Chapter 5: Confession

His head was very heavy, but his legs- his legs felt nonexistent, light, like pillows. He was dizzy, nauseous and his lungs couldn't catch a deep breath. His chest and shoulders felt as if someone were pushing down on them with maniacal glee. There was something- a pain starting in his right shoulder down the shoulder blade, up the neck; a blinding, ragged pain that seemed to come with every half-ass breath that he drew.

Then it was all gone.

*_*_*_*_*

He remembered falling, and falling, and falling� But not landing, never landing, and he wished that he did because then maybe it would all stop; if he could just land, then maybe the dizziness would stop and let him be.

Flashes would come to him out of the swirling blackness. Memories. And now they were getting more memorable, more vivid.

Lex desperately tried to stop it, to halt everything. He tried to stop his world from twisting and spiraling unceasingly, from being so damn confusing and sickening, but he just couldn't. He was helpless to end this onslaught of mental agony that continued to persist through his silent screams of dissent.

Pictures, left and right, were now coming at him like some peculiar, fragmented homemade movie. They were of his mother, Lynette, nice, serene and wonderful. The illustration of how he remembered her: a perfect union of childhood freedom and maternal love, coming to bliss within his anamnesis. He was unaware of the change, but his lips turned upward in a smile very unlike that of a Luther.  A smile that contained absolutely nothing but pure love and felicitous significance.

�mom�

But something was wrong. Something was changing. The pictures of his mother were now fading, fading into obscurity. One of his father coming home, up the stairs, into Lex's hallway, and into his room-

�no�

- to announce to his son-

�please, no�

-his one and only son, that his mother was dead.

Any sublime happiness was swept away by the harsh hand of time, now fast forwarded for the sake of recall. The place he associated with death of his mother, the abode of his worst memory ever, came into view. Images of that hated place, the cold and sterile wake, began to commit themselves to his long-suffering mind.

---My feet shuffle sadly down the carpeted floor in a solitary walk to the body of the woman that I love so� It's as if I'm walking to an execution, not of another person, not even of myself- which might be a more humane demise than whatever God has in store for me now- but instead the execution of my world.  The world that she made her own just by being in it, just by being there.  This world that she has always been in. The walk to her body is the most onerous and unrelenting of my life.---

�my mother; I can't see this again; I've been through it once, isn't that enough?�

---My father sits, stony-eyed and unmoving, cold and more dead than his wife. Dead to the world, her world, every world. Gone.---

Lex never saw Lionel cry.  Never saw him shed even a single tear for the one human being so solely devoted to him. He wondered if his father had been too far gone from the teachings of his own old man to really feel the loss; if he had been completely-

�numb; he was numb�

-devoid of all emotion at the site of his own wife's lifeless body.

�numb to the world; it's the Luther trait, the Luther gift�

Lex preferred to think that if anything had made his father the inimical and hollow man he was, it would have been the death of the one person in the world that could ever reach his heart, that organ so well hidden and locked away it was an enigma, a marvel that she had found the damn thing at all.

�did she really? did he ever love her like I did? like I do? did he ever live in her world? if he did and she found his heart, she must have taken it with her when she left us�

The memory of reaching her coffin hit him.

---Tears so close at hand, but I won't let them fall, I will not let my father see them because I've already begun to experience the chilly depths that exist within the man.  I pass my father in the front row, an impassive statue- a very monument to the Luther apathy that I know will eventually burrow it's way into my own being.---

�will I fight it? please tell me I will, that- that I can�

He had blinked, still looking straight ahead, then gazed down inside coffin-

�so stiff and lonely looking; I don't want to die like that�

---I see the eyes shut in that same image of perpetual slumber that every loved one so desperately wants- needs- to see.  The only difference is that I know the peace I see in her face is a false one, I know that the rest is an uneasy one.  It's the same uneasy rest that is the communal status quo of anyone who happens to die before their lot is truly up, before they have their chance to finish and say goodbye.---

�never had the chance to say goodbye�

---As I bend to kiss a cheek so stiff and cold, a tear slides from my cheek and down to hers. When I pull back, I don't dare wipe it away. It's something that I can give her, my own sorrow at my mother's abrupt finale, the proof of my love that she deserves but will never receive from her husband.  I stare at the single tear, unmoving on the pale porcelain doll face that had once been my mother.  Now it is merely the shell, the paper wrapper, the leftovers of something so wonderful and understanding and� human.

