lying on the floor, suffocating in her own blood, unconscious and close to death. Her eyes were small slits among a purple swollen mess of a face. The short-sleeved top exposing the labour camp brands on her wrist were on display. My mum never left the building unless she was fully covered up and sober.

Yet, she had walked out and exposed herself because of me. I should have stopped her from drinking. I should have been watching her better. I should have never left her. I should have never stabbed him. I should have helped him. Should have, shouldn't have. It's a cycle of what-ifs but there's no point in thinking about those. It won't change anything. It won't alter what I did or what I've become.

Me and my mum had already decided on our next destination. It's the first thing we do when arriving in a new location, decide the next place we'll run too. We're always looking forward, always moving forward. Once my mother had started to recover from the beating, we left without a word, disappeared in the middle of the night with a bag containing our worldly possessions, everything we really needed: money.

Sitting on a bus, I watched as another potential home slipped through my fingers. Most of the faces of the people we left and the names of our customers have faded from my memory but I clearly remember the lingering smell of a dead man's life on my hands, I remember my heart dropping in my chest. I remember the resentment and hatred I felt towards myself.

Only one face made an impression from this city. A person who had been an acquaintance but ended up becoming more on that night. Hovering in the distance, he had seen what I'd done and he'd helped scrape my mother off the sidewalk, he'd organised for a doctor to tend to her with no questions asked, he had helped me dispose of the body along with my family heirloom switchblade into the river. This person I had ran away from. I had tried to lie to myself about their involvement but I can't hide from the truth anymore.

My mum was not the only witness to the murder I committed. Jas was too.