Warnings, Implied Sexual Assault, Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Character Deaths, Suicide

Chapter 28: That Reaper's Record, Human

Erican's POV (Italics)

Mara's POV (Normal)

When I was young, I could remember that my family used to be happy; when my father would smile and it wouldn't mean he was going to hurt someone, and when my mother and I were alive and happy about it. Now, I could barely remember that happiness, and the kind man that my father used to be was gone.

When I immersed myself into Erican's record, the first person I saw past the blinding whiteness was his father, but he didn't look like the monster that I knew he was. His eyes weren't yellow and green like reapers, but they were blue, and they were kind. He was smiling a wrinkle-free smile down on Erican as he looked up at him from very close to the ground. This memory must have been from when Erican was a little boy. His father's long, blonde hair was tied back behind his head and his smooth, diamond shaped face was free of facial hair, with the exception of thin eyebrows that tilted slightly when he smiled. His smile was so kind, so much like a smile that a father should show their child, that I wondered what had changed him into the vengeful scum that did all of this.

He was in an accident when I was seven. There was a crash, and he pushed my mother and I out of the way. The doctors at the scene of the runaway carriage wreck said that my father was nothing more than a trampled corpse. I remembered how much I cried, begging for it not to be true.

The memory changed to himself, his father, and a woman with the two of them that I knew to be his mother crossing the street. I heard screaming and galloping, along with speeding wheels of a horse carriage on the left side of the street, coming closer and closer the family. I already knew it was coming, but he pushed Erican and his mother out of the way. His mother pulled Erican close to try and keep him from watching, but I could still hear the sound from his memory; the sound of hooves crushing bone, and the sound of his father being killed on impact. Erican didn't stop crying and trying to wriggle out of his mother's embrace to try and get to the corpse as people surrounded it. When a doctor arrived and inspected what happened, he soon came over to the family and told Erican his father had died, furthering the boy into hysterics.

His body was revived. It took a deep breath and stood back up. I shouldn't have been so happy about that, because when he looked at me, I knew the person my father used to be wasn't there.

When his father stood back up as the crowd stepped back, Erican and his mother ran to him, only for his father to strike him. He didn't understand why his father had looked so mad at him when he awoke, and why he was so horrible. His mother said his name fearfully, only to be shouted at. They didn't understand, and I still didn't understand.

I wish he stayed dead, because every day after that had been hell. My mother would try to protect me from that monster, only to make it worse for the both of us. He pushed us to the breaking point and made it worse when we showed it.

I saw various scenes where he was abusing them, going from screaming to striking them in a moments notice over the most small things, like hesitating to answer or spilling milk or even nothing at all. When Erican started crying, his roaring and hitting only got longer and harder.

"Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't fucking cry. DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE START CRYING, ERICAN!" I heard him scream.

"I'm sorry, Father!" He cried. Hearing a child scream in such fear towards their own parent broke my heart, even if it was Erican.

"Ellis, stop! You-"

Smack.

"Shut up, you fucking bitch!"

About a month after he changed, I was cleaning off a scratch I got from falling after getting hit, and I couldn't stop myself from crying, even though I was terrified to do it.

Judging by how I was seeing through Erican's eyes over a bathroom sink, Erican was washing off a scratch on his arm from falling after getting hit on one occasion, he started sobbing, but the noise of the running water drowned it out. He seemed to realize something.

He couldn't hear me because of the faucet I was using. It was the only time in that month where I could cry without only getting struck harder, or yelled at louder.

In the coming years, most of the kids at school thought I was too nice, and it made me annoying. I was alone at school, and I wished I was alone at home.

I saw all of his peers staying away from him and giving him the same looks of contempt that they gave to me the day I tried to take my life, and it struck me and gave me an awful feeling in my chest. It was every day. He would be alone on the swings, or at his desk, or waiting to be picked up. Back then, he was just a little boy, and no child should ever feel alone like that.

Every night, I heard my mother crying as my father abused her, and she always woke up to greet me with a smile, as if I couldn't hear the sounds that he had forced from her, like he forced other things with her; the sounds that had made me sick to my stomach every night.

I saw darkness. He wasn't seeing anything because he was in his room without the lights on. I heard his mother screaming and crying, but it was a different sort of pain than just being hit. No, he was using and abusing that woman in a filthy, defiling way that no child should ever understand, and I felt like I was going to be sick. Whenever he saw him the next morning, he saw her golden smile. She had sunshine blond hair that waved down her shoulders, and freckles across her nose and just under her crystal blue eyes. She was very beautiful, in mind and in appearance.

When I was twelve, it got to the point where I wanted to find a way to block it out, so started to use the faucet in my bathroom sink to drown out my mother's screaming.

Every night, he found himself staring at the running water in his sink. He lifted his head to look at himself in the mirror as tears ran down his face. He started out as a twelve year old boy, but since his circumstances barely changed in the coming years, the memory of a running sink played over and over as his reflection aged into the sixteen year old boy I knew for a month now, except for the fact that his eyes were still blue, and I was soon to find out how they turned yellow-green.

"Erican!" my mother called one night. My father was out drinking, but I still didn't feel comfortable enough to cry without the white noise. I shut the faucet off and went to her room. She sat on her bed and looked at me urgently.

"What is it, Mother?"

"Erican…" she said, her voice like honey. "You aren't safe here; not with your father."

"That's been obvious. I've heard how much he hurts you for years now. He hits me and yells at me when he's mad, but he hurts you even when he's not. I'm his punching bag, and I wish I could take more so you didn't need to, Mother." I told her. She reached up to me, and I knelt down. She smoothed down my hair.

