Chapter 515: A Familiar Stranger
I noticed that Sammy looked as if she was living a dream pouring into reality... and a bad one at that.
That look, that sentiment, I knew it all too well – figuring if she blinked hard and fast enough, any moment she’d wake up and this strangely vivid nightmare would hopefully come to an end.
When this all first started, Sammy could hardly look at Harry without having her skin crawl and immediately averting her eyes a second later, unnerved.
Here and now, she looked at him, still unnerved, still wanting to veer her gaze away, but there was something else now – something I’m not so sure she was even sure what it could be.
But I knew it was. Instantly, I did. I’ve seen that own look in my eyes too many times to count now – that feeling, that uncertainty... sympathy.
“Te... Terestra...” Sammy quietly uttered the name, her blue eyes gazing at a familiar slender figure, and yet finding only a stranger.
And the stranger responded, quickly whirling back around towards her, wearing a familiar gentle expression.
.....
“Oh, Samantha...” Mom sighed, hearing the tension and apprehension in her voice. “I understand. You’re shocked, you’re confused...”
“No, I’m terrified,” Sammy said, visibly shaking. “Every night for so long, I’ve dreamt of this – of you, the things you’ve done. But I wake up and I see that you’re different, you’re not the person in my dreams. When I’m awake, you’re my mother. At least for some time... I could still think that.”
“I am still your mother...”
“Then why don’t you sound like my mother?” She asked. “Why don’t you look like my mother? Instead, now you act like her, talk like her... that person haunting my dreams, night after night.”
Some part of me felt the growing urge to step in-between them both, quickly put an end to things before anything could escalate into something either one of them could possibly regret.
But ultimately, I withheld myself from interjecting. This conversation, this problem, it was clear to me that for once, this wasn’t my issue to resolve.
It was theirs.
“There’s a reason why I’ve deliberately chosen to hide my past from you,” Mom told her. “The distress you’re feeling, on top of various other conflicting emotions. I wanted to spare you from them. You shouldn’t have to feel them...”
Yet it seems it doesn’t matter what she tells her. The more she spoke, Sammy’s exasperation just kept mounting to newer heights.
“Spare me?” She raised her brows. “Or spare you?”
“I have no need to spare myself of anything, dear,” Mom replied. “You on the other hand, you’ve always been such a feeling girl... it’s one of the traits I love about you. Always caring, always feeling more than most.”
But Sammy was immune to words of affections at the moment, maintaining her piercing glare.
“So – what? You were just going to keep them buried? Do you really think you can get away without ever having to bring up the things you have done? Harry, Jay – whoever he is – he’s right! How do you get to live peacefully after what you’ve done?”
Across from us, on the other end of the barn, in that pitch darkness, Harry’s voice sounded in a wheezy chuckle.
“What a human question that is, Terestra,” He mocked, smiling a wide, deranged, inhuman smile. “Now, how will you answer her, huh? Your own daughter? As a God? As a mother? A monster? Go on then, justify it!”
But his words fell on deaf ears. Mom remained unfazed – her soft gaze never once straying away from Sammy’s.
“What do you wish to hear from me, Samantha?” She asked her quietly. “Do you want me to regret the things I’ve done? Feel remorse over my past actions? That I’ve changed for the better, that I’m a different person than I used to be back then?”
“Yes!” Sammy responded, her voice bouncing across the deathefening quiet. “Tell me you’re ashamed! Tell me you feel guilty over all the lives you took! Don’t just stand there feeling... feeling nothing! Comfort me, assure me... like you’ve always done! Let me know that you’re still my mother, and not her – that person, that monster!”
Mom heard Sammy’s cries, her desperate pleads, and simply shook her head.
“That would be lying, my dear...” She said. “And I refuse to lie to you anymore than I’ve already done. I love you both too much to do that.”
That wasn’t what Sammy wanted to hear. The total opposite, in fact. But it was what she needed to know. After days of bitter resentment, of denial and anger, she finally heard the simple truth of the entire matter.
“That monster is your mother,” the familiar stranger in black told her. “And she does not regret a single thing she’s done.”
It was the deja vu in its most literal form. I recalled having this same talk, hearing familiar words being said to me, and I remembered my confusion, my horror... and especially my anger.
Looking at Sammy now was like peering into a mirror of the past, except only I drastically paled in comparison... Sammy felt more than I.
She always does.
Mom blew another sigh, briefly closing her weary eyes.
“There will be more time to talk later, after this,” She said. “Properly talk. And as long as we need to. Until you understand.”
“I already understand,” Sammy muttered. “You said enough.”
“Samantha...”
Mom stepped forward, only for Sammy to take a further step back in return. They both froze, they both stared... and Mom kept her distance.
“If it’s any consolation,” She said to her. “You’re right, I’ve taken many countless lives. But here, right now, thanks to your brother... this will be the first time I get to save a life instead of taking one away.”
For a long while, it was just a continuous silence, a continuous drizzle that pattered on the barn roof.
It took a moment to realize I couldn’t see anything anymore in the corner of my eyes. It took me a little longer to hear the sound of footsteps gradually fading into the rain.
And when Sammy finally replied, that’s when the door swung closed for the final time – her words resounding unfamiliar, without emotion... as if speaking to a total stranger.
“It doesn’t.”
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