My family used to have a saying: “When you find the love of your life, you grab them tight and never let go.” So I did. I never imagined I would suffocate them in the process. 

“Eric, don’t.” I felt a salty liquid dampen my cheeks, falling to the ground from my chin. The brick red cobblestones damped, marking the evidence of my tears. I squeezed my hands into fists so tightly I knew my knuckles were white underneath my gloves. I didn’t care. “Please.” The word was a coat of poison on my tongue. My voice trembled. But it didn’t matter, it didn’t stop him from leaving, from getting into that black sedan and driving away. It didn’t stop him from barking those words, dripping with hatred before he removed himself from my life.

“I can’t do this anymore Clare. Get help.”

Then he was gone. And my mind was blank. No thoughts, just despair. Endless, horrible, black despair filling my lungs and cutting off my oxygen. I don’t know how long I stood in that driveway. I was numb to the cold, fall air biting at my face, the harsh breeze that sent needles to my nerves. My face was dry, the remnants of my sobs gone when I turned my back to the empty space where his car used to be.

“Mama?” The small voice came quietly from the living room. 

I took a deep breath and slapped the rubber band against my wrist. One, two, three times. Then I forced a gentle smile across my face.  “Danny. It’s early, why are you awake?”

“I heard yelling.” My son looked at me, his eyes so much like Eric’s, so full of empathy. 

“Oh, honey.” Even as my heart ached, I willed light into my features and kneeled down to Danny’s eye level. His russet hair was ruffled, as if he was tossing and turning in bed. “It’s okay. Your daddy just left for a work trip. Go back to bed, okay? I’ll make some breakfast.”

He hesitated before nodding and slowly going up the stairs and to his room, the wooden floorboards creaking with him.

I felt my face fall as he disappeared from my view. I slapped the rubber band again. One, two, three. Before my mind could fully catch up, my legs were leading me to the bathroom. There was white noise filling my brain. All I thought of were the basics. Toothbrush, toothpaste. Hairbrush, scalp. Medication, swallow. One, two, three.

I looked in the mirror. My pale skin was dull, an imitation of my eyes. My short brown hair was ragged, and my cheekbones sullen. In my reflection the only thing I found comfort in was my necklace. The gold chain traced across my collarbone, meeting from both sides of my neck to a tender, fragile heart. A locket. The locket my mother gave to me before she passed. So long ago. In another world. I looked away, shaking my head as if it would make the memory disappear, and walked to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Eric came back the next morning around 7:00 am. My heart stopped when I spotted the black sedan in the driveway from my bedroom window. My breathing quickened.

 One, two, three. The rubber stung against my raw wrist.

The doorbell rang. 

One, two, three. 

I put on my robe and forced my expression into something unfeeling, something strong. Something so opposite of what I really felt. So add odds with the gaping hole in my heart that was taking everything with it as it fell.

In a blink of an eye, I suddenly found myself opening the door, my mind reeling to catch up with my body.

“Eric.” My voice came out cold.

“Clare.” His blue eyes were hard, so different from the husband I had come to love, to adore, with my whole being. “I need to pick up my stuff.”

My gut plummeted, and I felt my expression flicker. “You’re really doing this? Now? After all this time?”

He repeated flatly, “I need to pick up my stuff.”

Anger bubbled in my stomach, all the way to my mind, clouding my vision. “Fine. Get your stuff.” 

He obliged, mercifully, and spent all of ten minutes inside our—no, my bedroom before walking out with a duffel bag.

“Hurry before Danny wakes up. Go.” Red hot flames, eternally burning and burning as I looked away.

He paused. Hesitant before he faced me. “I was hoping I could say goodbye. For now, that is.”

My anger vanished, as if the fire was being poured over by a bucket of cold water. Danny. My son. His son. The realization was enough to make me bite out, “You have 5 minutes.” The words made my soul, my very being, recoil with disgust. But I forced myself to remember my son—his son.

Something like surprise flickered in his gaze before he headed to Danny’s room. I closed my eyes. 

One, two, three. 

Right before I was about to start to Danny’s room, Eric exited, tears in his eyes. I didn’t care. I gave myself to the flames already rekindling in my core, savoring its bite. “Now … get out.” I didn’t have time to process the words before they were said.

