Diane willed the voices to stop. The ones that haunted her day and night and every agonizing second in between. She tried to blot out the words, scrub them out and rip them out of her mind completely. But no matter how much she pressed her palms onto her ears, she could still hear the taunts and insults increase and rotate and spin around her.
"Maybe you should end it."
"For yourself, and for your child."
"Put out all of your misery."
"Come over to where it's finally quiet. In the darkness. Where it won't hurt any longer,"
"Wouldn't it be nice to never worry, to never count the seconds until I return?" the voice eerily echoed through her mind.
"Make it stop! Please, God, make it stop." Diane cried, rocking back and forth, silently begging herself to be stronger, to be more powerful than these invisible chains that bound her to insanity.
She knew she needed to go out there and make sure everything is alright, do her chores before Dan got back from The Liquor Store. But damn it if she couldn't pull herself up off the floor in the tiny closet her son used to call his own. Diane swore she could almost smell and feel him in there.
"You can't shut us out," another voice in her head whispered.
"There is only one way to end us. To end this."
"And that is to end you."
"Come on, Di. Do it."
"And you'll finally be free."
Free.
The word stuck to the inside of Diane's brain like super glue to your fingers. She wanted to be free, yes, but she knew she didn't deserve it. Not after what she'd done.
Her whole body started shaking and goosebumps rose up on her arms. She looked down at her swollen belly and rubbed it, wondering what the hell was wrong with her? More importantly, what was wrong with her head? Tears pricked the back of her eyes as a burn quickly rose in her chest.
A little more than a month later and she still couldn't believe her son was never coming back. Little Jo' was never coming home to her and would never get the chance to meet his baby brother. The worst thing was that Diane was alone. She had no one to pull her through but herself. That realisation hit her harder than it ever has before as her body felt like it was about to be sick.
She tried to convince herself that she wasn't crazy, that she was totally fine. It was just the loss, the pregnancy and the realisation that she would forever be alone with no one to help her. To stand by her. To be her friend. To pull her through like she needed to pull herself together.
Diane realised it was quiet in her mind for the first time in hours, but fear gripped her soul knowing the peace won't last forever.
"Di? Diane Kimba?!" Dan, her husband, hollered from the living room, but Diane remained crippled and paralysed as she softly fell apart on the floor. Dan kept blaring her name as if he was a sick-in-the-head man. He was even using her maiden name. So, Diane finally pushed herself up. On wobbly feet, she sniffled as she wiped away her tears and slowly, reluctantly, put one foot in front of the other.
"Breathe, Di, just breathe," she whispered to herself.
But the tremble in her hands as she walked a few steps forward revealed to her the truth – firstly, she was a prisoner and secondly, she was weak. And she would never truly be free or strong. Rounding the corner, the scene that unfolded made her wish she could turn right back around and continue to hide where she'd finally found peace, if only for a few seconds. Just then, a sharp, searing pain stroked her lower abdomen and she gasped then winced.
"What's wrong?" The first voice taunted again, "Can't take being a mother?"
"You knew when you signed up for this what it would take."
"I thought all you ever dreamt of was to be a mother again."
"What a joke!"
Diane shook her head, trying once again to will the voices to stop for just a moment. The taunting, haunting monologue that crippled her daily ceased for just a second as she blinked back the tears that filled her eyes. She tried to steady her nerves before ambling into the living room.
When Dan saw Diane, he paused in front of her for a second. His low sigh of disproval hung around them like a fog. He then moved to the refrigerator across the room and grabbed two bottles of beer and opened one with his teeth.
Diane stole a glance at Dan as he drank heavily, just like he had since the night it all happened. He would never be the same. They, both, would never be the same.
And hell, it would always be her damn fault.
When he stopped gulping down the liquid, Dan begrudgingly took of his boots and leaned against the kitchen counter. He took a few sips of his beer then went to sit down across Diane at the small dining table. The bottles hung loosely at his sides as the duo sat together in a silence that stretched like a bad omen between them. A whimper escaped his lips a moment later. He sucked in a deep breath and brought the bottle to his lips once again and Diane could swear she'd never felt more cursed than she did right then.
"I'm sorry," Diane whispered, but that only caused Dan to hurl one bottle of beer at her.
