Ian's Mom

The last time I stood in the mud room, I’d been seventeen and high on amphetamines, listening to my mother tell me how disappointed she was in me for the thousandth time. I didn’t even remember leaving the house that night, just the afterimage of her face, skin shining in the halogen lamp over the kitchen sink, the purse of her mouth like the asshole of a dying star.

Now, twenty years later, I was back. I let myself in through the back window, crowbar angled just right to keep the glass from shattering, only splintering enough to unseat the lock and wiggle the pane free. I could have used the key I still remembered in its hiding spot, duct taped inside the mouth of the garden frog, but it was about the principle of the thing.

Inside, the air had that sour, lived-in tang: spent detergent, waxy linoleum, and the undertone of pet dander even though the last pet had probably died half a decade ago. The familiar floor plan reassembled itself around my feet with each step, muscle memory more reliable than any blueprint. Kitchen to the left, living room straight, bedrooms at the end of the hallway, past the grandfather clock my mother swore was an antique but probably came from Sears.

I went silent down the hallway, avoiding the third floorboard from the end, which always squeaked, and paused at the crack of her bedroom door. There was a sound, faint but not unfamiliar - the sharp intake of breath after a bad dream, the restless turning of sheets. I waited, listening. In the almost-black, I could see her silhouette, mouth open on the pillow, hair spread out like something drowned.

The mother of my childhood was never beautiful, but she had a quality that made people linger. A regal bearing, the dark, liquid eyes of a carnivore, patience and hunger both. Twenty years and she still had that predatory watchfulness, even in sleep. I stood in the threshold, backlit by the hallway nightlight, and let the silence curdle. After a long moment, she lifted her head, eyes glittering even in the gloom.

“Who’s there?” Her voice was groggy, but the fear was already there underneath.

I said nothing. Stepped forward so the nightlight outlined my shoulders. I’d inherited her height and something of her jawline, which probably made the resemblance all the more uncanny at this hour. I saw her try to process the shape of me, the math in her eyes, and then the flicker of recognition.

“Jesus Christ.” Her voice was louder, brittle. “What do you want?”

How many times she’d asked that over the years. What do you want, Ian? What do you want from me? I never had an answer. Tonight I did.

My hand reached out and peeled the comforter off in one sharp motion, exposing her thin nightgown, the kind old women wore that came in multi-packs and always seemed slightly see-through. She shrank into the mattress, pulling her arms up, but I’d already grabbed her wrist and twisted, just enough to show her what kind of night this would be.

“Don’t,” she started, but it came out as a whimper. “Please, just—”

I yanked her upright, let her feet dangle above the carpet for a second before I deposited her back on the bed. She struggled, arms flailing, but she’d never had much physical strength and now she was even older, her bones hollowed out and light as balsa wood. It was almost anticlimactic how easy it was to restrain her. I took the decorative pillow from behind her head, pressed it down over her face, not hard enough to suffocate, just enough to muffle her and watch her legs kick.

The struggle lasted a minute, maybe less. When she’d burned off the adrenaline, I removed the pillow. She sucked in a desperate breath, chest hitching, tears already slicking the creases beside her nose. There was something pleasing about how quickly she folded. It made me feel justified.

“Get up,” I said. I put my hand around the soft part of her arm and hauled her to her feet. She tried to dig in her heels, but I’d spent my life handling livestock and elderly patients; she didn’t stand a chance.

The hallway light made her blink, and I maneuvered her toward the living room, the carpet crushing down in little waves under our feet. She started up with the babbling, and I shut her up by pushing her face-first into the couch. Her nightgown rode up, and for a second, I saw the slack flesh of her thighs, the purple rivers of varicose veins, the vague, rubbery outline of her ass. The sight didn’t disgust me; it just made everything more real.

“You’re hurting me,” she gasped, voice muffled in the upholstery.

“Not yet,” I said. “But we’ll get there.”

I patted her down, half to check for a phone, half to amuse myself. She was trembling, which made it hard to keep a grip, so I used my knee to pin her between the couch and the coffee table while I checked her hands and up her sleeves. Nothing but an old tissue.

The living room was identical to how I remembered it, except older, yellower, and more crowded with junk. The Christmas tree was up even though it was April; fake, six feet tall, festooned with the kind of ornaments only sentimental women collected. The effect was grotesque, made worse by the fact that it was dusted with a thin patina of cat hair.

I made her kneel in the space between the couch and the tree, then went looking for supplies. In the utility closet, I found a tangle of orange extension cords, still looped from the last time they’d been used. I grabbed two, came back, and watched her eyes go wide at the sight of ...