His Nepenthe | complete

32. Shattered

S H A T T E R E D R E F L E C T I O N S

*

I hated the eyes that were so similar to mine. They were more evil, filled with malice and poison. There were icicles grown around the irises, reflecting her dead heart with dead eyes. She was a Molotov cocktail who threw herself for an explosion. She was a face in front of a camera broadcasting to people who thought he was much better than she was.

My fists were clenched as I reached her place at the breakfast bar, slamming them down to grab her attention.

Too much alcohol was in her system, or she knew me too well. She merely flicked her head up to meet my eyes, uncaring of my action, "What?"

"Why do you do it?" I asked Clarisse as she cradled her head and spun her filled glass on the granite bench.

She rolled her eyes at the question, clicking her tongue, "Why do I do what?" She asked, her lazy tone telling me she was long drunk. Lazy in Clarisse meant she had been drinking all day. No more energy, no more anger. Just the shell of a woman who pretended she was a mother.

"Pretend you never had another you cared for," I spat back. It was long time she knew that she killed me too, when she destroyed his memory.

The memory of someone so fragile. The meaning behind a boy with bright blue eyes and a beautiful beating heart that asked for nothing but love.

"I don't know what you mean, Christian," her words were slurred as she replied, cold eyes with mascara scrubbed underneath them.

"You act like he didn't exist."

She caught on, sighing heavily before she took a gulp of her drink. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, taking off the remnants of lipstick, before she replied, "Why are you so obsessed? It's like you wish you were him. Like he had it better."

I folded my arms over my chest, fingers tensing around my forearms. "Maybe he did. Because he never had to know what kind of a mother he really had."

"I give you so many things, the least you could be is grateful," she spat, her breath reeking of alcohol. She was a devil drunk. Then again, she was also a devil sober. She was a woman who had never wanted to love the children she gave birth to because it took too much time away from herself. It used too much energy to hug me as a child, it took too much time to put me to bed after a nightmare, it was so hard to lie and say she loved me.

"Grateful?" I scoffed, folding my arms over my chest as I looked down to the woman "Of what? Having a life I don't want?"

She seemed taken aback by my statement. Reeling as if it was too hard to comprehend. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't know I went to therapy, if she had never looked at my knuckles and realised something was wrong.

"You don't mean that," her voice was quiet. Dangerous. She was daring me to pick a fight and I would take her bet in a heatbeat.

Hell, I wanted her to cry. I wanted to make her cry for all the damage that she had done to me without lifting a finger.

"Yeah. I do. I really fucking do."

"Christian-"

I towered over her, refusing to back down. She was going to play the victim for the rest of her life, but she was a murderer and I knew it, "You never loved him. He deserved so much better."

Her face was burning red as she finally stood up to face me, "Of course I loved him! I loved him more than I had ever loved anything else, and his death was the thing that killed me too! He was my baby, my little boy with such bright eyes and a huge heart, mind filled with wonder!" She was crying now, a brilliant part of her elaborate show, "I wanted him to have the world because you, and fucking Marco, already hated me and he was the only one who loved me back! He was the only thing I loved!"

"Then why, Clarisse!? Why do not tell me anything about him!? Why do you not admit he was here, a boy who used to smile, and laugh, and ask his brothers to play soccer in the middle of a storm!? A boy who used to make me watch Back to The fuckin' Future once a week at least!?" My breath hitched as tears welled in my eyes, "The same kid Marco and I taught to swim because being there is too fucking hard for you!? The same kid who, somehow, knew how to make pancakes better than anyone I'd ever met at five fucking years old!? Why do you tell everyone Lucas Valdez didn't exist? WHY!?"

Clarisse hit my chest with balled fists, hysterical. She was whaling, trying to prove she had a heart, "You don't get it!" She sobbed, "You never fucking will!"

"No." I caught both of her hands in one of mine, eyes boring into hers, "I won't, Clarisse. Because I loved him," I could feel my blood boiling in my veins. The sensation was almost painful, and it was making me lose sight of what I knew and what I imagined. My breath caught in my throat, "and you didn't."

She ripped her hands away from me, grabbing the neck of her bottle to throw at me. She was an inch off, the glass shattering against the wall behind me as she continued to yell words I had no intention of paying attention to.

I ignored her, stumbling into the bathroom to try and grip myself again. I turned on the tap, pooling water in my hands to splash on my face. The feeling of cold water on my skin made my mind stop whirring, and my pulse slow.

When I lifted my head, I gasped, stumbling backwards. I hit the wall with the back of my head, sending my body falling limply to the cold tiled floor. My breathing was staggered, my head was pounding and my fists were clenched so tightly that they were chalk white.

It took everything I had to push myself up, to meet my reflection again. This time, I was reflected as I was. Broken, tired. Blue and purple, red. Bloody and bruised.

I wasn't him. He wasn't staring at me with dead eyes, blood pooling, dripping out his lips. He wasn't there at all. I was me. And this fact, it didn't make anything feel better.

Everything only spun more, and my hands were shaking. As I stared into my eyes, the dull hollowness if my soul shone back at me. I raised my fist, one blow to the glass. It broke the mirror, shattering everything I was.

Because I was nothing more than an image.

*

(( so easily shattered ))