1. Living in the Past
William Taylor- 1892
"They'll be coming soon," she repeated once again, and I didn't ask who.
"Mother, let me take you to the doctor," I pleaded. As the days slowly grew colder, mothers health deteriorated day by day. It pained me that she didn't agree, it pained me that she told me it was too late.
She shook her head very gently on repeating the words once again, "They'll be coming soon."
*
"Thomas!" That was my mother. I rushed to her bedroom. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My mother convulsing on her bed, spittle flying and somehow there was a large gash in her arm that which was streaming blood. I was frantic, I had made sure that there was nothing that could hurt her in the room. How was this happening? Why? Why? Why?
"Mother, are you okay." Stupid question,
did she look okay?
"Thomas I need you to kill me."
What?
"What?"
"They will be coming for
me."
"Who?"
"I
don't want them to come for you as well, if you kill me you will
become immortal and that way they can never get you!"
"No
one is coming for you."
"They got your father."
Silence blanketed the room, my mother finally calmed down and was now
watching me intently.
"You said he fell of off a
bridge."
"I'm sorry." Her eyelids fluttered closed.
"Please, just kill me, how else do you think I got this wound."
She said indicating at the unsightly bloody mess her arm now was.
Even though my heart felt it had been stabbed, I hurried from the
room and found a knife. What was I doing? I rushed back to her side
my arms shaking tears pouring down my cheeks, I knew she couldn't be
lying, she would never lie about my father no matter how crazy she
became.
I ran back to the room, my hand trembling with fear and
uncertainty. Her irrefutable eyes begged me not to delay. "Do it
now Thomas. Kill me." And I did.
*
My eyes quivered with shock and I tried to slow my breath as I began to take the room in. I focused on the burning daylight that seethed through the curtains and the flickers of light and sound touching my senses.
I released the facts so I could no longer worry, but who was I kidding .The further I ran the closer the truth followed. Life, as I knew it, ended and began in 1892, and now in 2009, I'm still living it.
That night I killed my mother. That night I became a killer. That night I shut my shop for good. That night I left Ameile. Because that night I became immortal.