Hi, I haven't been able to upload chapters for the last two days due to family gatherings for Christmas. I owe you two chapters, which I'll upload this week.
My name is Margaret Kennedy. I had a comfortable childhood; I grew up as the popular blonde girl in my school years, surrounded by fake smiles, easy laughter, and admiring glances that, back then, were my happiness. I fell in love with a boy and thought, with the naivety of youth, that my life was perfect. I walked with my head held high, convinced that the world belonged to me. But my father ruined everything.
My father provided for my mother and me, but I rarely saw him. He worked all day and almost never came home, and when he did, his presence filled every room with a silent tension. The few times I saw him, I learned that he was a very strict man, with a hard gaze that did not allow answers, someone who liked everything to be done exactly as he said and who did not tolerate anyone defying his orders.
At the time, I didn't think that was something bad, since I barely saw him and, when he left, the air seemed to grow lighter. But when I came of age, I understood just how wrong I was.
The moment I turned eighteen and finished high school, he took me away from the city where I had always lived. I remember clenching my fists as I stared out the car window, watching the streets I knew disappear, forcing me to leave behind the life I had built there. All of it so I could marry a complete stranger in a town called Derry. The knot in my throat wouldn't let me breathe.
I couldn't do anything against my father. It didn't matter that I cried until I had no voice left, that I begged on my knees, or that I threatened never to speak to him again. After forcing me to marry, he left, taking my mother with him and leaving me alone, trembling, with that horrible fat man he had made me marry. I remember how he closed the door behind him without looking back.
He said that man was the son of a friend who had helped him greatly in his youth, and that they had sworn that if they ever had a son or a daughter, they would marry them once they came of age. Apparently, that friend died years later, and my father, under no circumstances, wanted to break that promise.
The son seemed to behave properly until my parents left. He appeared correct, even kind on the surface, but after the wedding he changed completely. His voice became rough, his gestures harsh, his presence oppressive. And I was never able to get rid of him.
Everything changed one day, six years after a life of constant suffering. The day the child was born—my son, whom I named Liam. At that time, every time I looked at him I could only think of his father, because of his black hair and amber eyes, so similar that they made my stomach churn.
I regret taking out on him what I couldn't do to his father. I remember pressing my lips together, my hands trembling with contained rage. Because even though he was fat and full of vices, his father was a monster in terms of physical strength. I had no escape.
The day my son Liam killed his father, I could feel, deep in my chest, that something had changed inside him. It was such a sudden change that it didn't seem possible, as if something impossible had occurred.
But I couldn't do anything to get rid of him at that moment. He had clear signs of abuse on his body, and if I said anything, I would go to prison and he would be seen as innocent. No one would believe that such a small child could do something like that. Every time I thought about speaking up, fear paralyzed me.
I developed fear of him. Those eyes he looked at me with told me, without words, that if I betrayed him, he would do everything possible to kill me. Every time our gazes crossed, I felt a chill run down my spine.
And a few months later, I realized that life wasn't so bad. Without that thing that had been my husband, the house became quiet, almost peaceful. Life began to improve little by little—not as much as when I was young and had a life where I got everything I wanted, but compared to those horrible six years of marriage, it was heaven.
Even though he still frightened me when he looked at me with that coldness if I refused to obey something, over time I accepted it. He didn't ask for extreme things or anything I couldn't agree to. And over the years, I began to regret what I had put him through at such a young age.
With time, I accepted following his orders as a kind of payment for how I had been with him when he was little. For some reason, he seemed obsessed with training and becoming stronger. He spent hours in silence, focused, as if the outside world didn't exist.
He didn't make friends or do the things children were supposed to do. That self-imposed loneliness, that unnatural behavior, made me continue to fear him even after five years had passed. Nothing changed except his physical appearance; his gaze remained the same.
But everything changed when he brought a girl home. I remember watching them from the kitchen in silence. I could see how he treated her carefully, measuring every gesture, trying to help her regain confidence and improve her life.
