[color=lightgray][right]TIMESTAMP: Monday Afternoon
TRIGGER WARNING: LIAM POST[/right]

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[indent][indent]Sleep is for the weak.

April McMahon never really understood what her father meant by that statement. Not, at least until now. 

When she was a little girl, April’s father enjoyed regaling his daughter with stories of his ancestors. In a town with such rich history and lore as Edenridge, it became apparent that every clan that was directly from the area held a story or two within their family tree. The McMahons were not Founders and as such never fell into the same bracket with the likes of the O’Briens and O’Haras, they were never Foundlings. The McMahons were amongst the second wave of families arriving in the upstart town. They were men of the land, a family that prided itself on knowing what to do with their hands and building the very roads that still sit upon Eden today. Tough men, real men. Her father tried to continue this tradition, a Carpenter by trade. He would build furniture in his little shop on Chestnut Street on the Southside, sometimes he would even sleep there with the little cot he had built for himself in the back room. April hadn’t been back there since her father died, not until today.

McMahon Woodwork sat dilapidated on the corner of Chestnut. Untouched by a decent hand in a long time, she has never really gotten round to either fixing the place up or selling it. Though April was ok now, the last twenty or so years of her life had been naught but a mess. Everything was fine in high school, she was blonde, pretty, popular, not bad for a Southside rat. Yet there was always something, some promos to overcome. The pinnacle of shock was when her father died because that sent April into a spiral and her bipolar disorder into overdrive. She crashed out, stuck at Dolly’s in the day time and walking the streets at night. Big Rey offered her a lifeline but she wouldn’t take it. She was a McMahon. They built the world with their own two hands, not handouts. That didn’t stop her from entertaining one of Big Rey’s guests, a handsome New Yorker called Ivan. 

Here was a real man, like the ones her father always talked about in his stories. Ivan was tall, well dressed but with calloused hands. He had worked for what he had. Then there were his eyes. Those piercing, breathtaking, heart stopping pools of icy water blue that sent chills down her spine and a lightning bolt into her heart. A beautiful monster. Ivan did not stay in Edenridge long but every time he was in town he paid April a visit. On one such occasion he left her with a very unexpected gift, one she didn’t know she even had until her life became a nightmare.

Brendan Thomas O’Brien, a different kind of monster to Ivan. When he solicited April’s services she didn’t think it was anything different than any other John. That was until after she had given the ride of his pathetic life, he drugged her and he kept drugging her. Bound to a radiator for what felt like an eternity, April had lost all sense of time and of space. She lost count of the amount of times that BT injected her with God only knows what and raped her. By the time that Sylvester James and Mason Hyde broke down the door and shot the Foundling to death, she had not only given up hope, she had given up life and was ready for the warm embrace of death. 

It was whilst she was recovering in the hospital that April was told she was pregnant and had been for over a month. Based on the timescale, it meant that the baby thankfully wasn’t BT’s. It did mean however that the child was Ivan’s. She reached out to Big Rey so he could tell him. To say Ivan wanted nothing to do with a bastard child with a twenty year old hooker was an understatement. Mason, bless him, came to visit her every day at the hospital and as impossible as it felt, she found herself falling in love with the roguish police officer. He even decided to claim the child she carried as his. He helped April clean herself up and get herself a job as an estate agent. By the time the child was born, the couple were living comfortably in Westwood.

The day her baby was born, a lightning storm was tearing through Boston. It was violent and unpredictable. Power lines were falling down, roofs collapsing and major flooding was pushing the lake to the brink. Then in a brief moment of calm, with Mason by her side, April gave birth to a beautiful baby boy with a little tuft of red hair and the same blue eyes that Ivan had; Cameron, she called him. This moment of calm did not last as the rumours started almost immediately that Cam was Brendan’s and not Mason’s. This was heartbreaking. The gossip hounds of this fucking town were dragging their names through the mud, spitting on them. Cameron was a child! How could they be so cruel?

Life just fell apart from there. It had been maybe a year before police began sniffing around them, insistent that Mason was dirty. He was just trying to provide! Eden was Eden and nobody was entirely clean. It didn’t stop them from putting him away, which was a death sentence. Locking a cop up? Madness. When the news came that Mason had been stabbed and was dead, April left Cameron at Rhonda Decker’s house, found her way to the Edge of Sin and got so fucked up she blacked out for days. This cycle repeated for years until she found her path in God, sadly, it was too late for Cameron.

By the time April had made any sense of her life, Cameron was already a teenager. For years she had been told that something was wrong with him, that he needed help. Of course she ignored it. It was just Eden trying to drag her and her family again. The first time that April truly began to believe that something was not right about her son was when he returned home from a boy's birthday party covered in blood. Cameron had beaten the boy with a table lamp because he didn’t get the last bit of cake. When she looked into her son’s beautiful blue eyes, that moment changed everything. That’s when she realised he was a monster just like his father. A beautiful monster.

