Chapter 3

Annihilation of freedom

In the stunned silence that followed her words, Ceric felt the color drain from his face as the life seemed to leap from his body in an attempt to fulfill his mother's words. He swallowed, trying to force the lump of anxiety burning in his throat as he stared at his mother's tears, but he could not force himself to do anything; he could not bring himself to speak. He stared into his mother's brown eyes, pretending the thick brown color was mud, encasing him for eternity. He was already dead, after all. This way he knew the cause of his death.
His own eyes slid closed, as though the darkness was the crushing weight of the earth. He knew that when he opened his eyes, he would be staring at a new world, one he could not understand and would not want to. Without realizing it, he understood exactly what was going on, though he knew not how he suddenly had the answers to all of the questions he had been asking himself silently all these years. His gentle face hardened into a bitter mask of malice and hate and he saw before him not the woman who had given birth to him and given him the great joy of Layen, but a monster; the woman she was.
"You bitch!" His mother cringed and reached out, pressing a palm against his hard cheeks, but he slapped her hand away. "You horrible ungodly bitch!" His mother's eyes opened wide, and he suddenly did not care about the woman before him; she had done the unthinkable: she had killed her own child. "How could you kill Layen?!" He grabbed her shoulders and shook her as hard as he could. He was not sure how he knew it, but with one more powerful jolt, the thin vertebrae in her neck would snap in two, and she would be dead. "Goodbye, mother."
Pain seared in the back of his head, and he felt a trickle of warm liquid seep down his neck. He reached behind his neck, frowning at the warm, moist redness covering his hands. He craned his neck around, though he knew what he would find. His father stood behind him holding a big shard of the broken glass that covered his bedside table. Though he could make out his father's grinning face of triumph through his blurring vision, he knew what he was capable of, as though a door in his mind had been opened and the fragile shell of desolation had peeled away from his body. A grin slowly spread across Ceric's face as unbridled power flooded through his veins, causing his father to cringe in fear.
A moan sprang from his mother's lips from where she lay on the floor, but the noise brought a startling pleasure to his ears, and he closed his eyes as the sound slid across his body, warming his heart. A whimper came from before him and he opened his eyes, staring at his father. "You killed Layen, didn't you?" Ceric looked at his hands, covered in his own fresh blood. "You killed her because she was like me?"
His father shook his head, his reaction surprising Ceric deep inside, though his outward expression did not change. "We did not kill her. Others did, but not because she was like you." He grinned like a child; a child with a terrible, blood chilling secret about to be shared. "We killed her because you were like you. Your very existence was the reason Layen died." He spat in his son's face. "Because of you, she died! The only child I ever loved was killed because of you!"
Before Ceric could stop himself, he reached and grabbed his father around the neck, his thumbs pressed on his windpipe, choking him. His mother's frantic shrieks only heightened his anger and lust for death; the same was caused by her clawing at his face. She could not hurt him. No one could. "You are not my father, you are an insect." He looked at his father with the disgust he had masked behind pain for years. "You are nothing but a beast, and you shall be treated like one, slaughtered like one." He pried the shard of glass from his father's limp hands, a grin spreading across his face as the glass caught the light, shining like a dagger blade. "Goodbye, father," he spat. Where the glass was pressed against his father's neck, a hint of red had spread across the flesh. It will be done, he thought. Layen, I avenge you with your murderer's death.
"Ceric, don't!" He opened his mouth to silence his mother, as he turned his face around, but instead of seeing a fragile, beaten woman, he saw a beautiful young girl his age standing in the doorway. She had one hand pressed against her breast, the other stretched out to him. Her fragile equine face was shaped with gentle roving curves; the corners of her icy blue eyes were tipped with the shining diamonds over her tears. She was a mirror image of the man who stood staring at her with his mouth agape. Even if she had not borne any physical resemblance to him, he would have known her without any difficulty. "No," Layen said.
He cast his father aside, not caring about anything; not even his own life. Layen lived. His Layen stood before him, alive. He took a step toward her, tentatively, as though she was an apparition. He held his open without blinking, positive a single blink would reveal she was a materialization of the madness he was sure loomed in his heart; the madness that had nearly killed his parents. He held out his hand, reaching for hers, as though he would be saved from the madness that threatened to consume him by making contact with the only one he had ever loved.
His progress to her was slow; he seemed to he kept back by a thick wall of air, pressing tightly against him, but nothing would keep him from the girl he loved. His fingers clenched several times, trying to grab her and bring her closer, though she was halfway across the room from him. He smiled a child's smile, a smile of pure unaltered joy, as he crept closer to Layen. She frowned at him, sadness lingering in the eyes locked tightly on his own. He paused and stared at her, watching her face closely. She seemed to flicker before him, as though she was...
"A hologram!" He blinked once, and opened his eyes, not surprised Layen was not there. "So," he chuckled. "She's dead after all." He looked at his hands, now bound with thick ropes and followed them to where two strong, thickly muscled men held the other ends. He grinned and gave a quick jerk, knowing full well the ropes would fly out of his grasp, leaning his head back and releasing a bellowing roar of angst. The ropes fluttered in the breeze as he ran through the door, flying down the stairs, past the kitchen, past his father's hat and into the deep night.