My Heart Hates Me

Chapter 46 Clock Turns Back

"Is he gonna stay this way?" Ethan asked as he looked at Mr Hiomi who was frozen. Ethan's hands and feet were bandaged.

"I don't know. I don't even know how it happened" Vivian said. "Just what the hell are you?" Ethan asked and Vivian chuckled nervously.

He looked outside. The clouds weren't moving and neither was the traffic. Everything was quiet. It was like the whole world had stopped. Everything was a stone, except them.

He stood at the balcony and looked outside. "It's so quiet. Somehow, I love it" Ethan said. Vivian stood behind him "Everything has changed. From slums to cities and then to a golden civilisation, bringing golden azure. I don't want to see what's next"

Vivian quietly came beside him and stood beside him. The glass pieces crushed beneath their boots. He took a deep breath as he closed his eyes and shivered from the cold.

"Please don't find me" He said.

"What?" Vivian said as she looked at him. "Those were the last words of my mom, before she died." He said. Vivian looked ahead again.

"My mom and dad were siblings" He said. Vivian was surprised and turned towards him. "Dad, raped mom when she was 14 and then she gave birth to me when she was 15. He was 18 then" Ethan said.

"I wonder why didn't she drop me. Life would have been simpler for her. But, she decided to raise me up with him. They weren't married but they lived together. He would hit her and forced her into doing things she didn't wanted to. I was seven when I began understanding that... my dad wasn't what people would call normal"

Twenty two years ago
Manila, Philippines.

"Ethan! Ethan! Hey, look what I found in the garbage dumps today" A small boy said in Filipino as ran towards Ethan with a huge plastic bag in his hands. He ran barefoot towards the other pile of garbage.

Ethan rose up from another end of the garbage pile and looked overhead. He had blue-green eyes and thick, black bangs covering his forehead and his ears. He wore a peach colored, dirty and tattered sweatshirt and dirty, white knickers. He had purple bruises on his malnourished hands, mosquito bite marks on his feet and a pale, translucent skin.

"What is it, Tik?" He asked as the other boy, Tik, ran towards him "Look, a perfume bottle!" He said as he shoved a fancy, French perfume bottle in front of him which read 'Eau de Cologne'

"It's pretty" Ethan said as he took then bottle. He sniffed it "It smells good" He said "Yes! This is what rich people smell like! When I'm a millionaire, I'll also smell this way!" Tik said.

"Stop dreaming!" Ethan, as a realistic he was, said as he picked up the garbage bag beside him and walked out of the heaps of garbage.

"Oh come on, Ethan! Don't you have a dream?!" Tik said as he followed him.
"Who said I don't" Ethan said "But it isn't an impossible dream like yours"
"What is it?"

"I want a pair of shoes. I have never owned one" Ethan said as he looked at his chapped, dusty and bleeding feet.

"Let's hope, one day our wishes come true! Oh! We are already here! See you tomorrow" Tik said and they parted ways. Ethan ran down the stinking streets of the slums and pushed aside a huge tin wall. He got inside a hut made of mud, tin and twigs.

"Ina, I'm hungry!" He shouted, beaming with energy and happiness to see his young mother.

A woman of about twenty two came out of the hanging curtains. She wore a light pink maxi skirt and a green cover up. She smiled at Ethan and brushed his hair "How was today's day?"