STRANGE GUESTS
He pressed the red button and slammed the phone off the table.
“I presume that the call to that mistress of yours was all useless, right?” Mrs. Azzua spoke after watching her husband for a while.
He shook his head in defeat. “Nothing. She claims that she knows nothing. But she made it crystal clear to me that she did not care if Ejay hurt us or not.”
Mrs. Azzua scoffed, a devilish smirk etched on her lips. “But of course! What can you expect from such people? She almost ruined us when she chose to seduce you. What more can't she do? She must be enjoying that her son is avenging for her, even if she does not have any rights to this.”
“Let us not think like that, please. At least we know that she does not know where that monster of a son is. We can now look somewhere else.” Mr. Azzua spoke, dismissing his wife and taking a sip of his almost-cold coffee.
Gia chipped in with curiosity. “Didn’t she give any clue at all? She knows nothing."
“Nothing. She says she did not even know that Ejay was out of jail.” Mr. Azzua spoke.
Gia thought for a minute, and then she spoke. “That is odd. I mean, it is her son. How come she knows nothing? Are they not on good terms? Wait, why did Ejay even result in being adopted in the first place?”
Gia’s words hang like a dark cloud on everyone’s head. A lot of questions remained constant in the air. Then Mr. Azzua spoke. “She mentioned that she has not touched even a single cent of the money that I have been sending her for forty years. Maybe they had a rough life and decided to raise her son for adoption in a well-off family.” Mr. Azzua, his words cleared some doubts and made some sense.
But his wife scoffed, her words blocking his coffee from going down his throat. “And you trust that woman? Don’t tell me that you can't believe even a single word that comes from that woman’s mouth! She could be lying for all that we know.” She looked dead serious, strangling her husband with her cold eyes as she gawked at him, as if daring him to defend Hellen.
On the side of Hellen, she had been so engrossed in that conversation with Mr. Azzua that she did not hear the sound of the door opening.
“The balls of that old fool! How dare he!” She fumed.
“Bravo, Mother!”
She was about to turn and continue enjoying her loneliness and pains that had now been aroused, but that sudden sound shattered the tranquility—a voice, unmistakably familiar yet startling in its unexpectedness.
That sound?
How?
Her heart skipped several beats simultaneously, and she froze in her tracks, her hair on the back of her neck standing on end. It was a voice from the past, one that she had not heard in years. One she would never have expected. It echoed through the empty room as if carried on a ghostly breeze.
She strained to decode the source; her breath caught in her throat. ‘Is it a figment of my imagination? A trick played by the stillness of the night? Did that man’s words instill this much fear that I am now hallucinating about that voice?’ She thought to herself.
"Won't you turn to look at your son?”
But there it was again, apparent and hauntingly close.
Fear prickled her skin as a surge of terror surged into her. She had locked the door and not heard the creaking sound of the broken wood door opening. She still continued to think that her wind was playing tricks on her.
She glanced around at the memories stuck on the walls, wondering whether they were the ones speaking to her and tormenting her. Doubt gnawed at her thoughts. Could it truly be them? She smirked at that insane idea bitterly. ‘I cannot be going mad! And these photos clearly do not have mouths to produce sounds. It might be the disgusting voice of that Azzua moron scaring me,’ she thought! “I curse that man and his entire family’s generation! Curse him and that ugly wife of his. Their son is not innocent either! They would have at least given my poor son a name if he were never born!” She hissed, teeth gritted, her eyes radiating with the fire of rage that added more luminousness to the room.
“So, you agree to what I am doing, mother? You agree that those people deserve no mercy!”
But unbelievably, that voice persisted, softly murmuring words that tugged at the strings of memory, stirring emotions long buried beneath the surface. It carried the rhythmic pattern of someone so dear. Someone whose presence lingered in the corners of her mind and every beingness! Someone whom she thought had long ago forgotten about her. Someone that she longed for every passing second of her life!
A loved one. The only thing she had to call her own in the entire ugly world. A voice from a distant time, now echoing through the walls of her home? Or was it a phantom, a cruel trick of the mind playing tricks on me?
Heart pounding, she cautiously followed the sound, each step measured, the anticipation and trepidation intertwining in a dance of incertitude. And finally, she met the figure—the tall frame glammed with a red dress code and adorned with a cold demeanor, just like she always knew him—her son!
Shock struck her as much as hilarity surged in her in denumerable savage streams, both threatening and frightening.
“Son! My son?” Tears drenched her face, arms stretching on their own as the longing to hold her dear son washed over her. But his walking stick blocked her before she could even get an inch closer, pushing her back like he did not share the same sentiments as her after seeing her after long, dreadful years.
