By Dan Aries Amian

Content Warning: Parent Death, Suicide

The wolf doesn’t bark; it only howls to the gray-haired moon in monstrosity. Its fangs gilled and bared, wanting to etch the primitive ruin into tender flesh. So, what makes my fury unkind, eccentric, and apoplectic? Is my heart a scarlet-inked apple screaming of abomination, beating wilderness inside the Eve-incarcerated Garden of my chest? Is it a thorny crumb of glass winking cruelly against the harsh fluorescent light? Is it a martyr bleeding profusely? Or an earthly performance dug from the graves of my ancestral pain?

I half-listened when mom once said, “Girlhood is a rabid dog.” My mascara wand tilted in an angle of transformative magic, our eyes meeting each other in the reflection. Identical golden hair shimmering against the incandescent bathroom windows. Eyeliner sharply stark against her faded youth lines. She whispered, “It’s feral. It’s anger. It’s volatile.” Her words were religion, a divine testament of her adolescence. The opposite of Genesis: destruction unpeeling the creation. A prophecy dressed in pink.

Mothers were clairvoyants. There is witchery etched within their souls patterned with magic, all-seeing eyes, destinies, and hawk guidance. She was warning me about the truth all along. As my ballet shoes grew into the highest heels, I towered with a thunderstorm circling my head. My dirty-streaked nails stretched into neon claws, ready to dig their sharpness into my skin. My eyes contained crystallized coldness, sharply splintering. My tongue was no longer cotton candy sweet; it had morphed into slimy poison. The purring pleaser became a stray dog between smoked-stained streets. Her absence was a vessel of behemoth.

My childish adolescence was no longer a doll. It transfigured into a Frankenstein. Pet me, it begged. Its anatomy jutted ugly. Bones disjointed like boughs reaching into the dark. Skin chipped into the bluest bruise. Bleeding diamond tears against its hollowed cheeks. Its head was a lightning crack in the middle. Unspooling the wrecked wretch was the barest of me. A monstrous appendage—this Frankenstein conceived from the plague of my rage, misery, and defeat.

My father’s eyes were always a cerulean disappointment, specks of gentleness spurred with questions about how long it would tether me. The unspoken it. My golden hair that she transcended withered into gothic dye rebellion. Mascara streaming down into mottled watercolor. My skin, her skin, boasted crescent-shaped imprints of catfights. “You can’t let this be your life, Amanda.” His parental voice was no longer an antidote. My life was a funny indictment.

The solstice only brought a flash of electric nostalgia. A punishment of remembrance. The ocean was once beautiful against the dappled retro red and orange. Its surreal waves were gladiators’ shoulders clamoring in an arena, the white foams were blood spilled. The currents were always reeling, breathing, and gasping for air. Powerful, dangerous, and mercurial. Grandma would ease me from my memory lane during that dreaded commemoration of her death. Her handmade flower crowns would sit atop my head screaming of folklore royalty. We would watch the ocean swallow the earth; her arms draped around my heavy shoulders in a lulling balm of serenity. “You’re just like your mother.” A searing comment against the haze of comfort. Scalding. A scab pulled apart, gushing fresh pain.

Am I my mother? The question twisted my insides with guilt, pushing me into a corner cowering with embarrassment. My skin crawling in the most afflicted of emotions. What did I create of myself? How did I become rue?

Where was the girl she once loved—the one she taught to adore the frilly bubblegum pink because it was a perfect feminine ensemble?

Where was that echoing girl who tried to wear her powered stilettos, too big for her prepubescent soles? “One day, you’re going to grow up so quickly that you’ll walk faster in heels than me!” Her enchanted laugh would follow, genuinely appreciating my girlish innocence—always ringing clear in a tight rope of wistfulness.

Where was the inquisitive girl who asked too many questions about real life? “Monsters are humans, sweetie. Trust less.” Her wisdom embedded itself into me.

