The mourning doves flew up in a panic, the sky covered in their gray-winged fear. They fled from Kathy, who shot at them from the ground below. Her brother-in-law Kevin snatched the gun away from her, before he handed it off to his tear-stained wife.
“I told you, no fucking birds.” Kathy said.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Kevin asked. “Your son is dead. And you’re shooting at doves? How did you even get a gun into the cemetery?”
“Don’t fucking speak to me. You died right alongside Ian, and don’t pretend otherwise!”
Right then Kevin vanished. His wife dropped to the ground, sobbing.
“He’s gone!!! He’s gone!!!” She cried out.
“Everyone died with Ian.”
Kevin’s wife, along with everyone else at the funeral vanished. Kathy was alone.
Kathy sighed,picked up her gun and stuffed it in her purse, and walked home. On the way out of the cemetery, she passed her crashed car, the mangled body of the grave tender underneath it. She was in a frenzy. Every day was her last, yet she continued waking up each morning. She saw Ian everyone, and Billy nowhere. She couldn’t find Billy. She couldn’t find her baby boy, her sweet, innocent baby. The last thing she had that connected her to Ian.
“Its okay, my love.” Ian said, grabbing hold of Kathy’s hand. “He was a bad kid. You couldn’t fix him. And now you have me, and no more Billy.”
“I just want to find him….I wanna know what I did.”
“You didn’t do a damn thing. Don’t trust those filthy fucking liars who claim otherwise.”
“Its always the mother’s fault.”
“Its NEVER the mother’s fault. Any claim otherwise is just misogyny.”
“But you didn’t think sexism existed, Ian.”
Ian let Kathy’s hand fall, as he stopped in his tracks.
“You’re right.” He finally said, “and I’m dead. You know I’m dead. I shot myself in the fucking mouth to get away from you.”
Blood splattered behind his head, as chunks of skull and brain matter coated the wall. His eyes burst from his head like gummy little orbs,
small fragments of bone and gore spewing into the red, misty air. In a flash his life was gone, replaced by the red mist.
Kathy was alone again.
She kept walking, her naked feed crunching and cutting against the jagged skull fragments that made up the sidewalk home. The streets were rushing tides of blood and brain, the thoughts and memories bleeding up into the mist. She heard Ian’s voice. His laugh, his cries, his rage, all bled into the air like evaporating water. But there was no Billy. She wanted to find Billy, her precious son. The only good thing she brought to the world. Without him, there was no purpose, no reason to continue. Could he be at a friend’s house? Maybe school? No, it was July, there was no school in July. Maybe he joined the revolution? No, he was too young. Was? Why was? Is. He’s alive, he has to be. Kathy’s mind was a frenzy. Then, for only a moment, she heard Billy’s cry. Her head shot back; she searched for the voice. He was crying, sobbing; a desperate scream. She would find him, and bring him home. The scream grew louder, as she grew closer. And in a moment of terror, Kathy saw Billy. He was strung up from the power lines. The wires wrapped tight around his neck, as he stretched his arms out. His eyes were like gummy orbs, busting from the confines of his skull, as blood poured form the gaps between his torn lids.
“I’m sorry, Mommy; I couldn’t save you.” Billy said, before his neck snapped. The wires loosened around his neck, as his corpse plummeted into the red waters below. His voice joined with his father’s in the mist.
Kathy screamed out into the air, clearing the mist that surrounded her face. Falling to the ground, Kathy cut her hands and knees on the shards of bone.
“I failed you, Billy; I’m so sorry...I failed you. Please, baby, just come back. I want another chance, please!!!”
“You’re a waste!” Kathy heard Billy’s voice cry out from the mist.
“Billy?”
“Go to your fucking room!” said Billy’s voice.
“Billy please, I can fix this…”
“I don’t wanna see you.”
Kathy’s eyes bled, as she fell limp.
Billy was dead, and she killed him.
She failed Billy. She failed Ian. They all died to escape her. She failed herself. She can’t escape. She’s trapped. She should die, free the world from her suffering. The mist began to clear, as the ruined city around her came into focus. The revolutionaries battled with the police, cracking, Molotov cocktails flying through the air, pipe bombs bursting, police screaming as they held their wounds shut.
The revolutionaries chanted, “We the people, you the pigs!”
Kathy then realized, she may have failed Billy and Ian, but society failed her. She fought her way through poverty, addiction, pain, and death, only to lose her son on the otherside, and for what? To be left alone, bloody and tired, awaiting her eventual decline and death?
No more. Kathy may be alone, but she is with the people, and with the pigs.
“We the people,” She began to chant, “you the pigs!”
She then picked up a piece of rebar, and shoved it through a police officer’s eye, watching as the blood poured from the gash in his face. He fell to the ground like a sack of sand. Kathy drew her gun, and fired into the line of police.
“We the people,” she chanted, “will not be alone, again!”