A Love Restored

Chapter 89

The floorboards sang a song beneath my bare feet, each groan louder than the terrified drum beating in my chest. I hadn’t known my house made this much noise. Then again, it was being amplified by the eerie silence of the night. And of the paranoia in my head. Every breath I dared to suck in felt like swallowing broken glass, and the silence pressed against my eardrums like a suffocating heat. I felt like my eardrums would rupture from the pressure in my ears. Burglars. In my house. The thought clawed at the edges of my sanity, conjuring images from true crime documentaries – masked figures with cold eyes, glinting knives. Bile rose in my throat, but I choked it down, desperately grasping at the frayed threads of control.

I silently went up the stairs to my bedroom, on my tiptoes, I had to tell someone. I had to tell Felix. God, I had just changed phones and been stupid enough not to transfer contacts properly. Now I didn’t have Felix’s dad’s number. I was so stupid.

When I reached my room, I scrambled around trying to find my phone. It was under my pillow.

With trembling fingers, I clutched my phone, a lifeline in what seemed like the worst day of my life. Felix’s contact burned on the screen, a desperate prayer whispered into the digital void. “The subscriber you have called is currently unavailable… Each dial tone was a tiny shard of ice against my hope, the silence screaming in my ears. Even Felix, was out of reach. I was trapped now, alone and utterly helpless. If Felix couldn’t help me, who could?

The tears came then, hot and heavy, blurring the already indistinct shapes of childhood trinkets adorning my walls. I tried to hold them back, a choked sob shaking my frame, but they spilled over like salty tracts of water tracing silently down my cheeks. The silence mocked me, broken only by the Tagged hiccups of my sobs and the wind whispering, rustling through the leaves outside my window.

I had to stay silent. I cried silently, trying to feel courageous, but I was feeling hopeless, and nothing else.

My mother. I had to be with my mother. Together, we could be safe. We could run away. We could hide somewhere, at least.

Bile rose in my throat, but I choked it down, desperately grasping at the frayed threads of control. I scrambled up off the floor, and began to walk down the hallway to my parents‘ room.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drum solo in the suffocating silence of the house. Each creaking floorboard beneath my bare feet felt like a gunshot, each shadow a lurking monster. The scent of fear clung to me like a shroud, thick and metallic.

My phone, a useless talisman in my trembling hand, displayed Felix’s mocking unavailable message. Alone, utterly alone, I crept from my barricaded haven, drawn by a macabre magnetism towards the source of my terror.

I slowly opened the door.

“Mom?” I whispered.

There was no answer. I had a terrible feeling in my chest.

The I

lamp cast long, distorted shadows across the bed, where my mother lay. Still, Unnaturally still.

A scream, raw and primal, ripped from my throat before I could stifle it. It echoed through the house, a desperate plea for help that bounced off the walls and mocked me with its own emptiness.

once warm and crinkled with laughter, now stared ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

My legs gave way, and I collapsed onto the cold floor, tears blurring the scene before me. Her eyes, once wa blankly at the ceiling, a vacant emptiness reflecting the horror that had claimed her.

A single, crimson stain bloomed on her white nightgown, a grotesque rose blooming on porcelain. My mother, the woman who’d sung me lullabies and kissed away my scraped knees, lay before me, a victim of a nightmare i couldn’t wake from.

“It’s a d

dream, it’s a

a dream, it’s a dream.” I murmured to myself. But it wasn’t a dream.

The world tilted, the room spinning around me like a broken kaleidoscope. My breath hitched in my throat, each gasp a shard of glass cutting into my lungs. The air tasted metallic, thick with the coppery tang of blood and the acrid bite of unshed tears.

I wanted to scream again, to unleash the torrent of grief and terror that choked me, but my voice was lost in the echoing silence. My body, numb with shock, refused to obey.

The image of my mother, pale and lifeless, burned into my retinas, a permanent sear etched onto my soul. The warmth of her hand, the comfort of her embrace, were replaced by the chilling coldness of death.

In that moment, the world I knew, the world of fairy lights and bedtime stories, shattered into a million pieces. The shadows that danced on the wall

were no longer figments deat, but the very embodiment of the darkness that had consumed ny life.

And then, a hand on my shoulder. “Little girl.”

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