I couldn’t stand to be alone in my home anymore, so I took a walk.

  My jogs had become more frequent through the winter months, finding it hard to be around everyone as they got ready for Christmas with their families. I guess they were my family, but I still had a hard time meeting their gazes. I still felt like they judged me. I didn’t even realize what I was wearing. Everyday kind of just blended into the other. I felt the cold night air against my legs in my basketball shorts. My arms shivered in the sleeveless tank top.

  Amelia still didn't feel safe around me alone. She'd leave the room if I was the only one there. Ethan had also been distant since then. Only Orion had really fallen back into normalcy with me, reaching out to do stuff together and trying to include me in the group activities. I cherished our mended friendship and his desperate attempt to include me.

  Kalysta sees me the most nowadays. She's often in the gym or training room. She barely sleeps anymore, instead, constantly pushing herself. Chase agreed to increase her training, and the two spend a lot of time alone. Makes me wonder...

  Being ostracized, even if it was mostly self imposed, didn't sit well with me and the stress started to wear away at me. Despite my efforts to regain control of the situation, my own feelings about myself hurt the most. I jogged my usual route, my mind lost in thought. I didn't even realize when I had stopped running and had boarded a bus. I ended up somewhere familiar without even trying. I reluctantly walked up the stairs and opened the broken apartment lobby door. The single elevator took forever. I had a key for this place, but I knocked anyway.

  “Hello?” Her voice was frail, broken.

  “Hey Mom, it’s me.”

  “Erik, hunny?” She opened the door and I cringed. Her hair was white and her skin hangs loose. Crow’s feet etch her tired eyes. She wrapped me in a big hug, but she could hardly keep her arms around me.

  “What a pleasant surprise, I was just about to go to bed. But that’s ok.” She shuffled back to her chair in the corner of the meager apartment. She poured herself a glass of wine from the bottle sitting on the table beside her chair. I send her money all the time, but she prefers to live like this since she got out of the mental institution Dad had put her in years ago. I bought her all kinds of new stuff, but she just used the same things from her past. The same things Dad had bought and left behind. His picture was still on the wall by her chair.

  “What brings you by Erik?” Her hands shook as she reached for her glass of wine. I looked into the kitchen and saw uncountable empty bottles, lined neatly along the counter by the sink.

  “I wanted to talk to you about some stuff.” I grabbed one of the old dining room chairs that sat stuffed off in a corner, around a table that no one used anymore, and dragged it closer to her.

  “What’s on your mind son?” Her face turned to sadness, when she finally got a good look at me. I guess I wore my pain more than I thought.

  “I feel like there is too much of Dad in me." I said quietly. She rocked back and forth in her chair for a moment, nodding, so I continued. "I damaged my team. I failed them as a leader. I can’t hold my temper. I really hurt someone I cared about.” I spill everything, everywhere, like a burst sewer line; all my shit.

  She listened politely the whole time, her lip quivering. I sighed.

  “Is she pregnant?” She finally asked.

  “What?” I’m shocked. "No, I never actually did anything to her. I just..."

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “When I got pregnant with you, your father stopped screwing around on me.” She said, as if it was some fond memory.

  It's wasn't even the truth.

  "Mom, no." I shook my head. "Listen, I'm just really struggling..."

  “You know, your father could have been a great leader for the Order. But Gideon always favored Anders. Took sympathy on him because he was an orphan. Your father was a great man, Erik. You can be a great man like your father.” She said, sipping deeply on her wine.

  “Mom, Dad was not a good person.” I frowned, staring at my Mother sadly.

  “Hush,” She whispered, looking up at the portrait of the man on the wall like he was listening. The man who I hated myself for becoming. “Magnus was a great man. He was a good father, and a good husband.”

  “Mom…” I tried.

  “I miss him dearly. Everyday. He should have just come home to me, and let me take care of him. I could have made him better.” She lamented.

  “He was a raging alcoholic.” I said, but her eyes were already glazed over, lost in her skewed memories.

  “Why didn’t you send him back to me? Why didn’t you save him Erik?” She looked at me with her sad doe eyes and I had to steady myself and breathe deep to not scream at her.

  “I did my best Mom.” I lied. I was just a child when my father was paralyzed during the mission on the Rig. She knew I couldn't save him.

  “He dedicated his whole life to the Order and none of you bothered to help him.” She whined, sipping deeply on her wine again, before refilling the glass.

  “I just needed some advice Mom…” She cuts me off again.

  “Magnus would have known what to say to you.” She snapped. Suddenly I was the enemy. Between years of abuse, the pills and the booze, she was lost.

  “You know what, I don’t know why I came here.” I stood slowly and went to move the chair. Her liver spotted hand grabbed my wrist, and she dug her nails into my flesh.

  “You killed your father Erik.”

  My heart shattered. I had done everything I could for a man who was abusive to his family, miserable to the world and so deep in the bottle, he was never sober. I would send almost all of my money to this horrid little woman, who still obsessed over the man who beat her and cheated on her. I spent my whole youth visiting her and helping her. I practically raised myself if not for Anders. I had come here seeking some kind of emotional solace from my own thoughts, only to see the physical manifestations of my own issues.

  “I wish you’d join him.” I whispered, as I pulled my hand away.

  “What’s that, you ungrateful child?” She stood and shuffled closer to me, throwing her wine glass on the ground, adding to the stained carpet. “You ruined everything for me. If you hadn’t been born, Magnus and I would never have had any of the problems we did. He was a great man!” She shouted in my face. I could practically taste the wine.

  “He was an abusive drunk Mom! He hurt you. He hurt me! You’re probably too drunk to notice, but I came here reaching out to you. I needed you! I needed you both! I’m fucked up because of you both! This is all your fault. You made me like this! You ruined my life.” I screamed back. I couldn’t help it. I felt the hot liquid run down my face. The tears burned my eyes.

  “I wish you’d never been born. You ruined my life.” She took a swat at me and I stumbled back against the old dining room table, surprised. A table we used to eat at together. Where my father would spit out my mother’s cooking and call her a stupid whore. The table where she would sit up and cry all night and drink herself stupid. The table my father slammed my head against, telling me I wasn’t good enough. Fear made my mother stumble back into her chair, her arms raised in front of her, horror on her face, like she was remembering something traumatic.

  I didn’t even notice I had raised my hand to defend myself against her. What’s worse, was Mjolnir in my raised hand, sparking.

  “I hate you.” I whispered, my voice cracking.

  “I hate you more.” She hissed back at me. Words a child never wants to hear from their parent.

  I felt sick. I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash her face in with my damned hammer. I wanted to beat her to death with her own damn wine bottles. But the little boy inside of me just wanted her to love me, and hold me and tell me it was going to be okay. That's all I wanted from either of them, my whole damned life. I just wanted to be okay…

  A scream tore free of my throat, primal and emotional as lightning shot from my hammer, but not at my Mother.

  I shattered the wine bottles.

  I broke the television.

  I destroyed the portrait of my father.

  Her words echoed over and over in my head, as she screamed at me to get out. That she hated me. That she was going to call the cops. I couldn’t stand to be around her anymore, so I decided to talk a walk again. To jog down the street, in the cold. I ran until my tears streamed off my face, until my chest burned. I ran away from my Mother and my past.

  And I wasn't coming back.