Page 210 of Creep
I was distinctlyaware that I was dreaming.
And it wasn’t a nightmare, a revisit of a childhood memory that had haunted me for so long.
It was something else entirely.
I dreamed of my mom.
She was happy and smiling.
I grew up poor in a single mother’s household. We didn’t have a lot, and Mom had worked long hours just to put a roof over our heads.
Things weren’t always great, but the happy memories seemed to balance out all the shit, and I did remember a time when I was truly innocent in the world.
This was one of those times.
We were running around in an expansive field, the grass green, the day hot, with the sun shining brightly.
We were playing tag.
Mom always let me win, convincing me that I really was one of the best runners in the world.
It boosted my confidence, making me feel as if I could take on anything and everything.
“Time out,” Mom called.
I stopped running and looked back at her. She was breathing hard, but she was smiling.
I rushed back to her waiting arms, burying my face in her stomach and taking in the familiar, comforting scent that seemed to just scare away all the monsters.
“Look at how fast you’ve gotten, my lovely boy.”’
I grinned up at her.
Her smile faltered.
I never understood it before—why she would sometimes look at me like this—and it wasn’t until I got a little older that I realized it was because I had my father’s eyes.
Leo raped my mom when she was only eighteen, and her parents kicked her out for getting pregnant.
She never took any of that anger out on me, though I knew it sometimes made her uneasy to look at my eyes and see my father.
I had it better than Theo, at least. His mother hated him for what had happened to her. Up until her death, when he was sent to foster care, but my own mom…
And suddenly, I wasn’t that little boy in her arms anymore but a grown man. I stood up to my full height.
For the first time, Mom had to tip her head back to look me in the eyes and not the other way around. But her face remained frozen in age. She was still that beautiful twenty-three-year-old who had her life taken away from her way too soon.
She never lost her smile.
“I miss you so much,” I said to her.
She reached up and patted my cheek affectionately. “My sweet, beautiful boy. I’m sorry Mom wasn’t there to protect you.”
I shook my head. “It’s not your fault.”
No matter how shitty my life got, I had never blamed her for not being there.
“It doesn’t make it any easier, does it?” she asked.
