Antonova Family Mansion

hinI stepped out of the cab after what seemed like a journey that lasted for more than an eternity. I didn't tell anyone that I would be coming here to the family mansion today, so my sudden arrival might be a little surprising for some of them. I then sighed while thinking about everyone living in that mansion right now.

Well, I just have to face this decision now that I am here. It's only for a week anyway. If things went just as I planned, I would be able to erase all sorts of suspicions against me regarding my wife's death and come back to church with renewed respect from my peers. Now, this is not at all, implying that there are people out there who suspect me after the death of my wife—no, quite the contrary. In fact, everyone immediately dismisses any sort of suspicion that foul play must have been involved in my wife's apparent suicide when they saw me weeping alone in my home where my wife's body was found. The police officers and my parishioners saw me bawling in tears while wearing my cassock and praying to every saint I could ever list on the top of my head.

It all went according to my plan, and that time, I didn't even need to use chili peppers anymore! It was just some real, genuine tears, and I have to thank those Ghibli movies for that.

Nevertheless, countless interrogations and questioning followed until they all finally gave up on me when the people in my church started to rally against the police officers in my defense. I will forever be thankful to them because they have honestly saved my ass big time back then. After all, wow, I seriously have no more tricks up my sleeves around those times. Anyway, the police decided to leave me alone. After a convincing performance in the middle of a liturgy (I cried in front of my church mates while reading that day's epistles. It was great, very great), the people themselves were the ones who finally urged me to take a break.

And hey, who am I but another broken man in need of a break? Thus, after giving me a free airplane ticket from New York to LA, the people circled me and gave me a heartfelt prayer with their hands on top of my head. Uh... I can't remember what their prayers contain anymore, though, because I was thinking about how I can explain all of these to my mother, but it's all good. I saw some of them crying so they must have said something nice, I guess?

Anyway, the plane ride home lasted for about six hours, and it took another 2 hours to reach our mansion from the airport. When I finally arrived, I once again felt at awe after seeing just how empty this place is compared to the modern wilderness that is the rest of Los Angeles City. Everywhere outside of the mansion is filled with nothing... err... well, yes. That's it. It's filled with nothing, barren, almost like a wasteland. That's because my family bought this entire chunk of land but only decided to build that one mansion there in the middle of it, nothing else.

The mansion itself is, well, grand, I can tell that to you at the very least with words, but the design of it is impossible to be conveyed through simple linguistic methodologies alone. As a mortal man like me gaze at it with all its splendor and might, I could only imagine that this house might be what the house of God ought to look like in his kingdom above the very skies I gaze upon every waking moment of my life. It is simply too beautiful for me to comprehend. The house itself is painted with white from roof to the ground. There is a grand stairway leading to the main door. From the outside, one can see the many windows all over the three-story mansion wherein the grandest of them all stood at the very center where an enormous bullet-shaped window is placed with the silhouette of a woman's figure plastered in red glass. That window signifies the matriarch of the family, my mother, Lyudmila Antonova, but your dad can just call her Ila. Obviously, for me and the rest of the family, we call her just mom—she doesn't like it when her children get too formal with her but not too familiar that we would forget her status as our life-giver.

The mansion had no gardens, no lawns, no backyard, no whatever other shenanigans all around, not even a single grass, bush, or tree saplings, nada! However, it does have its fair share of greenery at the very top of it—the rooftop to be more precise. Oh, the roof is home to the grandest work of nature you could ever find on Earth! There stood a beautiful greenhouse of flowers and greener pastures that I can expound on and explain further, but I, frankly, am just too uninterested that I simply do not at all wish to talk about it—just know that it's gorgeous, okay? There's nothing more to it other than that.

I looked at the cab driver as it bolted through a lonely road, the one singular roadway that connects this lonesome mansion to the rest of the world. I have lived in this mansion for the better years of my childhood: this is where I was born; this is where I grew up. Nonetheless, whenever I look around to see the vast emptiness all over it and the misplaced vibe of the white mansion amid it, I still could not believe to the best of my honesty that I am still standing in Los Angeles.

I then walked towards the front door, stepping into the stairway with a dumbfounded look on my face as I smiled with a confused gaze running around the surroundings. Suddenly, the front door opened and a little boy who's wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon character design on it stood right above me at the very top of the long entryway.

"Who are you?" The boy said as a smile swept past his face, but he didn't move an inch from where he stood. He just remained there with his hands glued tight on his sides.

