Page 26 of Fear No Hell

Sam

Ilove my mother. Really I do. She has spent most of her life protecting me from the people who want to hurt me.

Instead of staying with the man who offered us financial security but was a monster, she became a single mother and turned herself inside out and upside down to make sure I had every opportunity available to me, including access to a prosthetic limb that was leagues beyond anything on the market at the time, a prestigious education, and a safe, warm home.

She wasn't perfect—cue traumatic memories of forced commitments—but she tried. I can’t begin to imagine a better mother.

But if she doesn’t stop talking right fucking now, I’m going to start screaming.

Because I haven’t told Lila everything. She knows about the commitments.

The restraining order. The abortive attempts to help her escape and make sure she was real so I could know I wasn’t exactly as crazy as everyone was saying.

“Poor Sam, lost his leg and his mind,” was the shittiest platitude I heard said to my mother by one of her friends who had drunk far too much and didn’t know I was still awake at the time.

What Lila doesn’t know is she became the perfect woman in my head that day in the attic.

At nine, too young to know what made a woman beautiful, I still knew she was the most gorgeous woman I would ever see.

And when she told me to run instead of staying to help her?

I couldn’t help but fall a little bit in love with her.

The more my mom says, the more Lila is piecing together. She’s gone still in that way that signals something’s off; I can’t tell whether it’s a good off or a bad one, though. Her only movements are the rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes are locked on mine.

I think she’s responding to my mother. I can see her lips moving, her words and the tone she’s saying them in inaudible over the roar of panic in my ears. Without hearing what she’s saying, I can’t gauge where her head is at right now.

My mom may not know that the woman she’s telling about my “fantasy attic girl” is the so-called fantasy herself, but Lila does.

My stomach turns over as my mother takes her dishes and silverware out to the table like it’s perfectly normal for her to eat dinner at whatever the fuck time in the morning it is right now.

As soon as my mom clears out of the kitchen, her steps fading away as she walks to the dining room, I close the distance between Lila and me. I don’t know what I’m going to say or do; all I know is the four feet of tiled space between us is absolutely unbearable.

She lifts her chin as I stop inches away from her. It’s not judgmental or angry. More contemplative than anything else. Honestly, I can’t tell what her emotions are at the moment.

I feel like I need to apologize.

I’m opening my mouth to blurt some barely formed thought out—and it’s anyone’s guess what it might actually be once I give voice to the nebulous fog in my brain—when Lila reaches out and grips my hand.

“It’s okay.” Her thumb rubs soothing circles along the skin on the back of my hand, a slow, calming pet along the tender skin.

“What—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” The pass of her soft skin over mine—small insignificant touches that would only be considered sensual in Pride and Prejudice—is taking me apart.

“You were a kid, and I was a woman everyone told you didn’t exist. Of course you wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. ”

“It was more than that,” I whisper, leaning my head down to hers until our foreheads are touching. Our tangled fingers linger in the space between us. “I—"

“Can I help serve—oh!” My mother’s voice breaks the fraught emotions hanging in the air around us. “Oh, I’m so sorry for interrupting!”

“It’s nothing, Michelle,” Lila cuts her off smoothly, pulling away and tugging me to the table by the hand she still held. The one she didn’t let go of when my mother interrupted. “I’ll bring everything in, and we can serve ourselves if that’s alright.”

“Oh, that sounds absolutely lovely!” My mother claps her hands excitedly.

Lila sends a small smile her way. “Stay,” she orders quietly as she presses me into my chair before letting go of me and heading back towards the kitchen.

She told me to stay. So I do. Simple as that.

I stay seated through dinner, which tastes good if you ignore the mud-like texture—don’t ask me how she managed to make stew doughy—and while my mother and Lila get along like a house on fire.

I don’t move until everyone has finished their dinner, at which point Lila gives me a tiny nod.

With her permission, I finally stand and start collecting all of our dishes, stacking them in preparation to return everything to the kitchen.

“You two are so sweet together!” My mom hasn’t stopped speaking in exclamation marks since we sat down.

