Rust Upon the Soul

Angelo’s ideal woman, Maria Rossi, had finally returned to the world after being away from her seclusion in the Catholic church.

To show how sorry he was to her, he shaved off all my hair, burned away my scars and gave her the title of the new ‘pure’ woman.

But the ideal woman thought her body didn’t look special enough anymore. She believed that regular statues couldn’t match her perfect image. So, she ordered people to kidnap my five-year-old son and seal him inside a statue made from mud, hoping that her beauty would return to her.

I ran for ten kilometers through the mountains. I dug through a hundred statues with my bare hands before I finally found my son, who was barely alive.

I fell to my knees, hitting my head on the ground again and again, begging Angelo to save our son.

But instead of helping me, he pushed my grandmother into the mud pond and covered it with a heavy iron net.

“Mrs. Dolores Heron,” he called my poor grandmother coldly,

He then continued, “If you hadn’t killed Maria’s family, she never would’ve seen through the pain of the world, become a nun and suffered in a monastery like that!”

“Sophia, Maria chose your son to be a statue to rever her beauty. he should feel honored. And since you feel so sorry, I’ll use your grandmother to make another statue of Maria!”

He told the bodyguards to hold me down and not help anyone. Then he gently hugged the ideal woman and softly sang to her unborn baby.

With all my strength, I pulled the iron net apart with my hands and held my son and my grandmother, who had already died.

I knelt in front of Mrs. Lombardi and said, “The five-year agreement is over. It’s time for me to go.”

——

The bodyguards kept pushing me down again and again, but I got back up each time, trying to save my family. They didn’t let go of me until my grandmother stopped moving and the surface of the mud pond became still again.

The clay workers standing nearby watched it all with pity in their eyes.

“What a terrible sin,” one of them whispered.

“How can you use a living person to make a statue? Aren’t they afraid of being punished by God?”

“Quiet,” another warned.

“For the sake of his ideal woman, Mr. Lombardi takes blood from the child’s heart every day. He says it helps calm his baby with the woman and gives her peace.”

“How awful,” someone else said. “And the old woman isn’t doing well either. They locked her up and made her sew three thousand blessing charms. Her eyes are bleeding.”

I looked up, shocked and desperately pulled my grandmother and my son’s bodies from the mud. I wiped the dirt from their faces. There was a wound on my son’s chest and my grandmother’s eyes were swollen and red.

They had hidden everything from me. They suffered in silence while I knew nothing.

I was so angry I couldn’t hold it in anymore. My head spun, I coughed up blood and everything went black.

When I opened my eyes again, I heard the doctor speaking nearby.

“The two people who were brought in... they’re already dead. They were tortured before they died. There’s no chance of saving them.”

“And also,” he continued, “it’s a miracle that Mrs. Lombardi is pregnant at all. Her emotions must be kept calm. She’s had more than ten miscarriages in the past few years. Her uterus is so thin now, it’s like paper.”

Mrs. Lombardi looked shocked when she heard this. Then, as she understood, her face filled with anger.

But I didn’t care. With great difficulty, I said, “Abort the baby.”

I had already decided to leave. There was no reason to keep this child.

Mrs. Lombardi looked surprised. Then I saw something strange in her eyes—like she didn’t want to let go of the baby either.

“Sophia,” she said gently.

She then continued desperately, “You got pregnant with this baby on purpose. It would be a shame to lose it.”

“I know Angelo hurt you badly, but the child is innocent. Your son indeed just died and now this child is here. Maybe it’s a sign that Angelo still wants you,” she told me.

At the mention of my son, my heart shattered. I couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

Mrs. Lombardi saw that I was emotional and quickly called Angelo, asking him to apologize to me.

She called more than ten times, but he never picked up. Then, finally, he called me.

As soon as I answered, his angry voice came through the phone.

“Sophia, what’s wrong with you? Will you die if you don’t complain for just one day? Actually, I should’ve also pushed you into that statue! Besides, it seems that you enjoy playing mother and son so much anyway.”

“And stop making my grandmother side with someone like you! So what if you brought them back from the mud? Do you think a miracle doctor can really raise the dead?”