You awake one morning. The usual time, the usual shit. A
myriad of thoughts shoot through your already burdened mind. You shake off such
triviality as thinking. Your room is the same. Having no reason to be cautious
or defensive, you slowly rise from your bed and groggily walk down the stairs.
Everything around is as it has always been. The same banal landscape paintings
line the tackily wallpapered walls. The same bits of fluff and old coffee
stains are crushed by your bare feet as you walk down the hallway into the
kitchen. The door has a wooden frame but is mainly made up frosted glass.
Through the out-of-style greyish glass, you see the outline of a small framed
figure. A high pitched singing voice fills your ears, a voice you recognize
immediately as your mothers. You hear this voice as a maternal homing beacon,
or perhaps a siren’s wail, and turn the door handle. The lazy shafts of morning
light shine through the window, revealing the unhealthy amount of dust and dead
hair follicles dancing in the stillness of morning. Your mother still sings
over by the stove, still faced away from you. You yawn yourself out of a jaded
stupor and realize you have not wished her a good morning.
“Hey mom, good morning”
you croak in a voice thick with sleep. With your left hand you reach into the
pocket of your faded tracksuit bottoms. Momentarily, you fumble through the
items within. A mish mash of pocket lint, keys, small coins and plastic from
cigarette wrappers. You chuckle dryly to
yourself, seeing the mess within your pockets as a metaphor for the mess of
your everyday existence. You don’t quite know why you chuckled, but you do so
again. It was funny first as tragedy, then as satire.
Your mother turns, but something isn’t right. The lady who
bore you for nine long months, and gave you existence, has changed. Where the
spark once sat in the murky pools of azure that were her eyes, only a black dot
remained. So slight was it that no one but a son would notice. Yet her
countenance and figure remained the same. The golden shimmer from her short
hair still radiated and complemented her pale complexion. You look in the pan
your mother has been slaving over feverently since before you entered the room.
The family cat lies in the pan. The organs of the poor creature lay spread out
across both the cooking utensil and counter surface around it. Blood drips from
every fixture. The guts themselves are laid out in such a way that they resemble
medieval portents. Your mothers head jerks sporadically from left to right, as
if her spine is momentarily rubber. She begins to walk towards you, her hands
outstretched.
