I Am Different

Tears

Michael POV

Where is she? She should be home by now. It's past community curfew. Where is she? I decided to go and look for her, even if I get in trouble. Would they let me go? I don't know, but I have to find her!

I shuffled into my white shoes with no laces and slipped out of the door into the still night, my eyes burning in the darkness. I padded down the paved streets not calling out for fear of being found. For some reason my feet carrying me to the capital building.

I cracked open the heavy double door and saw it was deserted. I crept down the eerie hall and saw a light seeping from underneath a door farther down. I nudged open the door feeling my heart in my ears. My breath was fogging my mind as I looked around the corner, shocked at what I had found, and fled soundlessly down the hall. I crashed through the heavy main doors not caring if anyone saw. tears were clouding my eyes and my mind was racing as I sprinted home, relying on muscle memory to get me there. I threw open the front door and collapsed onto my bed in massive racking sobs.

I went over what I had seen in an endless loop in my mind. My mother, the only one who possibly could have loved me was lying on a cold steel table in the that room. The table she was on was caked in dried blood, and her head cracked open like a porcelain doll. Her lips were cold and open, her eyes open and blankly staring at the ceiling. She was missing a few limbs that were thrown carelessly around the room at random. She had one tear that had slid down her pale cheek, but it was blood. Her face had looked so frail and innocent, without the creases of years of worry etched into it.

I don't know how, but I knew that her one tear had been for me. But she was broken. My mother was cold. She was bloody. She was gone. She was dead.

I knew what I had to do.