Hello there!

I have had 2 exams in a row so I have not been able to update. Now I'm kind of back on track and eagerly awaiting your reviews!

I wonder if you guess whose POV this one is from. This was a disturbing chapter for me to write..

Enjoy!

XIII. Faith House

The spoon clattered against her plate, over and over, in the overwhelming silence. The silence and the darkness of night. The clock ticked. The curtains softly brushed the windowpanes as the wind tossed them. The mirror rattled, not quite fastened, against the wall. The light of the stars in the moonless night fell on the house. The dust settled on long since empty chairs, on long since unread books, on long since untouched shoulders, on long since dead consciences.

On the wall, there were once photos. Many photos, of a couple, of a boy, of her. Now there were only rusty iron nails sticking out of the white like scrawny tree stumps in a desert.

And the curtains, oh the curtains. They were once blue, as the sky was, at least in her dreams, for she never dreamed of London. Blue as the eyes of the young boy, the way she wanted to always remember him, that would run up to her, his mother, and ask to be embraced. How many times had she embraced him? She could not count, she would not count: a mother could not measure her affection. How many times did he embrace her? She had not counted them first, but then, when she had started to, she could fit them all on one hand.

She had not wanted to marry her husband. His picture was the first that she took down from that white wall, that now barren white wasteland with crooked nails. They had not been a love match and she had been forced into the union – the union that was like a wasteland of her life, that wasteland of white and crooked nails upon which she had impaled her youth.

She had loved, and still loved her son. Her son that was the spitting image of her husband, that man who, she had always suspected, raided pockets by day and drank the money away by night. He had the same eyes, the same face…and the same ambitions. The same way of achieving them. And yet, she loved him, and where she inwardly cursed her husband, she tried to find justifications for her son in the same deeds.

As a child he was small, scrawny, nicknamed the rodent by the local children; and yet, he had found solace in service and a voice in blindly repeating after those who were stronger than him. That way he had power, that way the others feared whom they now called the rat, cunning and insidious as he seemed beneath his long-toothed smile and overt politeness.

She had shed many a tear for her son. She had wept when he was born, for she had seen his father in him, his father who then beat her, as she lay in the childbed, for the child being too small. Small and scrawny, they all are, he would say, as the blows rained down, one after the other, so that's what ye give me, two born dead, and this one, alive but what use is he, eh? Look at'im, look at 'im, he looks more dead 'an the previous two though 'es alive! Small and scrawny…

If she had been strong enough to retort, she would have added, just like you. But it was not the child's fault. Oh, all those times she had taken the blows the boy would have taken. All the times she lay bleeding and her son would watch, first horrified, and later, as the years progressed, he would smile sardonically.

Oh, she had wept many times for her son. Then, when he was shunned by the children. When he brought home a stolen pocket watch with pride to show his mother. When he, her son, was nicknamed, that rodent.

Her husband got his money by theft, she knew. Beautiful as she had been, her beauty had died the day she entered his house. Her beauty was left to rot, impaled, upon those rusty nails which held their family portraits. Her beauty and affection that had meant nothing to her father, that her dead mother never saw. The beauty and affection that reminded her father of things he wanted to forget, a face and a voice he wanted to forget. And he, her husband, he was rich. His cockney accent did not speak of it, but yes, he was rich, rich enough to marry a daughter you don't want off to; marry her off before you go insane with memories of her mother. Marry her off before she even knew what love was. For her, love was just as fictional as a princess and a dragon.

Yes, her husband stole. Stole for someone more important than him. He found solace in service. A voice in blindly repeating after those who were stronger than him. The best way to feel important is to lose oneself in the shadow of the greater.

And she had wept when her son first started coming home late and dismissing her with no more than a single word, like his father did. Always, with that simpering smile, feigned affection and politeness. Sometimes, she wept and prayed to the Lord to let her son stop pretending; to let him stab her, put a pistol to her worn head, anything, if he hated her so, anything but pretence.