Diane ducked – cowered - and the bottle went past her head and shattered to pieces against the wall behind her. Dan stood up, rounded the table and took a few hate-filled steps towards her.
"Sorry, Di?" he seethed. "You're sorry? My boy is gone. Gone! He's never coming back, and you're sorry?"
"Danny, I-" Diane began on a sob, but Dan cut her off.
"No!" he roared, coming toward Diane quickly and making her push back in her chair as he met her stare. Dan's eyes were like ice. Desolate. Destroyed. Ravaged of any spark there ever could have been.
"You did this! You did this, Diane!" he shouted angrily at his wife and grabbed her by the hem of her t-shirt with his free hand. "You were the one who left the damn gate unlatched that day, why? Because you 'forgot' to latch it? My son wouldn't have met with an accident if you hadn't left the damn gate open! You are responsible for this! You killed my son!"
Diane closed her eyes and counted to ten in her head. Why was all this happening to her? The dread the voice will begin again set in. Fear rose in her chest. Anxiety at an all-time high.
"He's right, you know." The voice taunted, reading her thoughts and knowing exactly which button to press.
"So just take the jab, Di. Take the hate."
"You deserve so much more, always will, and you know it."
"Stop it, please. Not now... not now." Diane's voice suddenly left her lips in a low hushed whisper as she looked down in her lap and attempted to block the voices out.
Dan grabbed Diane by the jaw forcibly, squeezed it tightly.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you, dammit!" he said with clenched teeth.
"He was my son too, Danny. Don't you, for one second, think I wouldn't take his place if I could," Diane spoke with a shaky voice.
He backed away from her and squared his shoulders. "Well, I wish you would. Maybe then I'd find some salvation, some deliverance, from all of this, from everything you've ruined," he spat, looking at her with utter disgust. "Maybe you should get rid of the one you're carrying too because what's the point if you're only going to kill him too. I really don't want to see your face in this house anymore, Di. You make me sick!"
Turning, Dan walked out of the kitchen and down the hall. Still trembling, Diane stood up and watched him, her heart breaking because she wished she knew what to do, what to say to fix this. When he reached the door to his late three-year-old son's room, Dan paused. Looking to the right, his eyes fell on the room that used to hold his son's life in its hands. Dan's shoulders quaked. His body shivered. He then screamed seconds before he ran into the room and immediately began to destroy it. Glass shattered as his tears fell and his heart-wrenching roars filled the house.
Diane shut her eyes as her whole body continued to shake and tears started streaming down her face. But she didn't move. She stood paralysed in grief. She could hear the sound of fabric ripping, glass shattering and feet stomping. And all she could do, all she would manage, was to try and breathe. To try and survive as she stood still, frozen in time, wondering how in the hell they were ever going to get through this.
"See what you've done?" the second voice began again. "Just go, Di."
"Go where no one can see the mess you've become."
"You call what you're doing mourning? You never even had what it took to be a wife. A mother. You're just a pathetic excuse of a human being."
"By the way, you make me sick too," the voice said then burst into a sickening fit of laughter.
The laugh sounded evil. Corrupt. Almost immoral.
Helpless and feeling defeated, Diane looked around the small living room, with stained carpet, wallpaper pealing, and a few holes in the drywall, and wondered if the place will ever feel like a home again. Between the demons that fill her head, the emptiness that crowds the four walls, and the loneliness and load she's forced to carry alone, the house would never be a happy home – not ever. Not like it once was.
The walls closed in on her. The thoughts got louder. The piercing in her belly intensified and the voices' taunting laughter melded together with the thunder of objects being thrown up against walls until she felt like she couldn't take it anymore.
"Stop it!" Diane yelled as loud as she could, covering her ears. "Stop it, stop it! Please, just stop it!"
She cried softly in the space around her, pleading with the voice as she fell against the wall behind her and slumped to the floor.
"Told you."
"Pitiful."
"What a waste of life."
Diane had hoped her situation didn't get worse, for her unborn child's sake, but it had. The searing pain in her belly returned and a second later, she felt her skirt and thighs grow wet. Her water had broken. Groaning and trying to control her breathing, she stood up then grabbed Dan's car keys from a bowl near the exit and left.
She didn't know where she was headed as she drove. The only family she had was a distant aunt who lived three hours away, but she knew that she wasn't going to welcome her. Also, Diane had avoided both her and her husband's friends after their son passed. She wouldn't blame them if they never wanted to talk to her again. But she didn't allow herself to linger on why as the heaviness of her choices weighed on her.