"KYLE!" The familiar voice of a woman rang from inside the mansion. It sounded so grungy and so raspy that I almost thought it was the sound of a rusted metal door opening. The owner of the voice then swiftly came out of the house as she banged the door open while stomping. The first thing she did when she stepped out is to drop every strength of her palm down onto the little boy's right cheek. I stood there with a stunned look on my face. I was about to approach her when she bit her lower lip so damn hard that I almost thought she deliberately did so to gush blood out of her mouth and use it as a sacrificial tool to summon a demon and command it to eat the little boy whole in one huge devilish bite. Her hand then bounces back from downward, hits the boy's other cheek, and slaps the ever-living soul out of him until I could visibly see his face contort unusually like that of a medieval painting of a cat.

The boy then cried so loudly, and I could almost see the remaining patience running out of the woman's eyes when red veins suddenly popped out of it in rapid succession. She then pulled the boy's hair so damn hard that the already crying child burst into an even more terrible outburst, which sounded just as horrible as the woman's shrill shouts. I then slowly stomped my feet on the white marble stairway as I approached the woman with a relaxed face while feeling an indescribable anger rush through me while listening to the boy's sniffling and screaming and further yelling and nonstop thrashing.

When the woman finally noticed my presence, she looked right down at me as I paved through the ashen stairway. Almost miraculously, I saw her reddened face turned into its usual pale color; her veined eyes returned into its normal drowsy state; her gritting mouth relaxed, which made it easier for me to see her familiar thick lips; and her trembling body dropped like it was ice that melted and turned into gas in just a matter of seconds.

She then groaned before releasing the boy's hair but not forgetting to smack his head first. I rolled my eyes as I looked at her condescending eyes while I tried my very hardest to feel happy to see her.

"Hey," The woman said with a relaxed tone, but oddly enough, I could still feel a twinge of anger within it. It was not the same kind of anger she used to the still crying boy, but it was a sort of rage that felt like it existed for so long that it just turned into something she expected to feel. Like doing a mundane task: you know you have to do it, you know you will do it, but you just can't get used to it.

I felt the same way, being angry about this woman felt so mundane after such a long time that the thought of being mad at her alone is enough to stop my anger from spewing out of my leaking brain. Nonetheless, a huge part of me still wishes that I could have slapped the darkness out of this woman's life out of her ugly cocky face. She and her little pest-like mistake continue to surprise me as to how and why such creatures deserve to live in this perfect world that the Lord has created—truly mindboggling.

"Mmm." I groaned as a reply with a nod. I then looked at the boy with contemptuous eyes while still listening to his loud crying—oh, Lord Jesus, son of God, the very bastion of hope and peace on Earth Himself, oh, PLEASE give me enough strength not to slice off this boy's tongue off or else, I swear to the very name of my family, I will slap him with all the might of all the waves in the seven seas combined so that he could feel your wrath once and for all, Lord. I looked at the boy while squinching my eyes as it continued to cry without an end in sight, along with his demonic sounding roars of sadness. "Your son looks healthy," I said before closing my eyes so that I could stop at least one of my senses from receiving more of the boy. However, its grating voice remained as if it was trying to shred my ears from inside out.

"Yeah," The woman replied before pulling the boy's hair again and dragging it towards the door leading into the insides of the mansion. As she opened the door, she started screaming again with her familiar blood-curdling voice, which is not at all a great thing to hear while listening to the boy's supersonic mouth. "MOM! MOM ARE YOU LISTENING!? MOOOOOOOM! ANATOLY'S HOME!"

"What!?" The voice of an old woman rang from within the mansion."

 "A. NA. TO. LY. IS. HEEEEERE!" The woman replied with an annoyed grunt.

"I heard you the first time, you ungrateful tramp, I heard ya! I'm asking if you're serious or just trying another more of your plans to kill me once and for all!" The old woman's voice rang from inside of the mansion and slowly got nearer and nearer into the doorway.

"If I wanted to kill you, I would HAVE ALREADY DONE IT LAST MONTH!" The woman's voice gradually raised as she replied to the old woman.

"Oh, every day, Susan, every day, you give me more reason why I SHOULD HAVE SWALLOWED YOU WHOLE!" The old woman replied as I finally heard her voice clearly from outside of the mansion.

"I never asked you to take whoever that man's cum is inside of your pussy, bitch! YOU KNOW THAT! I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS! THIS LIFE! I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS! YOU SHOULD HAVE ABORTED ME!"

The old woman was about to refute once more when our eyes finally met, and her devilishly angry expression turned into a sweet smile that I could only describe as the perfect brilliance that not even the angels could mimic. 

"My son!" She said weakly as she shakily moved towards me. "My good, good boy!"