WORD COUNT: 650 words

GENRE: Psychological Thriller?

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 She heard a loud wailing sound pierce through the walls of her small room. It sounded like the screeching of an angry cat, only growing harsher and louder as she continued to lay on her bed. But she knew better.

The noise came from a creature that was in an unpainted cradle across her bed. It was very hard for her to believe it came from such a tiny creature. 

A three-month-old boy to be exact.

All she wanted to do at the moment was to go back to sleep and ignore the noise but it was impossible.  The noise continued. Amanda sat up and lit a cigarette.

'For calming my nerves,' she said to the air.

Candle in hand Amanda walked to the cradle to stop the wailing. Placing the candle on the dresser next to the cradle, Amanda peered inside the wooden box.

She looked down at his balled-up face, eyes frantically searching the room for her face, and when his eyes landed on her the crying diminished and the screeching changed to cooing.

Amanda didn't love him.

The cigarette was her love and her only comfort in the ruin she called home. The cigarette was short enough to burn her fingers but it would have to do. She didn't have money for another pack at the moment.

Amanda flicked the filter from her cigarette.

She looked at the red ashes falling. It was as if each floating piece were a moment of her horrible life floating away and decorating it with this beautiful colour.

Amanda inhaled deeply, letting the smoke seep into her lungs. She held in the smoke. Trapping it, thinking how her lungs must hate her now having so little regard for them they must be screaming at her at the top of their lungs--she refused to smile-- those poor dying little cells were addicted to nicotine.

 
She released the smoke in small puffs.  

The comfort she ached for had finally returned. The sensation of floating and not caring about drowning.

Not even the voice of her mother's voice screeching in her head ruined her comfort.

The small reprieve she had been granted was snatched by the sudden bawling noises that came from the wooden cradle.
Amanda dropped the cigarette and frantically checked her only son's cradle.

Had the ashes burnt him? She peered around him and also brushed his body as a precaution. She even fluffed his blankets for good measure.

She saw no harm done to him but knew that his addict of a mother had hurt him in more ways than she could count.

How would his life be if he was given to someone else like she had been threatened? Would the parent be loving? Clean?

Amanda clutched his miniature fists without crushing them. She rested her head lightly on his belly. He made a giggle as if he was truly happy to be in his mother's arms. Amanda needed her baby. She wasn't ready to give him up.

The ominous voice told her that her baby would no longer be hers.

 It belonged to her mother.

She wanted to scream but she knew he would start too. The smoke that hung in the air now felt stifling,  suffocating her. The stench of the baby's diaper hung close to her nose. Amanda didn't want to touch the stuff but how would she sleep in a stinking place?

'It doesn't matter anyway,' she told her baby.

Bringing the bundle of sorrow to her chest Amanda started to sing a lullaby. The rotting air around them was now engulfed with smoke.

The smell of the smoke usually did not bother her, it even comforted her but not now. Now all she wanted to do was escape this rotting place but she was not leaving her baby.

'We can die here. Peacefully. Now sleep, my baby boy. It's going to be a hell of a time.'

It was just so easy to be cruel in that moment because then the damage was done.

The candle had been knocked over during her frantic moment. It was now burning the unpainted cradle.

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