Although she would never say it out loud, she has been waiting for me to get my shit together and meet a nice partner to settle down with since I was old enough to be interested in sex.

Lila—brilliant, gorgeous, funny Lila—checks every box my mother probably had for my future partner. “How did you two meet?”

Lila flinches, the subtle movement enough to catch my mother’s attention.

“Did I say something wrong?” My mother’s brow furrows in confusion.

“No,” I answer since I know Lila needs time to crawl out of the memories bombarding her. Reaching over, I grip her hand under the table, hoping it will keep her in the present. Ward away the horrors of her past. “We met at Arthur’s retirement party a few months ago.”

Mom’s shoulders shift, draw up towards her shoulders as her face shutters and her fingers start an aggressive tap against the tabletop.

“You’re one of Arthur’s people?” The coldness radiating from her is a sudden shift from how she normally is; hell, it’s a stark change from how she was ten seconds ago.

A growl, more than a noise, not quite a word, rasps out of the woman sitting next to me.

In the safe hold of my fingers, Lila’s hand starts shaking.

A flare of pain erupts as five suddenly sharp points prick against my skin.

There are the claws. A breath later, warm liquid trails down the back of my hand. And there’s the blood.

The minor injury doesn't matter in the face of the anger filtering through me at what Arthur did to Lila. And that’s not even touching on what an absolute abusive piece of shit father he was, something I’ve had over two decades and a ton of therapy—both before and after my surgery—to unpack.

I’m struggling not to react to the fury and pain.

Biting into my cheek to stop myself from verbally abusing Arthur and maybe follow up by stomping my way to the basement and setting him ablaze the same way we did his house.

Ultimately, Lila’s pain centers me. Brings me back to the table, so I’m able to pull myself together enough to correct my mother’s assumption since Lila doesn’t seem able to.

“No, she came with someone else. They didn’t tell her what the event was for.” I’m proud my voice doesn’t shake.

“And you, Sammy?” Mom purses her lips like she already knows the answer to the question she’s about to ask. “What were you doing there?”

I stay quiet.

“Oh, honey,” Mom sighs, her shoulders falling as she crumbles inward, suddenly looking so much older than her 50 years. “You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” I ask, still clenching Lila’s hand.

I don’t know what Mom’s about to accuse me of—searching for the woman in the attic again, breaking into Arthur’s house, burning the house to the ground, imprisoning him in my basement, or any of the many other felonies that I committed that night and, if I’m being honest, every one since—so I let her finish her sentence. No reason to finish it for her.

“You weren’t trying to get into the attic again, were you?” Mom whispers. “You can’t get arrested for breaking and entering, not again.”

“I didn’t break and enter, Mom, I promise,” I reassure her, ignoring her question about the attic. “His publisher let me know it was happening." Only a slight mistruth—they announced it in the papers and made sure to emphasize just how exclusive the invitations were.

“And you weren’t the one—”

“You want to finish that thought, Mom?” I raise an eyebrow casually.

“You didn’t burn his house down, right?” Her voice is so low I have to read her lips to know what she’s saying.

“No,” I confirm emphatically. Well, I didn’t.

Technically, I only gave Lila the lighter.

Lila actually set the fire. And wasn’t that just some sort of poetic irony: Lila setting fire to everything I thought I knew about myself, making me want to rise from the ashes, so I can give her the world she deserves.

“Oh thank God.” Mom hisses in a deep breath before exhaling sharply, a look of relief flashing over her features.

“When the cops talked to me a few months back, I told them you wouldn’t ever do that.

I was talking out my ass, though. They weren’t going to take my baby boy away in handcuffs. Not again.”

“Mom, like I told you back in January, the cops cleared me. Not to mention if I wanted to burn Arthur’s house down, I’ve had so many opportunities before now,” I joke. “I’m not gonna go to his retirement party to do it. Plus I got there late and left before it ended.”

“And you met Lila sometime during that time?” She doesn’t sound too suspicious, but she also doesn’t sound like she’s totally buying it.

“Yeah. Even though she was with someone, I saw her across the room and—” I shrug.

