Two days earlier
It was raining.
It pounded against the roof, pummeling the silence of his mind into oblivion.
He was sitting with his back to the door, his mattress a barrier in between, leaning against it and staring up at the sky from the clarity of his bedroom window.
Through a crack in the glass formed a steady leak.
He didn't hear her footsteps over the sound of the rain but he knew the instant she entered the room. He felt it. Felt the erratic beat of his pulse that matched the rhythm of the rain and the stiffening of his spine that made the ridges of his bones dig into his bed frame.
Silence. All he heard was silence and she was suffocating him with it, pushing it down on his chest until his lungs could no longer draw breath.
He knew she was standing on the opposite side of his bed, staring at the back of his head, because her knees were knocking into it with enough force to cause the mattress to bump against him.
"You finished packing up? You don't want to miss the bus, otherwise you'll have to wait for another, which could take who knows how many hours." Her voice was toneless, empty of any inflection.
He glanced down at the blood that had been steadily pooling on his wrist and then back up at the crack in the window.
"I don't want to go," he whispered, his voice a small exhale of air.
The mattress knocked into his back.
"And, of course, you'll want to make sure you have the money for a ticket because I don't have any cash so you're on your own for that one. If you really can't find any then maybe you can convince someone at the bus stop to spot you or something. Then you also want to make sure that you have everything you need packed because I won't be sending-"
"Please. Please don't make me go. I don't want to leave," he pleaded. He stared at the crack in the window with the steadily dripping rain and then down at the blood leaking from his wrist. He wondered which would stop trickling first.
She was smothering him with silence, choking him with all the things she wouldn't say, wouldn't let him say. He could hear it, the drip. Drop. Drip. Drop. Of the rain and the blood and the blood and the rain.
A deep breath in, an anguished exhale. "This is not up for debate. So I suggest you suck it up and deal. After what you did you're lucky I don't send you somewhere worse. So much worse."
His shoulders tightened and his spine stiffened. "It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it, I swear. But he wouldn't stop and I begged him to stop and I was scared and afraid and angry and all I wanted was for him to stop. Mom-"
"You will not speak about him that way in this house, not under this roof," she snarled, shoving the mattress so hard that he had to catch himself to keep from falling over. "I was your mother. I was your mother and I was supposed to love you unconditionally but I couldn't and I still can't. After what you did I can barely stand to look at you, to breathe the same air as you, let alone love you. I can't love you like a mother should. The very sight of you makes me sick. You have no idea how difficult it is as a mother to-to hate your own child. It makes you hate yourself. Until I can be your mother again, until I can bring myself to love you like a mother should and forgive you, then yes, you are leaving and that's it. Do not make me drag you out of here by your hair," she snapped. Her voice was tremulous, tinged with hysteria and so all he said in response, with stark resolution, was "I love you."
Her silence was drowning him him, choking him, strangling him, running its mouth so loud and sucking all the air from the room with its rapid inhales and poisoning the rest with its exhales.
He couldn't speak. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. And god, he didn't want to exist.
He imagined then his mother's warm arms, her perfume that always made her smell like floral cotton candy, her smooth waves brushing his cheek, her crushing grip, all part of the experience of giving her a hug. A hug. The warm comfort and caring affection from his mother's embrace was something he craved in that endless moment of time.
He just wanted a hug from his mom.
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.
The blood on his wrist, the crack in the window.
He didn't hear her footsteps as she walked away.
But he felt her absence. Because suddenly his heart felt broken.
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.
He could still hear the rain drumming against the roof, momentarily blinded by a flash of lightning as it streaked across the sky and painted it white with a flourish of bright brilliance so stark against the heavy inkiness of the night sky.
He wondered, idly, if after the rain and it's vicious storm whether or not there'd be a rainbow.