Beneath The Blackwood Sky | ✓

Chapter Thirteen: Tragic Story Starring Me and My Mom

Will looked at himself in the rearview mirror, he looked fifteen or so. His knuckles were white as he clutched the steering wheel tightly, his green eyes trained on what was in front of him. Suddenly, a woman appeared in front of him, but he couldn't stop the car.

Will applied the brakes but it was too late. The car had smashed into the woman with an audible crunch. He was frozen with shock as he saw blood flow onto the street. He threw open the door and looked down at the road, his hand flying to his chest when he saw that the person on the road was still as a doll.

Will's hands were trembling as he tilted the woman's head to get a better view of her face. It was his mother.

Will woke up with a jolt with cold sweat plastered on his face, doing his best to forget the world of non-existent horrors he was plunged into. He buried his face into the pillow and screamed into it, the cushion muffling his cries. He was breathing hard, the familiar scent of the detergent failing to calm him.

Will crawled down onto the floor after his screams subsided, putting his forehead onto the cold floor. It was going for weeks. His nightmares have taken a scary turn, projecting him with many scenes where his mother would bleed in front of him.

It would always be an accident: sometimes he would be the one who crashed the car into his mother, sometimes Will would watch the scene helplessly, screams tearing out of his mouth but nothing happening, sometimes he would be driving the car with his mother beside the car. The squeal of tires, the sound of glass smashing, a woman's haunting scream, all of it made him feel sick. He was sick. Will's forehead was burning against the cold floor, he was consumed by exhaustion and nausea. Will had always had nightmares, but they weren't this bad.

The first time he's had a nightmare this bad, Will had spent what felt like hours in the bathroom, puking his guts out. Will had assumed it was because of something bad he had eaten, but after the puking sessions in the middle of the night for three days, he was careful now.

Will was careful not to eat anything before he slept, he avoided eating completely. But it would always raise suspicions as he ate with his friends on the table, so Will would eat some of it and feed the rest to some stray animal when his friends weren't looking.

Since then, as his body couldn't get revenge by making him puke as he doesn't have anything in his stomach, it decided to punish him by racking him with spasms of fever and sickness. Will stayed on the floor curled up, gasping and heaving until it passed.

Will wasn't the one who crashed the car into his mother, hell, he wasn't even there when the accident happened. The only thing he knew about the accident was that it had happened on a road leading to a highway, his mother had been driving alone when a drunk truck driver hit the car and fled from the scene.

Even though it didn't happen the way it was projected in his dreams, Will couldn't help but think that his mother's death was his fault. It was his fault. He leaned against his mattress as he gasped like a fish out of water. He glanced at his friends, glad that they didn't wake up. Will padded across the room and shut it gently, leaning heavily against the wall.

He looked at the room beside his, his parents used to sleep in there. Will closed his eyes, the images of the day his mother died coming back to him. How he heard noises downstairs and came down, shocked to see people downstairs. Will remembered scanning the entire room with panic, searching for his parents. He only found his father, didn't find his mother. Someone had shrieked, "I can't believe she is dead!"

But Will didn't want to believe it. He had half stumbled to his father, who was weeping loudly. Grief racked his body when he heard his father tell him that his mother died in a car crash. Will had passed out after that and woke up in a hospital two days later, with his father still weeping by his bed.