“You see yourself…” Carina says softly, “outside your own body. You want them to hear you. You’re begging. Shouting. Screaming.” She pauses, “But they can’t.”
Continuing, “They smile at you and you see the child; their innocence and their possibility.”
Her voice cracks, “Then you see it coming behind them.”
The fidgeting in the room ceases and ruination fills Carina’s face, “You point at it. Wave like a crazy person, shouting, anything for it to run to you instead. All the while my precious boy just smiles at me, seeing all of my love for him present and waiting.”
She steps back. Tears begin to well but she fights them down only to be betrayed by the twitches on her face.
The sorrow pulls her into a frozen place in her mind’s eye. It’s a sentiment familiar to those around her and a thick hand presses gently upon her leg.
It returns her to the room of similar stares and she takes in their strength.
A blond teen—Liam, she recalls him saying—finishes her words, “But it’s coming.”
She pities the suffering instantly recognizable in his young face but can tell with just a glance he hasn’t hit his hellish bottom yet. Their exchange unlocks a mothering compassion and she lets her tears flow, confirming his words:
“It’s coming. It knows you see it. You plead with your child to run to mommy one more time,” her breath flutters, “but it never works.”
She desperately reaches out, “It’s standing behind my little boy when he finally hears it. He’s so scared. He turns and it’s so much bigger and its claws are out”—a pinched whimper from a woman deep in the back—“I’m stuck in slow motion…and have to watch its mouth open so wide it can take my boy’s whole head in its mouth.” Her speech fluttering, she finishes, “So many teeth.”
Carina wipes a stream of tears from her face before sniffling and beginning anew but with focused anger.
“He can’t even see me in the final moment…and I swear it’s smiling at me.”
A patter of hands on legs throughout the room signify united support. The thick hand returns to her leg while she concludes into the microphone, “I’m the mother of an addict.”
The room: “Hello, Carina.”