Rule of a Kingdom

I carry Aiden in my arms to his room. His head falls against my chest and he snores softly while his small hands hold on to my shirt.

Persian carpets spill under my feet and dim yellow chandeliers lighten the way. The halls are silent, eerily so. It’s nothing like the times when my grandfather and my parents were alive.

We used to keep more staff than we needed and my mother desperately tried to breathe life into the mansion.

It’s useless to revive the dead. It’s better to refocus that energy on creating something new and make sure it never perishes. Besides, silence is good. Silence means I can hear when something goes wrong.

Like right now.

My feet come to a slow halt at the sound of the balcony’s curtains flapping inside. Margot knows not to leave anything open at night so that can only mean one thing.

Fuck.

Holding Aiden tight, I cross the distance to the open balcony at the end of the second floor. I contemplate dropping him in his room but that will take me time I don’t have to spare. I also can’t leave him on one of the huge chairs positioned near the walls because I don’t trust he’ll be safe.

My only son shouldn’t be fucking unsafe in my own house, but the danger to his life isn’t a situation I can ignore. I can’t remove it either since he’ll never forgive me.

Nor can I forgive myself.

A hissing sound reaches me first as I stand at the threshold of the balcony. Then, murmuring follows; low, and haunted.

This should become normal considering that I witnessed such scenes countless times before.

It isn’t.

Far from it.

I’ll never get used to seeing my wife gradually losing her mind. Or the fact that I can’t even recognise her sometimes.

Like at this moment.

Alicia stands on the balcony’s stone railing, her frail arms open wide as she walks on the edge. Her white nightgown is thin and reaches her ankles. The cloth and her long black strands fly behind her in the night wind.

I approach her slowly to not startle her while still keeping a deadly grip on Aiden. The last thing I want is for him to see his mother this way. We’ve been both trying our best to protect him from this side of her, but she loses complete control during the night.

It could be insomnia, the depression, the hallucinations, or the neurosis. It could be all of them combined.

What’s for sure is that she’s been getting worse over the years. When I first met Alicia, she was a soft and laid back woman who loathed the spotlight. At the time, she lost her mother to suicide and soon after, she was in a car accident with her friends in which she was the only survivor.

Both incidents messed with her head, especially since they happened close to one another. However, she didn’t have hallucinations. She didn’t roam the halls in the middle of the night then break down in tears. Or perhaps she did, but maintained a perfect job at hiding them.

Alicia was always the type who suffered in silence, talked with silence and expressed her pain with silence. Maybe that silence suffocated her after all.

It definitely suffocated me.

Her intelligible words become clearer when I stand a small distance away from her. They’re still murmured, fast with some syllables skipped over.

“Not my mother…I’m not my mother…I can’t be my mother…I am, though…I am. Now, I will pay. They’re coming for me…he’s coming for me and for her and now it’ll be over. I’ll be over…all over….everything…everyone…what if Aiden will also be over? No, no, no…I will be my mother…I have to be my mother…why did you do it, Mother? How could you do it? How did you live with yourself? If I do it, will it be over? Answer me…tell me…”

It’s how it usually goes. What she usually says. Sometimes, she’ll be crying or sobbing out her mother’s name.

I try to find the meaning behind her words, but her psychotherapist told me it’s useless. Alicia is the only one who knows what’s going on in her head and if I try to meddle, it’ll only make it worse, not better.

So I do the only thing I know to. Softening my voice, I call her name. “Alicia…”

She freezes, her murmurs coming to a halt, but she doesn’t turn around to face me. So I do it again, making my voice as welcoming as I possibly can. “Come down, Alicia.”

She shakes her head violently, her hair swishing over her shoulders.

“If you don’t come down, you’ll fall.”

“I-I can’t fall or she will pay.” Her voice breaks at the last word.

“She?”

Aiden moves in my arms and I hold his head against my shoulder so he doesn’t see the scene in front of me. There’s a reason why I don’t leave him unsupervised with her anymore. I always have one of my security with them even when they’re within the house’s walls. I might not be able to let go of Alicia, but I will not risk my son or my nephew’s safety.

Aiden’s soft snoring fills the silence and Alicia slowly turns around, her head tilted to the side. Her hair covers one of her unblinking dark eyes, her petite nose and her defined cheekbones. In the dark, she appears as pale as her nightgown. Like a ghost of herself.

Her expression is far away, almost as if she’s disconnected from this world and already reaching for a distant one.

It’s only when her eyes fall on Aiden that she blinks twice and tears shine on her lids. “W-what is he doing here? He shouldn’t be here, Jonathan. The devil will come for him.”

“I’ll take him to bed, okay?”

She nods several times. “Okay.”

“Now, come down.” Keeping one hand on Aiden’s back, I reach the other to her. “Let’s take you to bed, too.”

She stares at my extended palm as a tear falls down her cheek. “I didn’t take my pills.”

“I know.”

If she had, she wouldn’t be roaming the fucking halls in the middle of the night. But I also can’t and won’t force her to take them, even if the shrink tells me it’s for her sake. Antidepressants turn her numb and she stops paying attention to Aiden. She stops eating and talking.

She stops existing altogether.

“The pills don’t let me feel,” she whispers.

“I know.”

“I hate it. I hate not feeling.” She’s full out crying now, tears soaking her cheeks and wetting the delicate line of her throat.

“I know.”

“Don’t you hate me, Jonathan? Don’t you wish you got yourself one of those normal women?”

“I never hated you, Alicia. I hate the world who turned you into this.” I take one more step forward, resisting the urge to yank her down from the edge. “Now, come down.”

She stares at my hand, lips trembling. “But I hate me. I hate what I’m doing.”

“What you’re doing?”

Slowly, her eyes meet mine as she reaches her hand. “I saw the devil today, darling. I think he’s coming after me.”

“What devil?”

“I’ll take the pills.” She sniffles, pulling her hand back before her fingers could touch mine. “I think I hate feeling more than not feeling.”

Ignoring my extended palm, she gets off the railing, her bare feet touching the ground. She approaches me but never looks me in the eyes. Instead, she brushes her lips against Aiden’s hair.

He mumbles something in his sleep, and she smiles. It’s a weird one — her smile, that is. Not only is it heartbreaking but it’s also like an extension of her tears.

“Protect him, Jonathan.” She pauses. “Even from me if you have to.”

I’m about to hug her, to tell her that she’d never hurt Aiden, but she brushes past me in the direction of the stairs.

I release a long sigh as my hand falls to my side, lifeless and empty. A foreboding feeling stays lodged in my chest as I watch her retreating back.

Why the fuck does it feel like the beginning of the end?