Hello, welcome to the shortest chapter ever! I worked with this chapter for a really long time, adding sections and moving them around. Finally I decided that it would only work on its own, so that's why this chapter is ridiculously short. No worries though, the next chapter will come quickly and will be much longer. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 25: The Past III

Once there was a little boy who lived in a little house in a big city. The little boy lived with his mother; it was just the two of them, but they were both happy. From the boy's point of view, this was all that mattered. Every day, the little boy would get ready for school with his mother's help. His mother would wake him up with a gentle kiss, help him brush his teeth, make breakfast for him, and pick out his outfits. Then his mother would hold his hand and walk him to school. They were lucky enough that they only lived two blocks away.

The little boy loved school. He had a lot of friends who he'd play kickball with during recess and a teacher who was super smart and nice. The little boy loved lunch hour. He got to open his lunch box and see what his mommy had packed for him. It was always a surprise, but his mommy always knew what he liked and didn't like. One thing was true about the little boy's life, he loved his mother.

One day, the little boy was playing with his blocks in the living room when he heard his mother crying in the kitchen. He wasn't sure why, but the sound of her crying made him feel anxious. He felt afraid but he didn't know why. Setting his blocks aside, the little boy made his way into the kitchen.

"Why are you crying, mommy?" The boy asked. His mother looked at him with sad green eyes and wiped away her tears.

"Oh sweetie, it's nothing bad," she whispered as she reached down to pick him up. She lifted him onto her lap and hugged him tightly. "There's something I want to tell you."

"Huh?"

"You're going to become a big brother!" His mother said, a smile breaking through her tears. She took a big sigh as she collected herself. "We're going to have a new member in our family, but nothing's going to change. I will love you just the same." The little boy buried his face in his mother's shoulder and relaxed.

In the following months, not a lot changed in the little boy's life. He still went to school each day, and on the weekends he'd play with his mother. She took him to the zoo, the museum of dinosaurs, and the library. One weekend, they even took an extra-long car ride to visit his grandma.

Shortly after though, the little boy began to notice a few changes in their routines. His mother got tired really easily and didn't have enough energy for playing. She began to take naps more often, and would get sick easily from almost every kind of food. He began to see her belly getting bigger. His mother would put his hand on her belly and explain that there was a little sister growing inside her. The little boy didn't understand this, but he went along with it anyways. These changes were small and didn't make that much of a difference in the little boy's world, but somewhere in the back of his head he felt a shift in their world. Something was about to change and things would never ever be the same again.

Finally, the big day came when his sister arrived. Grandma had come to stay with them for several days. The boy didn't understand why though since they did not explain that his mother would be gone for several days giving birth to the baby. There was a lot of yelling in the kitchen, but the little boy paid no attention to it. He sat right in front of the television watching his favorite show. Then there were loud sirens that sounded like fire trucks, even though there were no fire trucks outside. The front door flew open and several adults rushed in and rushed out. Everything happened so fast. The little boy didn't even get to see his mother get taken away.

"Come with me, honnie!" His grandma said as she took his hand. They went to a big grey building that grandma said was a hospital. The building had bright lights and smelled funny. There were a lot of adults who seemed scary to the little boy for some strange reason. He huddled close to his grandma, and asked where his mommy was. Grandma said his mother was busy having the baby.

They waited and waited, and soon the little boy became bored and anxious. There was a small play room where other children played, but the toys were boring and the boy wanted to see his mother. Grandma soon came to take him home and told him mommy needed another day before the baby was arrived. Time went by so slowly. It was another day before the boy got to see his mom again.

She came in through the front door with a bundle in her arms. The boy noticed that she was pale and that she had dark circles underneath her eyes. But she smiled at him anyways, showing off her perfect white teeth.

"Hello my sweet," she greeted gently.

"Mommy!" He shouted jumping up.

"Shhhh…your baby sister is sleeping," his mother explained. "Do you want to come see her?" His mother walked over to the living room couch and sat down. She shifted the baby in her arms carefully before she peeled away a bit of the blankets so the boy could see the little pink face of his new baby sister. It was then that the boy knew that everything was changing.

"I'm so exhausted; can you take her for a while?" His mother asked his grandmother. "I need to lie down." She passed the baby to his grandma. The boy didn't notice the slightest tone of disinterest in his mother voice. It didn't make sense to him that she brushed aside his hand when he reached out to her. She disappeared into the bedroom without another word. Grandma only stayed for a couple more days before she went back home.

