𝐓𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐓𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰

34 - Nightmares.

He was worse than any thirsty man, with his dry parted lips releasing the weakest of breaths in the room drenched in darkness. The strong air conditioning was seeping through his trembling limbs, and he was holding himself tight, as tight as he could to stagger to somewhere, just anywhere, but not there.

It was around midnight—or even past that. Not that it matters. He had just thrown the stuffy covers away, clad in sweat, unbeknownst to his sleeping companion, and his weary consciousness was his only evasion from the nightmare, one of which he never seemed to have escaped.

Aiden lifted his head up from focusing on his stumbling feet, squinting eyes trying to distinguish what seemed to be the bathroom door.

He saw the feeble moonlight like it was his last ray of hope. Aiden tried to move, but the ringing in his ears persisted like an annoying clamor, every fiber of his body refusing to move an inch. And suddenly the mumbling was corroded by screams and yelling; voices from a notional distance.

The noises pierced through his head until he was on the floor, pressed onto one of the corners of the wall, frantic and barely managing with his hands curling and fisting harshly among his raven locks as the noises grew louder and louder with each second.

But Aiden refused to even utter a word wishing for aid despite his current poor condition—trying to ascertain that his pathetic state should be obscured from the world’s eyes.

He throttled the soft sobs with what was left of his power because they threatened to reveal a gateway back to the start. Tears welled in his eyes as the pain in his head grew by the moment, it hurts—damn it hurts. Everything hurts.

As if the pain was invisible to his scalp, his hands that were gripping onto his hair grew ever so tighter each second, but Aiden couldn’t seem to feel it. Or anything, for that matter. By then, the voices in his head became clear to him now; and by then, he concluded it was useless.

The man’s eyes were soiled with stupefaction, unconvincingly glowering at the pool of tears puddling on the tiled floor. But the reflection on it wasn’t him—except it was—but it was a part of him that Aiden wanted so badly to forget that ever existed.

Instead, a stranger looked back at him, dull eyes devoid of brilliance and innocence.

His head started spinning as the tears came unbidden, and suddenly he was trapped with a drunkard who is a narcissist who thinks he contributed his entire life when technically he didn’t. He was trapped with a woman he couldn’t protect, and sometimes the victim herself is the problem—his mother’s heart was too big the size of his father’s ego could fit, his infidelity could fit, the amount of days where he would come home with another woman could fit, the hours of cleaning her husband’s mess could fit.

Anything that could hurt her was kept in that big heart of hers.

“N-no, please don’t–”

He could still hear it. He could still hear her, as if he was back in that cozy little house, witnessing something he wished he didn’t. There was a childish anger for a moment, one that blamed his mother for not fighting back, and one towards himself for not being able to protect her.

The voices grew louder and Aiden closed his eyes, trying to find any remaining tranquility there is but it didn’t seem to help as the voices only spun around him, toying with him; taunting him.

“Do you really think you can get rid of me that easily?”

There were two voices roaring at each other, one of an endangered woman’s and one of a man’s. It was surreal, his nostrils could even smell the odor of liquor. His tongue could taste her fear, the anxiety which plummeted through her burning chest and then–