CHAPTER 4
Jade sat against the wall in front of her mother's cell, staring into eyes that seemed to look right through her.
It was cold.
"Mom?"
The creature crouched in the straight jacket did not reply.
"Mom. It's Jade. Don't you recognize me?" Jade asked again. Jade asked her mother this every time she would come and visit.
"A propper lady does not slurp at the dinner table. And that's manners." Maria spat.
"Maria. What happened to Leo?"
Maria started to moan.
"What happened to my baby?" Jade pleaded with the empty shell across from her.
"I said no, so he burned us. Burned, burned, burned."
Jade couldn't help but look at the charred skin that covered her mother's body.
If that was what happened to the front of her mother, then what could have happened if she had a baby in her arms?
A sob ripped its way through Jade's throat as she imagined a burnt and disfigured lump where her baby once was. The tears that rimmed her eyes now spilled onto her plain grey shirt.
Despite the impossibility of her son surviving the explosion, Jade had clung to hope.
The cameras at the bank had been destroyed before the disaster, and apparently her mother had been the only one to survive.
The only survivor who witnessed the whole event
And she was stark raving mad.
Jade felt rage begin to boil in her stomach, seeping through her body until she felt like she could spit poison across the room.
"Where is my son?" She growled at the thing that she had once called her mother.
Maria started laughing.
Jade got up, clutching the bars of iron.
"Where is my son you fucking bitch?!?!" She screamed at the woman.
Maria laughed harder.
"WHERE IS MY SON?" The words scraped through her throat, echoing down the halls of the facility.
"Big boom! Baby boomer! Boom boom. Booming baby!" Maria cackled, drool and blood dripping between her yellowed teeth.
Jade let out a wrenching scream, rattling the bars of her mother's cage as security entered the hallway.
It took three men to pull her away from the bars of the cell, and Jade didn't stop crying, even when they dumped her outside on a wet sidewalk.
It was raining.
But she just sat as strangers would pass her by, not noticing the young woman and her eyes red with tears.