It isn’t completely a lie. I did see her across the room, and I had been drawn to her.

I’m leaving out the part where there had been a sea of corpses, blood, and viscera separating us.

Probably a detail I shouldn’t share with my mother. “When you know, y’know?”

As a less-than-impulsive person for most of my life, this is flagrant bullshit.

I know it, and so does Mom. I have never once “just known” something.

Except for Lila. Lila has always been my “just known.” Since the first time I saw her to now.

I just fucking know with her. She's the exception to every rule I've ever had.

Maybe some of that certainty bleeds into what I’m saying because by the end of my explanation, Mom is racing around the table and flinging her arms around my neck.

Her petite body is shaking as she kisses the top of my head repeatedly.

“I’m so happy for you,” she finally says when she pulls away, running one hand over my hair.

“Thanks, Mom.” I wrap my free arm around my mother’s waist while I maintain my hold on Lila with the other.

“You deserve the world.” Another pass of her hand over my hair, the inky dark color of it identical to her own.

“So much of your life was stolen from you by him.” Her lips pull down in a hate-filled sneer that I only ever see when she talks about Arthur.

Besides Lila and I, my mother might be the only other person in the world who truly hates him and wants to see him dead.

She might actually throw a party if she knew what we were doing to him in the basement…

not that I want to test that theory by telling her.

“I just want my perfect baby boy to have the world.”

“Mom, I’m 27.” I roll my eyes at her. “Baby boy’s a bit of a stretch at this point, don’t you think?”

“No.” Mom shakes her head so emphatically her hair flares around her face.

“You’ll always be my baby boy, no matter what.

You’ve always been too empathetic and good for this world.

” She leans in and kisses my hair then extends her hand towards Lila as she murmurs offhandedly, “I’m so glad you turned out nothing like him.

That you took after your father instead. ”

“Wait.” My head snaps back so quickly I hear my neck crack. “What did you say?”

I must have misheard her.

My mother freezes, and I know… she didn’t misspeak. She didn’t flub her words. It was a massive and completely inadvertent slip. One that means she may have been lying to me for my whole life.

“I-nothing. Nothing.” Mom steps away quickly as I stand, her arms falling to her sides as she backs out of the room. Towards the front door. “I didn’t-nothing. The old brain doesn’t work as well as it used to.”

“No.” Behind me, I feel Lila’s warmth seconds before her touch lands on my back, rubbing soothing circles.

They center me enough to breathe through the weird combination of anger, confusion, betrayal, and relief flooding through me, enough to see the shadows shifting at the corners of my vision, huge pockets of darkness pacing around me in shapes that look almost human. “What. Did. You. Say.”

It's not a question.

“I-I-I—” my mother stammers, her steps backwards towards the front door quick and nervous. “Noth-I don’t know-it was—”

“How did I take after my father and not Arthur if Arthur is my father?”

“N-n-no, you must have mishear—”

“Mom, I know you’re not fucking gaslighting me right now.” I didn’t know my voice could drop that deep, into a growl so filled with bass it sounds distorted. “I heard what you said. And I want an explanation for it.”

“But—”

“Now.” All around me, the shadows are whirling, closing in around us in a steady rhythm that feels synced to the beat of my heart.

“I can’t,” she whispers as she takes one final step back. As her hand wraps around the front door handle.

When did we get to the front door?

“I can’t tell you, Sammy,” she repeats. “I promised I wouldn’t.” A sob tears from her throat, and then she’s grabbing her purse from the floor beside the front door and tearing out of my home. A broken, “I’m sorry,” trails her as she sprints to the car.

And I’m left standing there in the open doorway, Lila’s arms wrapped around me from behind, her face pressed against my back in silent solidarity while everything I thought I knew about my life shatters into pieces.

My mother is long gone—for how long I don’t actually know, although I can tell enough time has passed for me to be shivering in the February cold—when I finally turn in Lila’s embrace.

She tilts her head up, her pale blue eyes wide and concerned when they meet mine.

In shock, I ask her: “What the fuck just happened?”