The Child by Robin Brown

Author:Robin Brown [Brown, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-18T22:00:00+00:00

16.

Emma slowly opened her eyes. For a long time, she didn’t know who she was. It was one of those strange times when she was still half asleep and completely unaware of who she was, what her life had become or any of her problems she had coming for her. It would have been nice had she been awake enough to enjoy it. It was a horrible catch twenty two. If ignorance is bliss, how do you enjoy paradise?

Eventually, her mind caught up with her body and she fully awoke. Tommy was lying next to her. He was still fast asleep. Curiously, Tommy was a little more sprawled out than usual. Normally he was still and closed in on himself, but this morning his arms were spread and his legs were too, though they were hidden under the blanket. Emma supposed he must have been seriously tired after yesterday’s trying day.

She got up and plodded over to the landing. There were little spots of mud on the carpet. Footprints. But she wasn’t distracted by them. Maybe she was too tired or maybe she just didn’t care, either way, she barely noticed them at all.

Emma reached the landing and sub-consciously headed towards the bathroom. Her eyes noticed it before her mind acknowledged it. Realisation so delayed that she almost walked on into the bathroom.

Tommy ran past her. He never ran. But now he did. He was excited, then alarmed, then frantic, everything he should be… and Emma just stood there, in the middle of the landing, staring at her three year old son shaking the lifeless body of his father, his body draped over the bath. Blood was everywhere, in every corner, on every inch, down the side of the bath, over the landing carpet and even forming little rivers that dribbled down the stairs. Simon was covered in it, everything from the neck down was stained by it, and Tommy was standing in it. His feet covered, his hands dirtied by it, and his chest splattered by it. A sea of red.

There was nothing inside her. Her skin was ice cold. All heat from her body had vanished. And then there was pain. Pain from within that surged up inside her gut and pushed it’s way further still through her chest. And it came out of her. A cry of pain, terror and loss. It hurt her rib cage, it sucked everything from her lungs and it strangled her throat.

Tommy stared at her. His passive face transfixed by her reaction. But she didn’t see him. She didn’t see anything. She fell to her knees. The cry was dead, leaving her somehow emptier than before, but still it wasn’t enough. Still, her body wanted to get rid of more of her. It squeezed every drop from her stomach, twisting it inside and out, and what pathetic pittance it produced immediately came up and Emma vomited. Her sick mixing with his blood.

Crippled on all fours, Emma stared at the carpet. But there was no carpet.

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