I stare at her face, knowing that the coroner has painted the life into her lips---

�from which I would no longer acquire kisses goodnight, no more verbal restorations of a young Luther's confidence, shot down from typical childhood agonies; I was on my own and knew it�

---and has brushed that hair. Hair so soft it was almost impossible to feel, to grasp; like stardust, it was there, you just couldn't feel it.---

�unless it was tickling you on the cheek as she bent forward to kiss you goodnight�

---The stranger had also added the flush to her cheeks, which had once upon a time been illuminated by a natural glow.  As I look at her eyes I try not to know what else the coroner has changed, taken, opened and shut. What he has removed from my mother.  I already know that if I place a hand above her breast to feel that rhythm, the comforting beat, it will be gone.  But I don't want to know that her heart is no longer there.---

�the body would have suited Lionel so much better; hollowed from the inside out�

---Instead I try to picture her eyes, the color of rich emerald leaves illuminated from behind by the sun's platinum rays. I close my own eyes, another two tears escape, and I try furiously to bring to mind what they had looked like filled to the brim with mirth at my many childish antics.  I can't seem to catch the right amount of light in her eyes, can't seem to find the right number of crinkles in the sides, or the correct angle of her head, cocked to one side in an endearing habit of hers; I'm straining to remember how her piercingly carmine hair---

�the one thing that I had received from my mom, the one single proof that I was her son, and it was taken from me so soon after I lost her�

---had brought out the verdant richness and the pale ivory in her face; how- how�---

He couldn't remember. He was losing her.

---The coroner, some outsider, foreign to my family, has sewn those kind eyes, warm with tenderness, shut forever. They will never again open, never look at me with pride or love or stern admonishment. They will never look upon another human, another smile. They will never seem like the motherly caress that could bring me out of any problem. They would never---

He didn't get any further. He had simply broken down.  At that moment the nine year old Luther realized all that he had lost. His one true ally in the world. His one true hero. The only person in the world that would hold him, love him and never give up on him. The one person that wasn't afraid to show the world what she felt, to be herself even though that sometimes meant ache and loss and suffering.

At that moment he realized that the strongest and bravest person that he knew was also the most scared, the most fragile, and the most-

�vulnerable�

-lost to him. He was young, but he wasn't truly naive. The veritable depth of his loss lacerated his heart, ripping into him that day and taking something, something vital and pure, necessary to remain mortal and sane, and never planned on returning it.

It had taken Lex Luther's soul, the essence of his life.

---I fall on my knees then and there, my hands gripping the edge of the coffin with fingers and knuckles whitening in recognition of my grip, a grip of fear and pain and loss. I stay as if rooted to the casket and floor, whimpering, sobbing with my forehead against the dark and chilly, lacquered wood, calling out softly for my mom.

After a few minutes I feel hands grasp me firmly around my middle, gentle in understanding, and I began to wail. I turn quickly into the arms of my father, pressing my face, defiled with tears, to the black suit and let go.  I begin saying things, but what I'm saying isn't clear to my ears.  They are only words after all, and words mean nothing, words can never mean anything again, and certainly can mean nothing right now. Too much pain, but pain is just another word, isn't it? Nothing is accurate, nothing to comprehend, nothing to be right. Nothing ever could be right again.

There are murmurs and whispers, assurances, hands caressing my head, running through my crimson hair- so like Lynette's- in comfort. At least my father is here for me. He can never bring her back. He can never make things better, but he could try, and isn't that better in and of itself? Doesn't that save me?  Save us?

I pull back, needing to see if the same emotions flow through my father's heart and out his eyes.  Only it isn't Lionel who holds me.

I turn back to glance at the front row to find that my father hadn't budged, and I realize my ruination has come.  Not with a whisper, or a bang, but with a simple inaction from a man whose depletion was resonant and reserved for only the walking dead.

I just stand there, responding to nothing but the desolate emptiness within. No more words can reach my soul, no more words that try to enter my ears will ever reach the hole inside, the void I need to find some way to fill.  I just stand there staring at my father.  And Lionel just stares back, his expression the same as it has been since Lynette had died.

Hands gently pushed me forward, out of the room. Hands- I don't know nor care to whom they belong- then lead me to a seat where I merely sit, I don't know for how long.  Later the hands move me to a limo, separate from my father's, then another seat, this time at the memorial service. I sit unseeing and uncommunicative beside my father and stare at the hole in the ground, ready to receive the corpse of something that had once been dear to me.---

�never again�

---The dirt covers my mother, now lowered into the ground.  As is covers the coffin, my humanity is also attended to, coated with the same grime as the carapace encasing her.---

�only mine can never be removed, never; I won't allow it to be�

---The hands come back to retrieve me and they lead me back to the limo, then to the gathering where they assign me food to eat. The hands finally lead me to my room where they tuck me into bed, caress my unmoving face, then, their job completed, they turn off the light and close the door.

None of it matters. Nothing matters anymore.---
 
 
 
 
 

To be continued...