Fuzzy around the edges, mouth like shit flavored sandpaper, the sudden cranial rape that is the loud screaming coming from the basement runs nails down the inside of my head. As reality comes further into focus an unsettling experience is made more so by the realization that I don't have a basement. Last nights drunken stupor vanishes with the shock of a kick to the groin, my eyes bug, and I wrestle with covers turned feral having tried to constrict me in the middle of the night. I win this small battle and as my feet touch the cold hardwood floor the screams simply stop and I am confronted with another horrible realization; I have to piss, bad, possibly vomit as well.
I manage to make to the bathroom and even happen to hold down the meager contents of my stomach. Three victories in one morning must be a sign that things can only get better. I have passed the screams off as alcohol induced delusion, the vestiges of a drunken dream. As I pass through the bedroom on my way to the kitchen I glance around at the sparseness of the bedroom in a house I still hesitate to call mine. It will always be hers. Mother would you be happy to know you still hold some bitter power over your son?
She had ruled in this house for forty two long years which saw the rise and fall of one husband, and two children. One son found a way out from under his mothers thumb on edge of a razor blade, leaving his younger brother alone to face the cruel dictatorship of his mothers iron fist. Daddy chose assisted suicide, a combination of alcohol and an injection molding machine at work. Twenty five thousand pounds of pressure per square inch plus a pint of Wild Turkey equals a closed casket.
This wasn't relative though. Coffee, coffee was relative, so I make my way to a kitchen that is also barren and go through the motions of making a pot. As it brews, I turn to lean against the counter when something catches my eye. Slowly ever so slowly I turn and face the spot between the hole were a refrigerator was and the entrance way to the dining room and see...
A door.
To what?
The basement.
Something tickles the back of my neck. Some connection to this door and waking that I cannot quite grasp. I was forgetting something, some significance to this door and…what? All I know is that there was never a basement in this house growing up I have never been down there and I didn't want to go down there because...
But you have to go down there.
Why?
I find myself halfway to the door hand reaching out of its own accord mind screaming at the walls of my skull. The door creaks open I see a flight of rickety stairs and the sickly orange glow of a dirty yellow light hanging bare from the ceiling. I am on the first stair with no conscience memory of stepping forward. I am on the fifth in a blink and the next thing I know I am standing on hard concrete the cold of which permeates my bare feet. The floor feels almost greasy under my toes. The basement is empty from one side to the next and not even as big as the house.
Empty.
No, wait there was something huddled in the corner. I hear ragged breathing and choke on my heart before I realize it is me. I step forward blink and suddenly I am in the middle of the room and the huddled figure uncurls spider like into a small boy squatting on the floor looking up at me with sad eyes. Before I can speak I hear a scrape behind me and I turn, this time swallowing my heart for real, as I see my mother at the bottom of the steps.
“Thought you could escape me did you Tommy,” the voice was the same one that destroyed me for years.
“I'm not Tommy Mom I'm...” that's when I notice the little boy walking hunched over dragging his knuckles towards the image of my mother is a twin of my brother Jason at the age he was when he found me.
I am Tommy.
That night rushes back to me in one single blinding moment of clarity. Running a hot bath and then pulling out my dads refills for his razor and opening my arms from elbow to wrist. The fire in my arms that was the taste of freedom and the warm blood as it ran over me into the tub. As my eyes began to close, and pain became beauty beyond words, the last thing I saw is my brother walking into the bathroom. The jealousy I saw burning in his eyes followed me down into this place and made me shiver as I came back to the here and now.
“But why is he here I say,” pointing at my brother. “And you were still alive when I finally fuckin had enough of your shit,” I point at my mother my voice becoming a screech of indignation.
“I am the childhood that died when your brother found you,” says the thing in the skin of my brother with a voice that makes my eyes vibrate, my bowels quiver, and my sanity rage. “I am everything he could and would have been and now I serve a different master.” As it says this its face begins to melt and shift like meat spoiling at twice the speed.
“As for me eternity is as short as it is long, so I am here as I have always been,” my mother says in that same old tired voice. She points at me.
“You,” This word is punctuated by a stretch of wire coming from the ceiling to yank my right arm towards the sky, “Can,” a second length of wire and I am yanked bodily from the ground, “Never, escape.” With each word another wire and I am spread eagle eagle hanging from the ceiling naked with no recollection as to whether or not I was ever wearing clothes in the first place.
“And so we shall rid you of your flesh, in pieces three by three,” the thing that played the role of my brother says. No longer playing the part its face is twisted, insect like, but hard to focus on for anything more than a second without becoming nauseous.
He is not the one who does the skinning, this is a job only a mother can do right by her child. Normally one would pass out from the pain after only a short time, but this is no normal place and I am forced to remain conscience the entire time. My throat is raw and as the last three inch by three inch piece is taken from my scalp I am finally allowed to embrace the darkness at the edge of my vision. I tumble towards blessed oblivion to the sound of my own screams and...
Fuzzy around the edges, mouth like shit flavored sandpaper, the sudden cranial rape that is the loud screaming coming from the basement runs nails down the inside of my head. As reality comes further into focus an unsettling experience is made more so by the realization that I don't have a basement.
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