She took a left turn, heading towards the Western Franc Park.
The crickets in the tall grass and the hooting owl in a towering pine fell silent as her car pulled into park, stopping in front of the restrooms. She got out of the driver's seat and looked around – thinking of the times she used to play with Little Jo' in the lush green grass. After a few seconds, she started walking. The full moon gave her enough light to see where she was going.
Groaning in pain, she paused and put her hand over her swollen belly. The contractions were coming swiftly now, not even a minute in between. She needed to find shelter quickly, some hidden place to give birth. She tumbled through the darkness to the ladies' room but the door wouldn't budge. Uttering a strangled sob, she turned away, searching.
Why had she driven so far? Why hadn't she checked into some cheap, low-rate motel?
Now it was too late.
With a sense of urgency gnawing at her, Diane drove aimlessly until the glow of neon lights signalled her arrival at the familiar alley beside the bar that had become Dan's second home. She got off the car and glanced at the only lit building - there was some movement inside. She couldn't risk being seen so she went further back into the alley and laid down on her back.
She kept breathing through her nose as she pressed her lips together to keep from screaming loud enough to alert the whole neighbourhood of what she was doing. With each contraction, Diane's body clenched in agony until, finally, the child emerged in a rush of slick warmth. She gasped in relief.
Panting in the dark shadows of the alley and her face covered in tears and beads of sweat, Diane looked up to the star-studded sky muttered a prayer of thanks to the heavens. Her baby laid pale and perfect in the moonlight on a dark blanket of earth. It was too dark to see if it was a boy or a girl, but then, what did that matter?
She had hoped it was a boy though.
The breeze moved down over the soil and in the alley. No longer in the protected warmth of its mother's womb, the new-born baby felt the stinging cold of the world. A soft cry came, then a plaintive wail. The sound carried across the buildings, but no lights went on.
"Pathetic," the first voice spat.
"You call that being a good mother?" the second one taunted.
"Dan would divorce you so quickly for the shameless disgrace of a parent you've become."
"God, what did he ever see in you anyway?"
"I don't want to do this, I swear I don't..." Diane sobbed, eyes frantically scanning the ground for something sharp. Her fingers closed around a broken beer bottle, its edge jagged and stained. She hesitated only a moment before slicing through the umbilical cord. Her hands were slick with blood, but she worked quickly, her breath shallow and shaking. Once done, she peeled off her sweater and wrapped it tightly around the baby. It was thin, not nearly warm enough, but it was all she had — and it was proof that her child deserved a better life, a better mother. He deserved a life Diane would never be able to give him.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed uncontrollably. "I'm so sorry."
Still crying incessantly, she slowly scooped the baby up, planted a small kiss on his face and put him in the nearby trashcan to shelter him from the cold, sharp breeze. Trembling and crying, she walked over to her car, hoping her child would be found by a good person and end up in a good, stable family. She hoped her child would be loved all his life.
Shivering violently, she rolled up her car window, knowing she'd never be free of guilt and regret. Her hand shook as she turned the key she had left in the ignition. She just wanted to get away from the place. She wanted to cover her head and forget everything that had happened, everything she'd done wrong.
Tears rolled down Diane's face as a newfound hatred for herself boiled up inside. A hatred that triumphed all the time before when she had replayed the past few moments in her mind. She felt nothing but disgust for herself. Holding in her breath until her lungs hurt, new tears pricked the back of her eyes as she glanced back again at the trashcan where she'd just left her baby in.
"You're a horrible person, Di."
"People like you don't deserve to be happy, they don't deserve to live."
"You deserve to be six feet under."
"You deserve to die."
The voices were right, and she knew it. She could feel her heart plummet to her stomach before bile rose in her throat. She was indeed a horrible person and the only way she'd ever atone for her sins and mistakes was to just... die.
Turning the steering wheel, she pressed down too hard on the accelerator. She felt a rush of adrenaline as the car skidded to one side. She corrected quickly as the wheels shot pebbles like bullets into the dark space. Slowly turning left, she stared ahead through tear-blurred, swollen eyes at the main road. She'd go north and find a cheap motel.
Then she'd decide how to kill herself.