Her slender body shivered violently from the cold and from fear.
“Will you ever talk back to me again?” Julian repeated, his voice squeezed through clenched teeth.
My entire world collapsed. All my suspicions, all my vague fears had now become a raw, terrifying, bloody reality right before my eyes.
My first instinct was to burst in, to scream, to pull my son away, to protect Clara. But in that instant, an ice-cold current shot through my spine, locking every muscle in place.
The scene before me blurred, overlapping with another memory, a dark memory I had buried for years. I no longer saw Julian and Clara. I saw my husband, his eyes red from drink, grabbing my hair and forcing my head into the rain barrel in the backyard.
I heard his curses, felt the searing pain at the roots of my hair, the suffocating sensation of water rushing into my nose and mouth. I felt the absolute powerlessness of struggling in despair.
That bone-deep terror, resurrected after more than a decade, was stronger than maternal love, more powerful than reason. It was a conditioned reflex.
It roared in my head.
“Run. Don’t make a sound. Don’t provoke him or you’ll be next.”
My body obeyed that command. My legs didn’t rush forward. Instead, they instinctively backed away, turned, and ran.
I ran back to my room in one breath, not daring to look back. I threw myself onto the bed and pulled the covers over my head like a wounded animal seeking a hiding place. I lay there trembling all over, biting my lip to keep from crying out.
The water in the bathroom was still running, rhythmic and cruel. The background music to my family’s tragedy, to my own cowardice.
Then the memories came flooding back, unstoppable. The hellish years of living with my abusive husband flashed before my eyes. The unprovoked beatings just because a meal wasn’t to his liking or a word was said incorrectly. The long nights I held my own bruised body, crying silently, terrified my son in the next room would hear.
The mornings I had to cover the bruises on my face with foundation before going to teach, having to lie to my colleagues that I had fallen off my bike. For over a decade, I lived like that until the day he received his death sentence from the hospital.
The day he died from his illness, I didn’t cry. I only felt a sense of relief, as if a great weight had been lifted. I thought I was free, but I was wrong.
The demon had not died with my husband. It had been resurrected, possessing the very son I cherished most. I had spent a lifetime trying to correct him, to teach him not to follow in his father’s footsteps. But in the end, the violent blood still flowed in his veins.
I had failed completely and utterly.
Tears began to stream down my face, no longer held back. I wasn’t just crying for Clara. I was crying for my own tragic life, for a mother’s powerlessness, for this cruel reality.
I had escaped one cage, only to have indirectly pushed another woman into an identical one, a cage controlled by my own son.
After a long time, the water stopped. The house fell silent again, but this silence was more terrifying than the noise. It was thick with guilt and unspoken pain.
I knew that in the next room, my son was probably sleeping soundly after his cleansing, while my daughter-in-law was lying there alone, licking her physical and spiritual wounds.
I lay there. My tears dried. The fear passed. The pain settled, leaving only a bone-chilling clarity.
I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t change my son. And I didn’t have the courage to confront him, to save Clara. I had fought that demon once in my life, and it had drained all my strength. I couldn’t fight it again.
Staying here, I would slowly wither away in guilt and fear. My only choice, the only way out for the rest of my life, was not this luxurious condo, but another place, a place where I could find peace, even if it was a lonely peace.