"I couldn't ask you to do that for me." She sighed.

"But I want to."

"Erican, I want you to run away. Go tonight, while your father's out drinking. It won't do to try to leave while he comes home drunk." my mother said to me. I had been waiting so long to hear her say something like that, and I started to smile at the thought of my mother and I being free from my father.

"Don't worry, Mother. I already know a lot of places we can-"

"I said "you", Erican."

My smile faded and my heart dropped. I shook my head.

"You want me to leave without you? And just leave you here with that monster? How can you expect me to do that; to leave and let you suffer with him? I can't leave you with him like that!" I told her.

The pain in his voice, showing how desperate he was to convince his mother to let him try and save her, only reminded me of the last conversation I had with my mother, where I begged the same thing of her. It made my heart heavy like lead, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep watching at this point.

"If he's hurting me, he won't be going after you. You can live the life that a beautiful child like you deserves. I know that your father isn't the man I fell in love with, but I don't want you to have to remember him as your father, when he wasn't like this when you were born. He was such a sweet, kind man until the carriage crash when you were just a little boy. If the man that I love is still somewhere in there, maybe if it's just me, I can save him somehow."

"The father that he was died in that crash! He isn't there anymore!" I almost shouted.

"Then please just give me peace in knowing you'll be safe from this man's abuse. That's all I want, Erican."

"Do you not care about what happens to you at all? Please, leave with me!" I begged, pulling on her hand as if to pull her away from there as my voice broke. She pulled her hand away.

"Mother, why? How could you ask me to let you die?"

"I remember when you were just a child, and how much you cried in my arms after your father hurt you. I remember how badly I wished your bruises were mine. I was powerless to stop him, and all I could really do to make him hurt you less was to make him hurt me. If you leave, and I stay, he'll keep hurting me, and he'll never hurt you again. I can finally protect you, like I always should have. I'll never have to see my baby boy suffer again at the hands of that man." she told me with a sad smile.

"But he'll always hurt you, for the rest of your life! If I'm not here, he'll kill you! I can't let you die like that, Mother!"

"Erican, listen to me. I'm always going to be with you, even if we're apart." She kissed my forehead. "Please, remember that."

I hugged my mother as tightly as I could.

"I'll never see you again, will I?" I sobbed.

"If I'm with him, hopefully not. I'm sorry that you had to suffer with him for so long. I couldn't protect you, like a mother should, and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for failing you, Erican."

"Don't say that! You've been one of the only things that's kept me alive this long. You're an amazing mother, and I won't let that scum make you believe otherwise. I love you so much, Mummy." I cried.

She hugged me back, rubbing my back soothingly.

"I love you too, baby. Now, you need to hurry."

Painfully pulling myself away, I ran out.

I ran to my room to find what I needed. I had things like a blanket and spare change when I heard something collapse in my mother's room, and I feared that it was my mother herself.

"Mother!"

I recognized Erican's scream as the one from the memory my father showed me. I knew what Erican was going to see: His mother's corpse.

Nearly tripping over my own feet with how fast I ran, I sprinted to my mother's room and the door flew open. I looked inside and wished it stayed closed so I didn't have to see what I saw.

My mother had collapsed, bruises covering her body, and she was now lying motionlessly face-down over half the bed. Towering above her was a being made of shadows and tar. He was a slender man, and his form was nothing but darkness, save for his fuchsia eyes and pearly, fanged grin. He looked away from my mother and looked at me, grinning as if he knew I was powerless.

"Dad…" I thought to myself. "Why did it have to be her?"

My legs felt like jelly, but I moved them like jets as I charged at him.

"I'll kill you!"

Just when he was within a fingertip's reach, he turned into a raven and vanished. I was left looking out the window until I remembered what happened. I ran to my unresponsive mother.

"Mother, no! Please!" I screamed, turning her over to see hazy half opened eyes look at nothing. Her pale skin was already discoloring as I held her hand as tight as I could, although it remained limp. Her lips were dry and cracked, but worst of all, they weren't breathing. I checked a pulse in Every I place I could, only to be met with silence.

My mother was dead.

I didn't even have the energy to cry. I had nothing to cry about, considering how soon I would join her.

I walked into the bathroom, unusually leaving the faucet alone, and looked under the sink until I found the drain cleaner fluid. I had planned on possibly slipping it into my father's coffee when he came home, but my mother didn't allow me to. I figured that she wouldn't allow me to do what I was going to do in just a few moments, but then again, her not being there anymore was one of the final things that would push me to do just that.

"No… I can't watch…"

I walked back to my mother's corpse and knelt next to it, unscrewing the cap of the cleaning fluid. Some people asked themselves questions about going through with suicides, but I had nothing for me here; nothing to share, nothing to say, and nothing I would miss.

I pulled the bottle to my lips.

I yanked my hand away from Erican's cinematic record, pulling myself back into reality. I covered my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut, realizing I had been crying at some point during Erican's record, and blocked out any images or noises of his suicide. I felt a horrible churning in my stomach as I calmed my breathing down.

After a few minutes, his record turned green. I learned in school that in the case where one viewed a reaper's cinematic record, to clear up confusion when certain things happened, it glowed green when it reached the point where they became reapers.

"No, please," I nearly sobbed. "I don't want to watch anymore."

The record gravitated towards me and touched my fingertips, and even though I thought I had seen enough, even in death, Erican was still making me pay attention to him. Apparently, now I was going to see Erican's month-long life as a reaper as well.