Now she found herself outside her fathers old shop because she knew inside lurked the beast that she had birthed. Since he had been locked away after that long bad night, April had dreamed of the day she saw her son again. It caused her the same amount of pain as dreams of BT and Mason did. Like she said, she now understood why sleep was for the weak. Because the weak suffer in their dreams. Like she did. The last time she had seen Cameron was as she plummeted down her stairs after being thrown down them by her baby boy. She wasn’t really sure what to expect when she opened that door other than some kind of pain. She was used to that now. The key she kept still unlocked the door and once she was inside, it became quite apparent that somebody had been living here.

[color=DEE3A6]“Cameron?!”[/color]

She could hear his footsteps. They were quiet but building as they approached. The air was quiet, like silent death. The room was littered with her fathers unfinished projects, takeaway boxes and beer cans. How was he living like this? He could’ve come home. God forgives us our trespasses. She twirled the crucifix on her necklace as her blue eyes watched the door behind the counter. She knew his rhythm, how he walked. He carried himself just like his father. April’s blue eyes widened on a mixture of surprise and longing as her little boy emerged from the back room. He was tall, broad and looked exactly like she remembered him. 

[color=DEE3A6]“Hi baby.”[/color]

Hyde tilted his head as he gazed upon the tired face of his mother, if he could even call her that. Whatever she was going to say, he had heard it all before. Every time he came home and she was face down on the couch after taking too much brown, it was always the same; God Forgives. Every time someone called them worse than shit; God Forgives. God would forgive him for what he did to Aleyda, deliver him from all his uncountable trespasses. God did not forgive. God punished. 

[color=63773B]“Mom, you really shouldn’t be here,”[/color] His eyes fell upon the wooden chair leg that sat behind the counter. It would take nothing for him to reach for it. He could be over the counter and beating her with it in seconds. Who would miss her? Really? April McMahon was the dirt at the bottom of a Northsider boot. [color=63773B]“Did the police not tell you to stay away?”[/color]

[color=DEE3A6]“You look tired, Cammy. Have you not been sleeping?”[/color]

Was she for real? She was madder than he was. Hyde was perceptive though. He looked upon his mother, watching her movements and facial expressions for a tic, a jolt, anything he could read. She was sweating. She didn’t have bags under her eyes but instead little red marks, similar to freckles but connected by visible red veins, burst blood vessels. She had been vomiting very recently. She was dressed well, well enough for her anyway. She tried to make an effort to impress him, to prove she wasn’t the mess he had always known her to be. [color=63773B]“You’re off your medication aren’t you? There’s no other way you would step foot here.”[/color]

Hyde began to drum his fingers together. 1. 2. 3. 4. 4. 3. 2. 1. How dare she? How dare she come to his place, messed up? She was supposed to be his so-called mother but she had to be this version of herself to even get the courage to see him. It was an absolute atrocity. [color=63773B]“I don’t want you here. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”[/color] He walked around to the other side of the counter; Hyde towered over his mother by at least two feet.

There was still a metre or so between them. April wanted to close that gap. She wanted to hug her boy and apologise for everything that she had done and everything that they suffered through. [color=DEE3A6]“Cammy, please. I want us to forget about what happened. I want to move forward, me you, Rafael…”[/color] She reached out. Her hand rested on her son's face as she stepped forward. [color=DEE3A6]“We can be like we were supposed to be.”[/color]

A white hot flash hit Hyde like a sudden downpour of rain. He lunged forward and grabbed April by the side of her head and forced her down to her knees. He was so strong. She gripped a tight hold onto his wrists but was unable to move him. [color=63773B]“You….”[/color] he growled, spit flying from between his teeth. [color=63773B]“…keep my son’s name out of your fucking mouth.”[/color] His voice was monstrous, commanding and every word dropped with venom. [color=63773B]“You stay away from him. You will not make him a monster like you made me. You even try and I will make sure you regret the day you opened your fucking legs.”[/color] He threw her down to the floor hard and turned away. [color=63773B]“Go now, Mom, before I lose my temper.”[/color]

April’s eyes watered. It was her fault. She shouldn’t have surprised him. Cameron was a sensitive boy. He didn’t like to not know things. He could control himself when he knew things. She dragged herself up to her feet using a nearby table and once more looked upon her son. [color=DEE3A6]“I hope you're taking care of your siblings. Maybe one day we’ll have a family barbecue, that would be nice.”[/color] She wanted to reach out again but pulled back her hand with her other one. It wasn’t the time. April shuffled towards the exit of her father’s shop and briefly looked back towards her baby boy as he stood with his back turned, stewing in his own rage and in that moment she knew the awful mistake she had made.

He was going to hurt someone tonight.

[color=DEE3A6]“I love you Cammy.”[/color]
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