And yet, when she had recently read of his disappearance in the papers, she had not wept. She had smiled, her mind too tired for sorrow. Perhaps he had had enough of London life. Perhaps he had finally decided to disappear, as romantics loved to do, as it was fashionable, to disappear for a year or two. Perhaps, he had tired of corruption, and of serving as an occasional sidekick. Perhaps he had remembered her. Perhaps he would come to her soon.

Oh, those days! How would he remember her? A young woman, bruised and yet beautiful, hands soft and looking adoringly at her son, who looked at her, she had thought, with the same adoration. Or would he expect to find her an old woman? Wrinkled and in black. Wrinkled, she was, yes, but black? No, she had never worn black for her husband.

She smiled, and even laughed, knowing she would forgive him when he came. Every tale of a return is that of the Prodigal son. One did not have to be the man from the Gospel of Luke to forgive one's son.

Perhaps he had remembered the days when their house was a place of fairytales. A place where he believed in Saint Nicholas in a flying carriage, who gave presents to all the good children; a place where he believed a mother's arms meant nothing could hurt him. A place where he would wake in the middle of the night to see if he could summon the spirit of winter as he stood barefoot in the snow, and his mother slept. A place where he believed in God.

She sat there at the table, watching the little particles swirl to the bottom of her soup. In the spoon was her reflection, one she knew by heart and yet wished to forget, the drab cheeks, the dull eyes and hair. Perhaps, when he came back, the spark would come back. She could believe everything now, in the house where her son once played under the Christmas tree.

Tap, tap.

Tap, tap, tap.

She smiled, smiled from the heart and felt as though the years of solitude and torment had been washed away in a mere second; if she looked in the mirror, she would see that spark in her eyes that she thought was long gone. Her son had come home. She knew it. It was him.

She walked along the corridor where her son had turned on his heel and left all those years ago, without a backward glance. She would forgive him. Now, now everything would be fine. She walked to the door through which he had passed, never to be seen again. She would forgive him. Everything would be the way it was before. She placed her hand on the cool handle, the handle of a cheap yellow colour, the same colour as that stolen pocket watch. She would forgive him. Every wall would be breached between them, and she would finally embrace him and be embraced back.

She opened the door.

The night was silent, the moon hiding behind the clouds. The stars twinkled, benign and distant. The world beyong the door was empty; empty except for a large, pale moth beating itself against the door frame, over and over. Watching it beating itself relentlessly against the wooden panel, she was about to think that dreams ended beyond the threshold of her house. She was about to collapse on the doorstep. She was about to slam the door on the world beyond it, but the moth, so large and pale, like the moon, descended and hovered before her eyes. Slowly, so unnaturally slowly, it moved forward, away from the house. Slowly, as if beckoning her to follow it.

She brushed her hand against the door, and followed the great white moth. The door she left open, and as it was open, and the wind, that wind that had ruffled the silent curtains of her home, blew in, sending all the dust that had settled there in the intervening years swirling in torrents above the floor.

She could have sworn that more than once the moth had turned and looked at her, still in the air, as if waiting for her to catch up with it. She followed it, and as she did, she noticed that the streets were earily silent, sultry and breathless, and that the pale orange light spotting the cobbled roads could not shine at night, weak as it was. She noticed that the carriage horses were gone, and the reins lay limply on the ground. She noticed the that the air smelled of cinammon, cinammon and nutmeg, and a crackling fire...she smelled and inhaled, as she followed the moth, slowly, slowly, until the road passed the last house and the air was fresh with freedom.

Before her, she saw a dawn breaking on the horizon, the light washing over the cobbled roads and motionless carriages. The sunrise beyond the empty, silent houses and lone streets. As she squinted into the distance, she saw the road disappear into a misty haze of pale orange; and on that road that seemed to drown in pale light, a figure materialized.

Small, scrawny, a Christmas present in his hand.

Forgive me, mama, he whispered.

The next morning, after the next door neighbour knocked several times without an answer, they would break into her home and find her motionless, having died in her sleep at the dinner table.

Clutched in her rigid hand was a pocket watch.

A cheap yellow pocket watch.