A Better place

Blood was everywhere, soaking into the carpet, pooling and trickling through the cracks in the floorboards. Some would say this was inevitable. Her last hopitilization was a month ago. She seemed unusually amible with people. Although it was easy to see it was hard for her to hold herself together. Claudia had a long history as of being a psychiatric patient. Her relapses were always explosive. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had many nasty mixed episodes.

They feared many times in her young life this would happen but it was still a shock. Some would say he was at peace now.

Claudia wans't all doom and gloom. She had a dark sense of humor and kept her problems to herself. Her best friend and ex-boyfriend was devastated and in shock over her death. Seth was angry she didn't call him before she went through with it. They hada child even though they were separated. He was mad she would leave  this world and abandon him and their son. In the past Claudia went through a terrible postpartum depresssion and the family stepped in. At times she felt her family her son, Adam from her unfairly. She got on disability for her mental illness so she was at home all the time butthey still distanced her from her son.

Seth grew increasingly unable to function in everyday life. Their son, Adam, was confused as to where his mother was. Hewas used to not seeing her for breif intervals but even he knew somethiing was wrong. Seth was wracked with grief . He knew she had not been gettting better after her last hospitalization.He felt like he hd just taken her pain for granted and never tried to save her.

He began to visit her gravesiite at various times when his pain was intense. He went there when he couldn't sleep one night. In the moonlight the gravestones crouched like
animals waiting to pounce. Sometimes he wondered if she was mad at him in the afterlife. Be brough a bouquet he had bought earlier at a grocery store, yellow roses.HE cried and cried and asked why , why but he knew the answer. She was living with constant emotioal pain with only a few breaks of sunshine in between. He lefta picture of Adam on her gravestone before he left.

Seth left the graveyard wishing to be with her, even more than when she was alive. His family became concerned with Seth's obsession with her  death. They told him it was inevitable that she kill herself and to get over it. They wanted hm to care more for Adam but on their terms since he was Adam's only parent now.

Their families practically took over raising Adam. They wanted to adopt him formally on grounds that Adam's parent's  were either dead or unable to are for him. This was the family's fault anyway. Seth became pyschotically depressed . Guilt-ridden over his ex-girlfriends death and the thought hisfamily would take away his only connection to Claudia he began drinking heavily. A month after her suicide he planned he would kill himself and Adam so they could be a family.

On the day Seth was allowed "custody" he strangled Adam, the child's face was blue, eyes bulged out. Then he tied a rope and hung himself hoping to see Claudia and Adam, all in a better place.