Heaven by Mur Lafferty

Author:Mur Lafferty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: afterlife, mythology, heaven
Publisher: Mur Lafferty

* * *

I don’t know when my mother officially snapped. My father said later it was post partum depression that just never went away. She had seemed normal, a little moody, maybe, but nothing to make me fear her. Then one day I came home from school to find her in the kitchen, crying about a broken computer and scrabbling in a drawer for a knife. She shouted at me to go outside, but I heard my sister Megan crying and I ran down the hall to check on her.

Megan hid in the corner of her room, clutching her blanket. I hugged her and told her it would be okay, that Mommy was just mad and she’d get over it, and that I would always protect her, but my mother was already in the doorway.

I don’t remember the rest. Or, at least, I told myself, my father, the reporters, and the shrinks that I didn’t. But the next thing I allow myself to remember I was in the hospital with cuts all over my arms. My father, red-faced and exhausted, was sitting by my bedside, grasping my knee because my hands were so bandaged. He said I was so brave for trying to stop her from hurting Megan. My mother was confined to an institution, later found not guilty of second-degree murder by reason of insanity. My father divorced her and moved us to Tennessee to restart our lives. Megan went with us, her ashes in a jar embossed with angels, with a small portion of her in a glass vial that I kept by my bed.

The cuts healed, eventually. I was in therapy throughout high school. I never saw my mother again; my last memory was of her staring blankly at me during my testimony. I told Kate she died before we left home, but she was only dead to me. She died for real four years ago. I did not go to her funeral.

I was only ten when it happened, but I carried the guilt of Megan’s death for the rest of my short life.

Loki’s words did their job. Ragnarok, the end of the world began, beasts and gods and monsters clashed on a field beyond us, and I knelt in front of the World Tree and cried.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.