NIGHTMARES
"Mommy.. Mommy..?"
...
Maeve yawned and shuffled before sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She turned and smiled sleepily at a small child, sitting next to her with matching eye bags. Maeve pulled the child into her lap and softly pet his hair as the child looked up at her with a noticeably tear-stained face. The child sniffed and wiped his nose. "What's wrong, baby?" She asked, her voice low and raspy from lack of sleep. He didn't respond. "Is it the nightmares again, Axl?" The child nodded slowly. Maeve sighed, not in annoyance, but out of pure exhaustion, and held him in her arms, letting him burrow his face in her chest as she got up from her empty queen-sized bed - well, mattress. Maeve was a twenty-three-year-old, unemployed, mother and didn't have the best living situation, but she was doing alright. She and Axl shared the mattress for two reasons. One, Axl was always too scared to sleep alone and two, Maeve preferred to have Axl right next to her in case someone broke in. A slight inconvenience to this was that every time Axl had any nightmares, he would shake her repeatedly until she woke up and she'd have to stay up all night until he was able to go back to sleep - hence the eye bags. Their apartment was relatively small, but it was affordable so Maeve was just going to have to deal with it for the time being. Maeve smiled softly as she listened to Axl's slow, rigid breathing and walked into the kitchen, turning on the light as she set Axl down on the counter. "Alright, baby, what'll it be tonigh-" Mave was cut off by a sudden knock on her apartment door. Who is coming to see me this early in the morning? She asked herself, going to check the door regardless. She opened the door instinctively, forgetting to look out of the peephole. She was quite surprised to see a tall, Hispanic male standing before her, holding white roses and white chocolate in his hands. She recognized this man all too well. He was the man who promised her the world, the man who "loved" her for seven years then left her, the man who was the biological father of her first and only child. Her ex-husband.
