*Warning: The following story includes mentions of abuse, trauma, and mental illness.* "The Rumble of Silence" by Randall Wyman ***** I’m a good mother. The state may not think so. My family. My doctors. My therapist. They all think I’m unfit to care for Patrick. He’s my boy, though. My special little boy. I’d do anything for him. Kill for him. Chris, my boyfriend, sees how good of a mother I am. He’s far more supportive than James ever was. James, my ex-husband, thought I was crazy. He sent me to doctors who agreed with him, so they prescribed drugs. When the drugs didn’t work, they stuck me in a psychiatric facility. A sane person would call it the Looney Bin, so that’s what I call it, too. Chris likes me better off the meds, like God intended. He flushed them down the toilet one night and that was that. Chris’s outside now, digging. I told him to wear a jacket; it’s raining and cold. I don’t want him to catch a cold or worse. We don’t have insurance and we certainly don’t have the money to see doctors. Even if we did, we wouldn’t go. Don’t trust them. Not anymore. More thunder. Patrick hates storms. I find them majestic, soothing. But not him. The thunder terrifies him. He read in a book once that really bad storms spawn tornados. After he watched that tornado movie with Bill Paxton he didn’t sleep for weeks. Me? Tornados remind me of The Wizard of Oz, and escaping home. As a child, I prayed one would whisk me away to some fantastical place, a land with talking animals and magical, colorful landscapes; a land with bizarrely-shaped plants and buildings made of candy. I’d make friends with strange but lovable tin men and scarecrows and lions. They’d ask me to go on adventures, maybe even enlist me to stop a wicked witch from corrupting the land. Most important of all, in this place my father could never find me, could never again lay his filthy goddamn hands on me after everyone had gone to bed and the house fell silent. I prayed the silence would last forever, or, at the very least, until the sun came up the next morning. But the only answer to my prayers was the floodboards creaking, the door cracking, and knowing a monster was coming… I continue to watch Chris through the slider door. He’s a good man. A hardworking man. He stops what he’s doing and turns , turns as if he knows I’m watching him, stares straight at me. He smiles. Lightning streaks through the sky. My stepmother used to say lightning was God’s way of expressing his anger for all the bad things I’d done. She blamed me for my father’s “indiscretions.” She had the nerve to accuse me of corrupting that bastard, perverting the bodily gifts bestowed upon me by the Lord for my wicked desires . Another boom. Closer. I’ve never touched Patrick. Never laid a hand on him. If Chris ever touched my boy I’d kill him, like my father killed my stepmother. He fed her rat poison, snuck it in her oatmeal each morning. He wasn’t a smart man; it didn’t take long for the police to figure out what happened and arrest him. I tried to visit him once in prison. I had driven three hours to the facility, sat in my car and waited to gather up the courage to confront the man who robbed me of so much in my life. I even wrote out what I’d say to him. But once night fell, I had forgotten why I’d thought this was a good idea. That night I slept in my car. In the morning I drove home. My father died a few years back. I was told it was cancer. Good. Cancer rots away your insides, robs you of your dignity. I bet he suffered. I bet he died alone. Afraid. I don’t regret never visiting him. Not one bit. He wasn’t worthy of forgiveness. Luckily, I’m nothing like him. The worst thing I ever did was stab my ex-husband one night as he beat me. He called the police and that’s how I was forced into the Loone…I mean, psychiatric facility. See? I’m not crazy. I called it a psychiatric facility. I spent two months in that hellhole. Never again. (continued in comments)