In the following days, everything seemed to fall apart. The baby cried all the time, and mommy didn't seem inclined to do anything about it. Instead, mommy slept and slept. She seemed sick and irritable. She cried too. Sometimes it seemed she cried as much as the baby. Every time the little boy asked his mother if she wanted to play she said, "No, not right now."

The boy knew there was something wrong with his mother, but he didn't have the capacity to truly understand what was going on. Mommy spent far too much time staring listlessly out the window, ignoring the baby and her young son. She found herself staring at knives and cars driving by, unable to stop herself from fantasizing about terrible things. She knew they were horrific things to think about, but the thoughts kept coming. She couldn't bring herself to shower. The littlest routines felt like monumental tasks. Her feet felt like cement. Her hands felt like clay.

The boy went hungry and soon he grew angry. He realized he needed to make himself a sandwich if he was hungry. He clumsily gathered the necessary ingredients for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He wasn't allowed to touch knives, so he used a spoon to scoop out the peanut butter and jelly before flopping it down on the bread. He made a mess, but he didn't care because it tasted so good. He got to lick the jelly off his fingers and he got to put extra peanut butter on his sandwich (which mommy would never have let him do).

Soon the boy realized that he hadn't gone to school in a while. He tugged at his mother's skirt and said, "Mommy, I want to go to school." His mother turned and walked away from him with a sigh. "Not now," she murmured as she wandered away into the bedroom once more. Two minutes later, the boy heard his mommy crying again. He had given up trying to console her. At first he had tried hugs, offered his favorite bear, and even tried his best to hush the baby with a lullaby. But nothing seemed to make mommy better. The telephone would ring and ring, but mommy wouldn't pick up the phone. The boy wondered where his grandma went because he was sure his grandma could fix all of the problems.

He grew irritable with the baby crying all the time. He threw his stuffed animals at the baby, thinking that might stop the crying but it only made the crying worse. Sometimes his mom would come pick up the baby while it cried, but she would only hold her for a few minutes before putting the baby down again and walking away. The boy had half his sandwich left and offered it to the baby through the bars of the crib, but the baby just laid there crying. The boy grew sad, anxious, and scared. There seemed to be nothing he could do to make things better.

The boy's mother felt herself falling deeper and deeper into her depression. It became painful to look at her daughter, and her son did nothing but irritate her. All she wanted to do was crawl into a hole and sleep for fifty years. She would walk over to her daughter's crib and her hands would turn into fists. She would physically shake with anger sometimes because of her daughter's crying. She dreamed of a thousand ways to make the crying stop. Water. Shaking. Dropping.

One night, in a fit of anger and screams, the solution came to her. The boy's mother bundled her daughter up in blankets and took her son's hand. She led them to the car, where she put her daughter carefully into the baby car seat, before she sat her son down and buckled his seatbelt. It was dark outside and raining. The car was put in drive, and zoomed out of the driveway and into the streets of the city. The neon lights of the city glowed like warning signs.

"Where are we going mommy?" The boy asked. His mother didn't reply. She gripped the steering wheel tightly, her eyes frenzied and bloodshot as she stared at the wet pavement in front of the car. She could hear quiet voices speaking in her ear, whispering what she knew she had to do. She swerved the car accidentally, and another car jerked off the road to avoid her. The sound of loud honking noises could be heard as the mother's car zipped away from the site of the accident. The car gained speed as it raced toward the bridge connecting the west half of the city to the east half of the city. There was construction going on, and half of the lane was blocked off with barricades. The mother slammed on her brakes and the car went screeching into the orange and white barricades. The sudden movement scared the little boy, as he huddled in his seat. He covered his eyes with his hands and screamed.

The car skidded across the wet pavement and hit the bridge's side barriers. Metal was crushed before the car tipped horizontally and few into the air. It was mere seconds. The car flew over the bridge's barrier and down into the river with the loud splash. The boy barely had time to think about what was going on before the car hit the icy cold water.

Everything went black. There was no time for the boy to remember how the water slowly filled up the car or how long it took for the car to sink to the bottom of the river. He would not remember how his mother struggled to get out of the car, but failed to do so. He would not remember what it was like to drown beside his baby sister. He would never hear about how people nearby who saw the incident jumped into the water to save his life. He would never hear about how they failed because of how strong the currents were. He would never hear that he was on the television news the next morning, nor would he hear all the horrible things people would say about his mother. He would not remember anything as his soul left his little fragile body and disappeared into the night sky.

Thanks for reading guys! The song for this chapter is called "the sinking man" by Of Monsters and Men. Great song, make sure to check it out. Don't forget to leave a review :)