Where was the romantic daughter who cried shamelessly about boys, ruefully complaining about their inconsistencies? “Cry those tears, honey. Someday, a man will never make you cry for what he lacks.” A billet-doux to Dad.

Where was the achiever who showed her A’s boastingly? Where was the eager girl who taught her so much about Gen Z slang? Where was the girl who loved her mother so much? Where was that girl who called in the middle of a hot afternoon begging for her mother to buy a tampon? Where was that girl who binge-watched Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, and Gossip Girl with her? Always competing to recite iconic lines while we made faces at each other in the haven of the living room.

Where was that girl who snapped furiously at her for being too disapproving of the boys she dated?

Where was the girl who posited her mother into an elevated admiration?

Where was the girl who loved her so much? Where was the girl among the myriad of memories with her? Where was I? In the feathering reflections of my mother, where did I refract into a disdainful consequence? When did I fragment into a lost puzzle piece?

A boy asked me once under the party lights, my snarled smile breaking his heart, “Who hurt you to make you this way?” My red lipstick drenched in nicotine thrill drooped into a sad slab. His eyes were glazed in tears; my eyes were windows sifted open by a hurricane, the water excavated.

I unfurled my hands around his arm and clashed outside the club, the stylish lights coiling around my sad statuesque. Who hurt me? The question reverberated like scratched vinyl.

I walked the night breezily. My memories glitching into splices. Mom with her wolfish smile. Her darkness was silent but howling with clenched magnitude. It didn’t bark, it only bared its fangs and bit Mom in the most vulnerable position. She was sunshine. She filled the room with character. Her wit was saber humorous. She was accentuated glory. A bubbling champagne. She orbited in her universe. She had so much life. She had it all. And while she expanded into her ubiquitousness as a star twinkling ethereal, it all came to a crashing end. A titanic explosion. A supernova.

It was summer. The night was melting.

Her door was locked. I was beaded in sweat.

The moon was curtained by gregarious clouds. A starless night, not wanting to witness a tragedy.

I heard the scratches first, the panting of bare feet on the ground. Bottles clinking and something rattling. The air suddenly felt anguished. Coldness wafted around me. I tiptoed outside, walked to her room, and knocked multiple times until the stabbing inside my ribs felt more real than how it recurred. I screamed gutturally. My eyes shut tightly as I barged my shoulders into the wood, the pain flaring on the dent of my force ignored as tears were exulted from my ducts. Dad was cradling me in his arms. He didn’t have to ask questions. He kicked the door inward, his elephant foot unhinging the bolted screws. It toppled on the floor like a gong sound of conclusion.

And on the bed was my inevitable fear, my mom restfully empty. Dressed in her silky white gown, she looked like an angel fallen to her fate. Eyes peacefully closed like a siren singing for rebirth, reincarnation. Lips were slightly ajar, the last of her life whooshing out into the vastness. Against the mist of my tears, I saw the pills scattered like a constellation on the floor. Goadingly fatal, mocking me with their potential poison.

Screams.

Sobs that cupped the heaven, begging unabashedly for a second life.

Dad’s tenor screech of my mother’s name. I watched the catastrophe unfold. I became part of it, sharing my cosmic betrayal through silence.

A splash of cold water numbed me in all my sliver. Wrecked and trampled, I confounded myself on the floor with my head bowed. My pain felt metal, lethally hard. As the world around me brimmed with a pulsating white noise, I surrendered to the static and the embrace of dark. Dad’s screams were muffled; they only pulverized me. The whole of myself was burning in anguish, a cremating sensation of punishment that I felt undeserved. Hell. Fury. Fire. Conflagration. I was red.

–

Dan Aries is a nineteen-year-old queer individual from the Philippines. Young as they may be, they have a fierce heart for intersectional feminism and inclusivity. If Aries is not writing, they are probably holed up in their room watching drag makeup tutorials while feeling the fantasy with a faux coat.