Page 19 of Enticing Monsters

It’s dangerous to give your back to a predator, especially one as unhinged as V, but I’ll need to trust that his obsession with Sera outweighs his need to kill me for my insolence.

I don’t have time to deal with V with everything else going on.

With a grunt, I slide myself into the car, but I don’t immediately pull away. Instead, I stare at my fingers, bleached white and gripping the steering wheel hard enough to crack it.

I almost forgot what day it is today. Honestly, I would’ve forgotten…if my mother hadn’t texted me.

Somehow, someway, Serafina was able to dissipate the shadows that surrounded me for far too long, bathing them in light. But now, I’m facing the cold, hard truth of my reality, glaringly more obvious in the illumination of day. It’s time for me to pay for my sins, as I have every day since the incident. It’s time for me to repent and plead to every god in the universe to forgive me.

My mother claims I’m a monster, and one day a year…I actually believe her.

Mom is waitingfor me outside of the trailer, her emaciated body looking thinner than ever before, the stench of alcohol wafting off of her in palpable waves. I can smell it even before she enters the car, her hair greasy, her eyes glazed, and her clothing ripped, showing more skin than I ever wanted to see on my mother.

“Drive,” she tells me curtly, not even bothering to give me directions.

I know exactly where she wants me to go, the same place I’ve gone every year since I was a kid.

How could I have forgotten what day it is? With everything going on with Tristan, Kian, and Sera, I allowed myself to believe… Well, it’s stupid. A monster is never allowed to truly forget the sins he committed.

The silence in the car is tense and uncomfortable. I feel a weight on my shoulders that’s always accompanied by someone’s eyes on me. They cut at my skin like daggers, a physical sensation that twists my stomach and covers me in a layer of frost.

But still, my mother doesn’t speak, her gaze continuing to crawl over my skin like an invasion of skittering insects.

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel.

All too soon, we pull into a familiar, modest building with brick walls, a huge awning, and a small parking lot. I steer us into one of the empty slots but don’t immediately make a move to get out.

Mom doesn’t either.

And then she speaks, the disdain in her voice dripping like acid eroding rock. “Where were you today?”

I don’t respond, knowing that anything I say will only make things worse, will only exacerbate her ire.

“You know what day it is,” she continues in her curt, no-nonsense voice that has insidious fear slithering through my mind and grasping my heart.

I’m three times her size, but when she speaks to me like that, I feel like a little boy all over again, one who desperately wants his mother to love him.

“Or are you so much of a monster that you forgot?”

Again, I don’t answer, and that only seems to heighten her anger.

I brace myself, readying for the hit a second before she delivers it to my shoulder. She’s so frail and weak that it feels more like a light tap than her attempt to punch me.

“You fucking selfish boy.” She opens her car door jerkily and steps out.

I press my lips together and follow her, still not saying anything, still avoiding eye contact.

“This is why we come here. So you can see what you did.” She wobbles slightly due to her intoxicated state, but I don’t lift a hand to help her.

The last time I did, she slapped me so hard across the face I received an actual bruise from the rings adorning her skeletal fingers.

I follow a few steps behind her, keeping my head lowered, my dark hair obscuring my eyes from view. I don’t want to see the accusatory stares I know are following me down the hallway. Mother has made it clear time and time again to the staff the reason for our visits.

And the reason why my father is here in the first place.

The nurse in bright-blue scrubs looks up from his computer at the front desk when we arrive. He takes one look at my mother, frowns, and then jerks his head towards the hallway.

My mother is a frequent visitor, even if I’m only forced to come here once a year.

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