My mother, Sarah Jane, was a quiet woman; a recluse even. She kept to herself and barely uttered a single word to anyone other than those she had to. In a small town like Wakestones, where everyone knew everything about everyone, this was uncommon, unnatural even. People were afraid of my mother. I’d see the stares as she’d drop me off at school, feel the grip on my hand tightening as we walked through the streets, hear the rumours and whispers wherever I went…
Maybe that’s why I left. That might just be an excuse though…A pitiful attempt to excuse myself for abandoning my own mother when I knew she had nobody but me in her life. Perhaps if I hadn’t shut her off to separate myself from her rumours then she wouldn’t have taken a rope to her neck and jumped from the roof of my childhood home.
I sit at her grave as her sole mourner. No family or friends wishing to say goodbye. Only her one foolist daughter, the daughter who left her to die. The black dress that I had found in the back of my drawer was now crumpled around my knees as i stare at my mother’s freshly placed tombstone.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. An hour or two, maybe three. I can’t bring myself to leave her side. Something cold and wet drips down my face and I looked up to see rain. It was then that I finally allowed the salty tears to leave my eyes, concealed by the rains own droplet. The pitter patter on it hitting me was all I could feel until it suddenly stopped. I looked up and saw a man holding an umbrella. Well, that is if you could call it a man, perhaps it was once, but certainly not for a long while. It’s jaw was long and boney, absent of any flesh or skin. It’s eyes were sunken into its sockets and it smelt of the old fabric of my mother’s couch. It smiled down at me and pet my head.
“Don’t cry Lucy Jane, I’ve been waiting for you”
My legs wouldn’t move. Whether due to sheer terror or the unwillingness to move forward, I was unsure but there was not question about it that I couldn’t move an inch. I was going to die here. I knew that from the moment I stepped out of the ship a few hours ago and yet it only has just dawned upon me that this is my end: on a foreign planet, lightyears away from my home, surrounded by alien gore. I want to go home. However the decisions that have lead me to be present in this moment cannot be undone. I must therefore, take a step forward, and face this monstrosity that we call the Dilosophacto head on.
I joined the expedition 2 years ago, after failing my exams I dropped out of university and couldn’t find a path to go on. So when the government began to recruit people for the expedition I immediately signed up after all, I was living a doomed life anyway and thought I might as well make some use of it.
In these past two years I have learned how to live again and how to enjoy my existence rather than just waiting on my impending death. Despite the constant threat of dying I don’t regret signing up after all, this mission is nothing but an expedition, to scout out territory for the real soldiers to be informed of. All of us knew that we probably wouldn’t make it out alive but we accepted it.
That’s why, as I lay in a pool of my own red blood, staring up at the ceiling, I don’t regret joining the expedition. It may have ended my physical life, but being on it tought me how to live again.
