Irreversible
Irreversible
Martin groaned. Finally, this generation-long dim-witted podcast was finished, he thought. He shoved his finger into the speaker and changed the tunes to hard metal rock. Finally, his style. His mom, like a trigger in disposal, snapped back and changed the channel, a grisly stare adorned her as he tried, and failed to defy her.
“Martin, this music is bad for your ears, and until you can learn to hear what I want for a while, you have to stay put”, my mother prattled, and he droned out of existence for a few seconds. Why must she constantly nag me? Doesn’t she realize that in a few months, I will be moving out, and there’s nothing she can do to stop me then?
The drive went on for what felt like a lifetime, and before the car even screeched to a stop, Martin had burst out of the car, causing a wave of honks that his apathy obliterated, and sauntered over to his gang of friends.
“Not so fast, young man! You can’t leave without a parting hug!” he could hear the defiance in his mother’s voice, and like he had always done thus far, he mirrored it. This time, he was feeling especially intolerable, and burst back around.
“I don’t want to hug you mom! I don’t ever want to hug you! You have done nothing in my life but nag me and prevent me from ever enjoying myself, and now, I’m finally rid of you for just 6 hours! Even school is preferable to your insufferable nagging, so please! Just stay away from me!”
The flames of spite bloomed from his snout as his dragon tail whipped 180 degrees, and Martin pounded away to the awed silence of not only his mother, but a gang of millennial mothers behind her who’s incessant honking finally gave way.
As Martin spiraled through his classes like a purposeless tumbleweed, he gave but hardly a cough to his egregious remarks from earlier. Yet as he ditched his 8th period and was fudging around the urinals with his gang of friends, a faint noise from a blurred family fiddled his way into his mind. It was a young boy holding his mother’s legs in the kindergarten next to his high school. There were a group of other children sitting on the sand right next to him, their giggles and laughter emanating from them like bubbles from a bath.
The mother, rooted down in her position, carefully nudged the kid towards the rest of the children, and right before departing, the boy hugged his mother tight as a lasso on a bull, and in there embrace, it appeared as though the might of a thousand trojan warriors would be incapable to making them budge.
Suddenly, memories spurted in Martin’s brain, quite similar to these. He was in this very same kindergarten, the very same age, with hundreds of children swarming around like bees without a compass, and it felt like he was the only one there without a stinger. But always, that whole day, his mother had stuck by his side, encompassing him in the light he needed to see the path through life, and steering him the right way with a pinpoint accuracy and unfazed determination that other mothers could only envy.
Yet, with her love a peninsula dragging its waves against him, Martin chose to land upon shore, and delve into darkness. These memories rushed into his brain at the speed of a million bullets, and he clamped his hands to shrivel them to bits. Their melted aluminum dripped down his cheek, his tears at this reminiscence striking a blow to his arrogance. He sprinted out past his addled gang members, and ran home his tears the only friction slowing him, and his hands trembling onto a grip, a grip at the lever that he could pull to simply undo everything he had said, to take back all the words of hate and sorrow he had unleashed upon his mom, to revert all of the burdens he had lumped upon his mom to which she could barely withstand. His mom. He needed to see his mom.
A loud screeching blur whizzed past him, Christmas lights blaring from its head, and a brief glimpse of flame encapsulating the road in front of him. A barrage of traffic cones were the only boundary between him, and a bludgeon of police officers swarmed him, just like the bees of children he had been swarmed with oh so many years ago. Except this time there was no light, and only darkness that befell him as he could see a gurney being wheeled into an ambulance in front of him. A closer look revealed a dark and crinkled figure, who’s dilapidation had now disappeared from existence. It was his mom.
He rushed towards the scene, held back by police officers as the screams and bellows burst out from his lungs until the buffalo had lost its steam, and he collapsed to the floor in a pool of tears and sorrow.
A hollow voiceover was done through the walkie-talkie of one of the officers: “Sergeant, there was no heartbeat. We are wheeling her to the ambulance right now, but there doesn’t seem to be anything else we can do. Time of Death: 2:41 p.m”.
Martin’s face was parched into crust from his dried up tears, and the realization finally hit him. She was gone.
“Mamma please come back. I’m so sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it. Please, mamma, please.” he pleaded to the wet asphalt floor, but it merely sizzled back in heat, and soon, the tears ran out and the requests denied, Martin, gave in. His mamma was never coming back. And no matter how hard he tried or how much he wanted, that hug she wanted could never be repaid.
Love is a tender and finite thing. It must be treasured. It must be preserved. And to the best of our ability, it must never be tarnished.
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