I know when it started.

It was February 4th, two days after my tenth birthday. An eerie red-gold haze enshrouded the moon. Frothing gray and black clouds drifted across it, as if they were trying to hide its evilness, but couldn't quite overpower that glowing wire light.

I noticed the moon as we sped towards the river, our car careening back and forth over the yellow lines as she chanted and I clung to my terrified brother.

The train drizzled down through the darkness, stopped, then pounded the top of the car, as if millions of tiny black cannon-balls had been released from the bag of the devil himself.

"Momma, stop!" I cried as she barreled through a red light. But she couldn't hear me, not with the other voices clamoring in her head.

She whispered, she raged, she yelled at her hallucinations. "Get out of here, Punk. This isn't about you. I'm not getting tied down to that chair again! You wont put your tentacles and ropes on me!"

I tried another name. "Trisha! Can you hear me, Trisha?" She didn't respond, smashing her floppy yellow hat down on her head with both hands.

I realized, almost ill with panic, that the voices had won. It had been a long, soul-crushing battle, but I tried to save us anyhow. There was nothing else left to do.

"There's no chair! I'll tell Punk to leave and take the tentacles and ropes with him. I'll get him for you! Punk is bad; he's chasing us with his red eyes and he wont let us go. I'll save you, boy kid!"

We swerved again, snaking all over the road, barely missing a truck.

"I scared, Edo, I scared." My brother whimpered, his little face tucked into my neck. He smelled of soap and lemon shampoo, his fingers sticky from an orange Popsicle.

I was scared, too-so scared my brain felt as if it were rattling in my head, my knees knocking together. "Its okay, Alphonse. Grandma and Grandpa will be here soon."

But I knew it wasn't going to be soon enough.

I knew that.

We whipped around a corner and skidded onto a one-lane, wood bridge. Trisha slammed on the brakes; the car fishtailed, and we crashed into the rail.

She scrambled out, swearing at the "spying, bad Punk," then wrenched open our door and tried to yank us out of the car.

Alphonse clutched me, screaming, as I gripped the seat, trying to save us both, my lucky bracelet cutting into my skin. When Trisha grabbed my heels and my hands lost their white-knuckled grip, I grabbed the door handle, then the door.

But she was strong-the voices made her stronger-and my fingers were pried away, one by one, Alphonse clinging to my waist as he shook with fear.

Trisha dragged, half carried us to the rail as the boiling clouds parted and that strange moon mocked us in the distance, the only witness to our dance with death.

She wrapped tin foul around the waist of her black dress, and it ripped as we fought her, as we scratched and shrieked.

She was wearing her best black heals, and they tapped o the wood of the bridge, the black line up her nylons perfectly straight, which was so unusual, so surreal, it scared me more than anything else.

"Now you've made Command Center mad!" Trisha yelled, wrestling us over to the trail. "Don't destroy the communications!"

We pleaded, we tried to run and she punched both of us in the face, shooting us backward onto the bridge. "Shut up, boy kid! Shut up, Trash Heap!" She had never done that to us before, and it stunned me into silence, into obedience, for one shattered moment.

"They're spying on us! They can see everything!"

Dizziness sent my mind into a whirl and I wrapped my arms around Alphonse, who was gasping with fright and bleeding.

Trisha ripped us apart, and I knew that what was left of my momma, if there was anything gentle and kind left in her, was way, way back, at the end of a labyrinth of tunnels in her troubled mind, crisscrossing the lines of insanity.

Her arms banded across my chest and waist as heavy raindrops hit me. I didn't recognize the raw, terrified scream that tore from my throat as I squeezed her neck and bony shoulders with my arms, my tears mixing with the rain, her floppy yellow hat flying off into the wind.

"No, Momma, don't," I begged. "Please, Momma! Stop!"

"Leave us alone, Punk," She commanded the moon. "You can't read my mind anymore. You're done. It's all done. Take Command Center with you down to hell."

She heaved my struggling body up on the rail and briefly held me close, rocking me like a baby, then kissed me on the lips. I saw Alphonse fight to stand up, blood streaming from his head.

He tugged on our mother's arms, kicked her shins. "I hate you! I hate you! Let go of Edo! Let go of brother!"

His words flew into the churning sky, swirled around the moon, and then they were gone, making no impact on our mother.

"I am saving you," Trisha yelled at me, the stormy wind whipping her brown hair around her face. "I am saving you from them."

Then she dropped her head back and said, her voice edgy and guttural, "Save yourself. Do not save it. Don't save that Trash Heap."

She showed me over the rail of the bridge, then yanked my clinging hands from around her neck, our fingertips the last to touch before I tumbled and somersaulted into the rushing river.

It was freezing cols and pitch black, the water wrapping me up tight as I plunged through the silent darkness. My feet never hit, and I paddled to the top, choking, sputtering, knowing Alphonse would soon join me.

I have to save him. I have to save Alphonse.

I fought against the water as the current swirled me away, waved splashing against my face, surrounding my body like a wet vice, my head still reeling from pain.

I twisted in the river's grasp and saw Alphonse. His cry, high and thin, echoed under the bridge. I swam toward him, my arms pin wheeling as hard as I could, but I was panicking, gasping for breath, the water dragging me away, my blonde hair covering my face.

Between shifting shadows I saw Trisha standing on the rail. Of the bridge, arms outstretched, head back. The red-gold haze parted and the moonlight illuminated her slim form.

I couldn't hear her, but I knew she was singing and I knew what song it was.

In a remote corner of my mind I noted her outfit again as she teetered on the rail. She was wearing her black cocktail dress, her best black heels, and her pearls. She got dressed up to kill us, I thought, as another wave swamped me.

She got dressed up to kill us.

She curved her body, palms together over her head, then dove into the choppy water. I never saw her come up again. They did, however, find her best black heels later. Downriver.

I saw the brown hair but not for very long, as another current came, perhaps the sister current to mine, and swept Alphonse away.

I heard his terror, I heard him sobbing my name, I hollered back at him, told him I was coming, I promised I would save him-but in the inky blackness, fighting off the chill of the water and swirling waves, I lost him.

I heard his death in rigid silence as soon as my ragged voice was the only one left in that tragic, shattered night.

I have not saved him.

I have not saved my brother.

He is gone because of me.

Under that moon with the eerie red-gold haze and those frothing clouds, that's were it all began. I started inhaling food the next day. Mountains of it.

It continued for more than two decades. And the song my momma was singing? It was "Amazing Grace." My momma, after throwing her two sons off a bridge, was singing "Amazing Grace."


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