A Mother's Grief
07 Sep 2022The_prop
Christian would have been twenty-one today. But he wasn't. He was still just eighteen.They said it gets easier with time. Where were they now though? Probably analysing new patients, reporting on new stories, patronising new bereavers.
A gentle cool breeze blew softly across the hotel bar's beautiful floral balcony and through Nancy's long silver hair, lifting it slightly from her sloping shoulders before resting tenderly back on top of her ears.
The sky was cloudless and the sun's reflection beamed back off her conservative, yet fashionable sunglasses as she sat back on the traditionally cushioned wooden chair, with a second empty seat pushed comfortably underneath a fancy glass table for two.
The view of the town from the seventh floor was amazing. On a clear day like this you could see pretty much everything. Almost all of the way down the high street, the lush green and yellow fields from the suburban farmland and even the fishing lake between the trees in the middle of County Park.
Nancy swiped through the pages of her electronic photo album, brushing her hair back into place delicately with the back of her hand, the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, deepening with a rare smile.
This was her favourite picture. That's how she wanted to remember Christian; sat next to his father in their old workshop, tinkering with an old engine and getting covered in all sorts of foul smelling and unsightly lubricants. They would have surely told her off if they knew at the time that she had snuck a photograph of them both from the garage window fixing whatever it was they were working on.
Nancy laughed to herself, and wiped a tear away with her white embroidered handkerchief. To lose one of them would've been hard enough, but both, well that was just cruel.
"Ms. Jarvis! They never told me you were here." An impeccably dressed young waiter stood in front of Nancy's table holding a tray with a dark tinted bottle and a clean glass beside it, "May I get you another drink? This one's on the house. My treat."
Nancy looked down at the lipstick stained empty glass in front of her. She was in no rush, and a third wouldn't do any harm, "That would be lovely. Thank you so much, Josè."
The waiter poured the Wine carefully into the new glass and took away her old one, giving a polite bow of the head as he replaced the cork, "Has it been a year already?"
"You know full well it has," she laughed, pointing at the lavish table decorations that took pride and place in the centre of her small table for two, "I notice nobody else's tables have these ornaments and candles."
"Only for my favourite customers. If you need anything Nancy, you need only say the word."
She nodded back with a smile. Josè always managed to cheer her up with his overly dramatic gestures and extravagant facial expressions. Even during the hard times. He truly had a heart of gold, one of the main reasons she and Ken had chosen to go here on special occasions.
Nancy took a sip from the wine glass, closing the photo collection and reluctantly browsed through the news feeds on her datapad.
It was everywhere! There was no escaping the news that everybody was talking about: those creatures were back.
Every emotional wound had been ripped open again, and the pain was as deep and agonising as the first time. She reminisced back to the boardroom she was sitting in, watching Mendez Terminal burn from the holographic projector in a room full of colleagues. Nobody knew what to say.
Ken was only a few months off retiring and Christian had just completed his engineering apprenticeship under his father's watchful eye. Some even suggested he had the potential to outshine her husband's expertise given time.
She had pleaded with them both to stay in the Heike star system, there were opportunities here, why go all that way to work on a space station when there were farming folk that needed good engineers. But the money was too good to turn down, apparently, and she would be glad of a few weeks of quiet, the boys had told her. Now the quiet was all there was.
Her attention was brought back to the present by two bickering youths, their volume increasing after every Beer they finished. They hadn't been here before, at least not that Nancy had noticed.
Their rowdy conversation seemed to be focused on the same subject everybody else was discussing at the moment. Those creatures of damnation: the Thargoids.
"They wouldn't dare, Tom. We've beaten them once, we would do it again without a second thought." said the fatter looking boy of the two, his hair cropped close to the scalp with an interesting tattoo that banded around his throat and stretched across the back of his neck.
"It wouldn't come to that. We're too far away from the places they're attacking. By the time they got close, there'd be nothing left of them." The second boy chuckled.
"Well if they do, they've got to get through me first. I'm enlisting as soon as I've got my shit together. Cindy's stopping me seeing the baby, she says I've got no future. Cheeky bitch."
Nancy put her head in her hands and tried desperately to ignore them. They were young, foolish and didn't have a clue what they were talking about. She continued browsing through the news feeds, skipping each article related to their impending doom.
"I'm telling you, Tom! I might be the only one that actually hopes those assholes touch down here. I swear, just gimme a gun and-"
"Enough!" Nancy interjected, "You're both just little boys pretending to be men. Those things would butcher you without a second thought. Give you a gun? You wouldn't even know which way to point it. Idiots!"
The bar's courtyard dropped silent besides a few murmurs. She could feel every pair of eyes focused on her, burning right through her soul, "Who the hell asked you anyway, Grandma? Have you not had your medication or something?" quipped the tattooed boy.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything." Nancy finished the rest of her wine quickly, leaving a generous tip on the table for the young waiter. She pushed out the chair with the back of her knees and stood up from the table, taking care not to knock over the empty glass.
"Ms. Jarvis, is everything alright?" Josè's voice was concerned as he rushed out from the indoor seated area.
"Yes, I'm fine. Maybe I shouldn't have had that last glass."
The waiter stared wide-eyed at the huge pile of credit chits stacked neatly on the empty plate, "Wait my dear, that's far too much. I can't accept all that."
She just smiled at him and pulled her handbag strap around her neck, "I won't need it, Josè."
The tattooed boy stood up from his chair, blocking her path to the exit, "Wait there. You think you're allowed to just leave with that pathetic apology, old bitch?"
Her throat tightened and jaw clenched. Neither Ken nor Christian would've allowed this lowlife to speak to her this way. Boys younger than him had perished helping others whilst scum like this just ranted nonsense they knew nothing about and threatened ladies of her age.
She turned to face Josè, silently miming the words, I'm sorry, as she took half a step back and gritted her teeth, "Ok, I'll say it again. I'm sorry..."
She reached out to the table in front of her, picking up the empty wine glass by the bowl and shattering the base off against the corner of the table, leaving a seven inch spike where the stem once was. Her heart beat thumped inside her eardrums and her veins surged with adrenaline, "I'm sorry that you think you're so much better than everybody else. I'm sorry that Cindy thinks you're as much of a shit as everybody else thinks you are. And I'm sorry your baby has to grow up without a father."
She thrust the spike upwards through the boy's trachea and let go. Blood curdled through his windpipe and gushed around the broken base of the glass, collating into a puddle on the balcony floor. The boy dropped to his knees, clutching at his throat, his panicked crimson eyes, wide and helpless.
Nancy turned to face the boy's friend as he scuttled backwards, tripping over his chair, too afraid to stand.
"Please, lady. I'm sorry." he pleaded.
Josè rushed over to the choking boy and knelt beside him, wrapping napkins and towels around his throat to try and stop the bleeding, but it was no good. She looked down at her own hands in disbelief; like Josè, she was saturated in the boy's blood.
Onlookers from the outer edges of the dining area recoiled in horror whilst others held their datapads high, recording the scene with mouths agape, ready to catch anything else that may transpire.
"He's gone, Nancy." said Josè, regret and compassion quivering in his voice.
The sound of sirens from the noisy street below brought home the realisation of what had happened. The boy was likely the same age as Christian would've been today. How would his mother take the news?
Nancy walked to the balcony's edge in a daze and hoisted herself up onto the rail, dropping her handbag by the wayside, "I told you I didn't need that money anymore, Josè."
"Nancy, wait." The distraught waiter yelled, holding out his blood covered palm towards her.
She took a deep breath, shut her eyes and leaned back from the balcony rail.
Christian would have been twenty-one today.