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The side door of Leeroy’s house slammed open on a freezing cold Monday night.
Somewhere in the kitchen, a middle-aged woman lied motionless on the floor, her eyes firmly shut.
She was dead.
Oh my god.
She was dead.
Streetlamps blurred in Leeroy’s vision as he ran for his fucking life, his hair whipping wildly in the wind. He didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know where he was going. There was only one single thought running through his panicked mind: I killed her.
He hadn’t meant to. He swore he hadn’t meant to. He wouldn’t hurt his mother. Wouldn’t hurt her the way she’d been ever since his father had left. Wouldn’t.
But he had, hadn’t he?
Someone was crying. He was. It didn’t matter. Keep running.
Leeroy knew it’d been a mistake to tell her what he had. He never should’ve said anything - never should’ve opened his mouth and said those six traitorous words: What if I was a–
And she’d laughed.
Laughed in his fucking face until he felt raw and told him no, you’re not. My son isn’t one of those.
Those disgusting deformities.
You’re always going to be Leeroy to me.
You’re always going to be my son.
Pulled him into a hug that felt suffocating in the midst of the humiliation. I love you. You know that, right?
And then he’d just … panicked.
Her hug - no, her love - was nothing more than a trap, intent on leaving him to bleed out without so much as a bandaid.
So he’d pushed. Pushed her disgusting excuse for love away to prevent himself for choking on it, just as he had been for years now.
He’d watched his mother fall to the ground with a thud.
Silence.
Dead
dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead—
Leeroy almost collided with the streetlamp in front of him, feet struggling to keep up with the pure adrenaline running through his body.
The police were going to find him. They’d toss him in some dark room and leave him to sit with the guilt of killing his mother for the rest of his life–
And he’d never be able to go home ever again, would he?
He ran towards the woods - no one would be able to find him in there, right? No one would look. No one would think to look.
It was next to a random pine tree a few miles deep into the woods that he broke.
Just cried.
Cried for all the hurt he’d been dealt and all the hurt he’d caused.
His mother’s voice echoed around in his head, scathing as always. Crying like a little girl now, are we?
He tried to cover his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie, trying to will the moisture out of his eyes.
Pathetic. That’s what he was being. Pathetic.
A twig snapped somewhere off to his right, and he was immediately running again, his hair - which he’s foolishly been growing out to be medium-length - catching on the branches hanging above. His chest had constructed impossibly tight. Oh god, he couldn’t breathe.
Regardless of it all, Leeroy still ran.
Ran away from the burning remains of his childhood, that of which had been on fire since as long as he could remember.
Ran away from the “love” his mother welded as a weapon, forever trapping him inside a cycle of hurt and guilt. Because this isn’t what parents who love their kids are supposed to do to them.
Ran away from that house where everything bad must be swept under the rug and excused with a simple, what happens in this house stays in this house.
Ran away from that piece of clothing sitting in the very back of Leeroy’s closet, hidden from the outside world - not a single beam of light ever touching it.
Ran away from his suffocating excuse of a life.
Ran.
That was the only thing he knew how to do, after all.
That was all he’d ever been taught.
Maybe someday, he would finally stop.