"Mama?"

Her gasps and muffled moans echoed throughout the corridor outside her room. He didn't like it. He was scared of those sounds and he wasn't sure why she would sound like that when his father was at work. She only ever made those sounds when his father was with her in their room.

"Mama?" He opened her door, peeking hesitantly behind the massive wooden frame. The room was empty but he could still hear her silent gasps and deep pants. "Are you here?"

The room suddenly went silent, as if frozen by his voice but he knew she was there. She couldn't hide her laboured breaths no matter how hard she tried. He walked in, his feet shuffling clumsily, anxiously. He didn't want to look but he had to. He had to know that she was okay. He walked towards their bed, slowing his pace as he walked to the opposite end of it.

She was there. She had to be there but he so desperately wished that she wasn't.

He closed his eyes, craning his neck to look around the thick duvet.

He breathed deeply, trying to prepare himself, before his opened his eyes...

Her eyes opened to the strong smell of cigarette smoke and an empty space beside her on the bed. She rubbed absentmindedly at the dull ache on her outer thigh before turning to look for him. "Couldn't sleep?" Tasneem sat up, wrapping their sheet around her body to fend of the slight chill in the air.

She looked at him worriedly. Riaz hadn't even realised that she had spoken to him as he stared aimlessly down at the street below. Great white puffs of smoke billowed from his mouth each time he lowered his cigarette, tapping off the ash as if by reflex in the ashtray beside him. She wrapped her arms around her knees as she looked at him. After five years, the thought of being with him still made her smile. He was always there, silent and constant. He was there to shade her against all the shitty things in life and leaning on him seemed as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

She reached for his shirt, tangled up in the covers at the end of their bed, wincing as the bruise on her leg seemed to pull at the action. She looked down, stifling her gasp at the size of the large, purple mark before she grasped his shirt in her hands, yanking it over her head in order to cover it up.

She padded over to him on her tiptoes, shivering at the feeling of the cold tiles against her feet, and wrapped her arms around him as if to siphon the heat out of his body. He jolted, as if brought back to life, as she snatched the cigarette from his mouth and brought it to her own lips.

"I don't like it when you do that." He said softly, wrapping his arm around her soft frame, watching as she inhaled the blackened smoke into her lungs.

She looked up, smiling around the cigarette before she handed it back to him.

"What?" He asked, amused at her reaction.

She stretched up, wrapping her arm around his neck as she pressed her lips to his, exhaling the smoke slowly into his mouth. The bitter, sharp taste of the smoke infiltrated every part of him as he tightened his grip on her waist, lifting her up till her she was balanced on only the tiniest tips of her toes. He could feel her chest expand heavily as he pressed her up even more firmly against him, trying to drown out the voices in his head. He could feel her breathe cold air heavily out her nose as he ran his hand through her long, brown hair. His grasp around her waist was almost suffocating before his hands roved lower down her back...

Lower...

Lower...

He barely felt her fingers slip through his own before she removed the cigarette gently from his tightened hold and leaned back, breaking of the kiss with one last peck to his lips.

"Couldn't you sleep?" She asked, her voice on the other side of husky after he stole every breath from her body.

He looked down, entranced at the way the check material strained over her bust as she tried to force oxygen back into her lungs. "My shirt looks good on you."

Her lips tugged upwards as his fingers skimmed over the light blue buttons, teasing her with his touch as he stepped closer. "Thank you."

Her hands subconsciously lifted to the bottom of her shirt, opening each button slowly from the bottom as he opened them from the top. His palm barely grazed against the hard bone of her sternum before thousands of goosebumps erupted all over her skin, practically begging him to run his lips over each and every one of them.

"What's wrong?" She brushed his hair out of his eyes, pleading with him to confide in her.

He shook his head, pushing his shirt off from around her shoulders. "Just let me be with you for a while." He caught her lips gently between his own, silently asking her for permission to use her body once again. To help him mute the voices in his mind. "Please." He asked over and over between each kiss.

Please

Please

Their kisses were frantic and fevered as his hands seemed to savour every inch of her warm skin.

Please

His fingers were edging along the band of her panties, almost impatient in his endeavours.

Please

Her fingers brushed along the button of his jeans before he walked her back to their bed, barely stopping to allow her to lay down on the crisp white sheets.

Please

She opened her eyes, watching as a single droplet rolled of his cheek, wetting her naked shoulder beneath...

Yes...

...

"You shouldn't be here, my boy." Claire's eyes were bloodshot and her face was pinched in pain as she tried to comfort Riaz. "Go play."

He could only look down horrified at the pool of blood collected in his mother's skirt as she laid back against the bed with her legs splayed open.

"Go on now." Her smile was watery but he could see the way her arm strained as she held something beneath her skirt. "Please." She spoke through gritted teeth.

He shook his head, rooted to the spot.

"This is not for you to see." Her eyes began to cloud over as her body shook in agony. Her big, round belly stood out like a lump of rock as her thin body writhed beneath it. "Please go."

He caught a glimpse of her fisted hand beneath her skirt, drenched in blood, and the small, white tip of a knitting needle shaking dangerously between it...

He slept sprawled on his stomach, breathing unevenly as long forgotten images invaded his dreams once again. She ran her finger gently over the bridge of his nose, smoothing it over his dark blond eyebrow as she sidled closer to him. She wished she could dip into his dreams, just once, to know what it was that troubled him. It was far more than grief that kept him up most nights, that took him a thousand miles away from her even though he may have been inside of her.

He would make love to her but his mind was never there. Sometimes he would hold her so tightly as if it could get rid of the images in his mind that she would cringe in his hold. There were times she would come close to asking him to stop until she felt his tears coat her shoulder as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. And all she could do was wrap her arms around him, holding onto him as he forgot himself in the taste of her skin, and the feel of her breasts and the sight of her beneath him as he drove her to the brink of insanity only to bring her back to the warmth of his arms around her.

"Please tell me what's wrong." She whispered into the empty silence. "How can I help you if I don't know what's wrong?" She brushed a kiss to his forehead, easing her own distress before she closed her eyes- begging only for that one time that she would join her husband in his darkened dreams and help him find his way out.

"What are you doing?" He asked, afraid to hear the answer.

"I'm sending your brother to heaven." She looked down at the knitting needle jammed up into her body. "He'll be safe there."

And she placed the palm of her left hand over her right, howling in pain as she pushed the knitting needle to where it was meant to go...