At that moment, I began to see him as my son again, not just as something that had taken control of his body. He had feelings and everything that came with them, even if he didn't show any of it to anyone except Carrie.
That same year, he found out that his parents had died in a car accident. He wanted to go to the funeral to say goodbye to his mother. Even though she hadn't defended him when his father forced her to marry, he still appreciated her for those eighteen years of happy life.
That year, he changed to his mother's last name. He didn't want to keep using his dead husband's surname, and he didn't want to go back to using his father's last name either. From that day on, she and Liam were Kennedy. Liam didn't mind the change; I had asked him before doing it.
The girl Carrie seemed to keep her distance from me on Liam's orders, always evasive, her gaze lowered. But one day, Liam sent her to me so I could teach her everything related to being a woman. From that day on, I was able to see and learn how hard her life had been. It was practically the opposite of my youth; she had never known what a full life was.
At that moment, I also thought that if Liam hadn't suddenly changed at the age of five, he would probably be worse off than this girl Carrie, with his father's horrible way of being and me taking my frustration out on him. I couldn't help shaking my head at that thought, regretting my mistakes even more.
Two years later, I saw Carrie lift objects with her mind after she and my son came back with blood on their clothes. For a few days, I distanced myself from her out of fear, keeping my distance, watching her cautiously. But later, I learned to accept it and returned to treating her with the affection I had grown used to over those two years. I could clearly see that she was in love with my son, though he seemed unaware of it.
A few days later, I realized that on that day they had killed some boys who bullied Carrie, and it seemed those boys had tried the same with my son, judging by his gunshot wound. But years later, Carrie revealed to me that the gunshot wound had not been caused by those boys, but by a kind of psychic vampires that had come after her.
That was when I learned that my son was capable of sacrificing his life for Carrie. He could have left, fled without looking back, and left her alone against those two monsters, but he didn't. He chose to face them despite his young age and ended up with a gunshot wound, close to death, if it hadn't been for the awakening of Carrie's powers.
My son seemed to change little by little as he spent more time with Carrie. He stopped being the loner who only thought about training, the boy who isolated himself from the world as if he didn't need anyone. Now he had someone he truly cared about. That hurt a little in my heart; I felt a silent stab when I realized it wasn't me. I knew I didn't deserve for him to care about me, but even so, deep down, I couldn't help wishing that one day he would forgive me and treat me like the mother I was never able to be.
Margaret knew that he called her mom, but she also knew the truth behind that word. For him, it was nothing more than an empty title, something he said out of habit or laziness, to avoid having to call her something different in front of others or to spare explanations. Every time she heard that word from his mouth, her chest burned, because she knew it didn't mean the same thing it did for other mothers.
Three years later, she witnessed how a monster that supposedly attacked in dreams was killed. She remembers standing frozen, arms stiff at her sides, her mind blank as she processed what she was seeing. At that moment, she began to think that anything was possible in this world. She had already seen giant monsters on television, a supposed human evolution with powers in Japan, and now a creature that attacked people in their sleep. Reality, as she knew it, had shattered.
And she wasn't wrong. One day later, they found themselves fleeing from a clown who could transform into Godzilla—the same one she had seen on television—and who could also manipulate reality to create infinite loops they couldn't escape from. Every step she took during that escape was filled with terror, her heart beating so hard it hurt.
But for some strange reason, it became increasingly difficult for her to remember what had happened the day before and everything related to that clown, Derry, and what happened there. She felt the memories becoming blurry, like sand slipping through her fingers. The only thing she remembered clearly was life in her house: how she treated Liam and how everything changed over the following years. Everything related to the town became harder and harder to remember each day, as if someone were slowly erasing it from her mind.
They were currently staying in a hotel in the next town. Margaret was sitting on the bed, her hands clasped together, her gaze lost, when she made a decision. She had decided to win back her son's love once again. She would do more than just comply with what he asked; she would actively seek what was best for him, even without him asking. She would strive for him to see her as his mother and not just as something useful, a convenient tool. This time, she had no intention of giving up.