Eric didn’t look at me as he went down the stairs, duffel bag in hand, and drove away from me.

Danny didn’t come downstairs until 10am. I hadn’t moved from my spot on the stairs, staring at the door in front of me, not seeing its carved crevices, its muted burgundy detailing. Frozen in time. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Until I heard his voice.

“I’m sorry mama.”

I turned to Danny, focusing on his hair, gleaming in the brightness reflected from the white walls, making his follicles look as if they were burning. I couldn’t look at his eyes yet. “Oh, honey. Things happen. I’ll be alright. As long as I have you.” As the words were spoken, I realized it was true. Danny was my lifeline. If he was with me … I’d be okay. I looked into his eyes. Eric’s eyes. Almost exactly like Eric’s eyes when … when he came to get his stuff this morning. Cold. Hard. Then it was gone. 

“I’m hungry, mama.” His voice sent chills down my spine. I couldn’t figure out why. I shook my head again.

One, two, three. 

“Of course, honey. Let’s make some food.” 

And we repeated that encounter. Again, and again. Every morning. And every morning, I saw that chill, I heard that unfamiliar voice. For a heartbeat, then it was gone. Eric had blocked me. I didn’t want to care. But I needed him, more than I thought. And as much as I denied it in my head I was … scared of Danny. Acting strangely, sounding off. But his eyes were what frightened me the most. Once a blue ocean, lulling me to sleep, anchoring me to the ground. Now …

A crash in the kitchen pulled me from my thoughts.

“Danny?” I walked into the room and gasped. Dishes were shattered everywhere, and in the middle of it all was my son. Smiling like a snake.

“Danny, what are you doing??” My voice shook as I attempted to keep the raging anger from blurring my vision.

Danny mumbled, something illegible, still giving me a serpentine grin, but ice pooled in my gut freezing my senses.

“What?”

“Your fault.” Danny’s voice was not his own. “Your fault, your fault, your fault!!” He started shrieking, jumping around the kitchen like he was insane.

One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two- 

The band snapped.

I began to panic, my heart beating faster, my lungs not getting enough air. I scrambled for my necklace, my mother’s necklace, in a desperate attempt to ground myself.

It was gone. 

Something worse than anger clouded my vision as I was thrown into the past. My mother on her deathbed, handing me the necklace with the last of her strength. Her death rattle sound in my ears, the light leaving her eyes and not returning, not even as I sobbed, clinging to her, begging for her to come back. Eric had saved me from falling apart entirely. 

My Eric. 

The same one who held me, who freed me, who had come all those weeks ago to eliminate himself from my life when he…. The duffel bag; the duffel bag. 

No. I’m not crazy. I know I’m not crazy.

Before I knew what was happening, I was marching towards the boy in my kitchen, my instincts taking over.

“What have you done with my son?” I seethed as I grabbed him by the shoulders. “What have you done with Danny?”

A speck of fear flashed in his face. Then his madman smile grew. And he began to giggle. The sound stabbed my ears, clawing me apart from the inside out. I let my red hot anger, my black unending despair, take hold of me. Nothing would ground me anymore. Eric had Danny; this boy was not my son. 

Not my son. 

Not. My. Son. 

I grabbed a piece of glass on the floor next to me, gripping it so hard I felt it pierce my skin, the blood trickling from somewhere far away. I swung my arm back, my memories, my life, running through me. Drowning me. Suffocating. My arm hurled toward the mass in my grip. Then my vision went dark.

When my eyes opened, I only saw red. But it wasn’t anger clouding my sight. 

White tablets were scattered across the once clear tiled-covered floor, stained with shards of glass and a hot, sticky liquid. Pills. A bottle caught my eye, the words sketched on the bottle sharpening into legibility.

Iloperidone 

Typically prescribed for: Schizophrenia

No. No.

The scent of the red hit me. Iron. Danny. I whirled around, looking for my son, gasping, shaking from the sobs that were threatening to escape from my body. Danny. My light. My love. My life.

When I saw him, his body was unrecognizable. 

And I was- I was covered with his blood.