Our Infinite Fates

THE MOTHER RAN HER helix fingernails through her long sheets of white hair. The locks were stained charcoal grey in several places, and the hollows of her cheeks seemed more pronounced than before. The wounds I’d inflicted had closed, leaving behind blackish scars from the suffering that had healed them.

‘I tried never to punish you as a child.’ Her words were cold, disaffected, but her eyes shone bright with hurt. ‘You were all I had. Letting you go above to reap was my mistake, because I soon grew addicted to your suffering. It was so raw, so potent, and it fuelled me like nothing or nobody else. Perhaps because you were mine. An extension of me. And so when you suffer, it is more powerful than I ever could have imagined.’ A twist of her gnarled lips. ‘Since discovering that quirk of nature, I have not known what to do – let it keep flowing to me? Relish its power? Or come after you? Force you to do the real bidding, the real reaping?’

‘Or you could’ve let me go,’ I snapped. ‘Cut me free of the tether, if you really loved me like a child.’

Her mouth twisted bitterly. ‘But then I would be alone once again. And that I could not bear.’