Art by Mori_art_ti

Challenge: Landscape

Idea by @mere_inkslinger

The secret your mother asked you to keep.

minipage

I couldn't keep secrets to save my life.

My mother wanted me to keep a lot of secrets.

Which caused our relationship to be incredibly problematic. Not that she noticed.

She was too busy--- it's a secret. 

Her secrets drove me to insanity unless I told.

So I told her secrets to a little stream on the edge of the woods by the park at first. But it was there that I made a friend. Someone I could tell all my secrets to. He was really good at keeping them as far as I knew.

I started off with the little stuff.

"Mother doesn't remember who my father is."

"Mother can't read."

But as the man and I met more frequently, my secrets got bigger.

"Mother sells drugs."

"Mother does drugs."

"Mother steals some of the drugs she's supposed to sell."

The weight off my shoulders provided an undescribable relief.

I knew my mother was screwed up. 

I knew I should leave her house.

But I had no where to go. I didn't have a father.

"Mother killed my grandparents because they were judging her."

The man sat on the otherside of the stream, silent as a rock. Some days I wondered if he was real. 

But as soon as I told him a secret, he stood up and left. That's how I knew he was real. He moved.

I had heard about the diseases where you went crazy and saw stuff. But that wasn't me. I was sane.

I insisted on it. 

"Mother killed her old boyfriend," I said one night. The man stood and left.

Some nights I stuck around by the stream. Some nights I didn't.

It all depended on the secret. The big ones had to be contemplated; they got caught on the rocky bottom of the stream. The tiny ones could be let go, disappearing down the stream faster. 

That night I stuck around.

When I got back to our tiny house, it was surrounded by police tape and cop cars.

I immediately started panicking. I started running because that was the first thing you learned how to do in this neighborhood: don't walk--- run.

But a cop caught me, swinging his massive arms around my waist and scooping me up. I was sat in a cop car but they left the door open.

"Am I under arrest?" I asked.

"No," a cop insisted. But I asked the question, again and again.

If you're not under arrest, you're free to go.

Every street kid knew that.

Eventually, I caught a glimpse of my mother. I could tell from her bloodshot eyes that she was on some violent cocktail of alcohol and narcotics. 

She was watching me, but not for long.

A man in a long coat came out of the house and headed straight for me.

"Who are you?" I asked. "Am I under arrest?"

"I'm a detective," he said. "You're not under arrest."

"Then why am I here?"

"As a witness."

"I have rights!" I shouted. 

"You do," he said.

"I want to go," I said, sitting up straight.

"You're a witness to a string of crimes. Leaving now would be obstruction of justice. Then we could arrest you," the detective said. 

"I won't say anything."

"You already have," he said. 

When he walked away, there was something so familar about his stride and posture.

The man at the stream was the detective.

He didn't need my confession.

He already had it.