Your Mama Knows Your Dirty Little Secrets

All I Want Is To Not Be Alone: Stories From The Start #8

Where is that idiot going again?

I shout after him, “Where are you going?”

“Ma!” he says, “Ma, it’s important! It’s our lives we’re fighting for!”

Like I buy that. It’s just another excuse for them to yippee-ki-yay all over the place. Throwing up sparks, like there’s some kind of boozy revolution. No, sir, I’ve seen enough in my lifetime to know what’s what. All a waste of time, if you ask me. Nothing changes in a night.

Still, I can hear those idiots out there. Cackling like a band of he-banshees. Testosterone fuel. They get each other going like a pack of baboons. I don’t miss being young. Not when such thick stupidity coats everything. No, sir!

I get out of my chair. It’s not as easy as it used to be. I don’t mind, it’s more comfortable that way. It sags in all the right places. Fits like a glove. That’s what happens over time. Things form to you and you to them. The whole world can be narrowed down to a few, comfy nests. No need to move, and no want to, either.

But these idiots out there. Look at them, lighting up the whole street with their sparks. They’ll wake the dead.

I open the front window. The little one that’s next to the door. It swings out. The street is full. That’s nothing new, but they’re acting strange. Maybe it’s the fire down the road. That’s also not new. The sirens will be here soon enough, then all these little birdies will fly back home, where their mamas have dinner and beds waiting. The mamas always have these things ready, with no thanks.

I yell at them.

“Shut up, you lot!”

“Go back home to your mamas! Stop being such nuisances!”

That gets their attention. Look at them, a whole mob, coming up this way. I yell some more.

“That’s right! Go on home!”

One breaks out in front of the pack. They head straight for my house. For my open window. They don’t look right. They look sick. Hurt.

They crash into my house and reach through the window. I tumble back in a yelling mess.

“What’s wrong with you!”

Hands and arms push through my little window. They break the glass. Blood squirts everywhere. It’s a mess. They’re messing up my house!

It’s hard to get up, but I do. I manage. No, these wild drunkards, these heathens won’t keep me down for long. I’ve outlived them this far. I bark mad like a dog.

“Get out of my house!”

That riles them up even more. The tiny hole is filled, and the banging starts on my door. The group spills over to the front window. And that’s when I see him. My son. My own son, out there, pressed against the glass with the rest of them. Has he gone mad? What has the world done to him? I didn’t raise my child to be like this.

He looks at me and sucks at the glass.

“Baby, what’s wrong with you? What’s gotten into you?”

I’ve lost my glasses. The details blur. He looks like he’s wearing thick lipstick. What have these people done to him? I go to the window for a better look. To try and get him to see some sense. Stop all this craziness.

“It’s me, your mama. Now, you knock it off with all this. You hear me?”

My son, my boy, he raises his hands like in church. They stretch above his head, and I can see all this close. I see him, just on the other side of the glass. I see he’s not right. He’s a mess, just like the others. They’re all smeared, all gone completely mad. They look like a pack of wild animals.

My son, his hands come crashing down. They crack right through the glass, and splinters fly everywhere. I hear them. They don’t say anything that makes any sense. Cavemen. All men, some boys. They push through and peel all the skin off their forearms. I see it. I don’t need my glasses to.

My son, his head pokes through. It’s pushed through, forward in front of the others behind him. Pushed through like being birthed. That was my job.

His face. It changes to something else. He doesn’t look the same. He looks like a monster, and he squeezes through the crack. He slides into my house in a pool of mess. It stains the carpet like spilled chocolate milk. It’ll never come out.

I roll back. Now my body feels more like a burden. Why won’t it move the way it used to? The way I need it to now? Hurry up, legs, hurry up, arms. He’s coming.

My boy, my son, he slithers across the floor, grabbing for me. I told him not to go out. Look what they did to my boy. Those others, pushing through the glass too.

He grabs for me. He grabs me. I try to kick, but it’s no use. His hands slide up my shin. They stain there too. He bites me. It’s like a bear trap. Down, hard on my foot. I can’t see, maybe he’s even taken a few toes.

Move body. I squirm away. I kick back. Something in me. I take on a different kind of instinct. Survival. It overrides my motherly concerns about kicking my own son in his bleeding face. His eyes. I finally kick away.

Two others fall in. They hit the floor and start to drag more, long stains. It takes a moment, but I find my feet. I use my chair to pull my body up, and I stand. I warble without all my toes.

I can’t look at this scene. Look at them. Always trying to invade. And my poor boy, still laid out on the floor. My poor boy turned into whatever they turned him into. I want to hold him, but I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me again.

I hobble upstairs. It’s hard, but I pull the hall wardrobe the best I can. I try to block the way. They haven’t followed yet, and I go to my room. I go to my bathroom. The door has a lock, and I lock it. I sit on the toilet. It takes a lot of effort. I wish my body could sink into the hard surface and turn it soft.

I close my eyes. They feel heavy, like my body. It holds me down. My foot hurts.

My son. What did they do to him? What have they done to themselves? These self-proclaimed revolutionaries. Down to breaking and entering and violence. I told him not to go out there, and now look.

I feel tired, so tired. I wish I could sink into my chair. Watch my shows. The Price is Right. Fall asleep with the taste of meatloaf and buttered carrots in my mouth, and my boy laid out on the sofa. Safe and with me. With his mama.

Instead, he ran off. Now I’m here, on the toilet like a rung-out Elvis impersonator. Hunka burning love. I’m so tired.

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The downstairs floods with bodies that grapple over each other. They fill the floor like a secondary carpet and trip the ones coming in through the shattered window. The body that was once the woman’s son stays pinned with his face deep in shag.

The woman slumps on the toilet. She leans to the right, against the counter. The water runs cold and sloshes down the open drain. Her fingertips dip into the cool flow.

Her heel lies in a pool of deep red. The bitten foot, looking not much more than grizzled meat and a few splayed bones, funneled all the thick stuff out. From the heart to the floor. Nevermore.

She is quiet. The hours have settled her breathing. Her body makes a slow transition to a thing that’s, for the moment, stilled.

The rest of the world surges on, and others, in other houses, meet various fates. The water continues to run. It sprinkles against the sides of the sink in a steady gait.

Its fingers move.

They start with a small shiver of several spasms. They elongate, then curl back into a claw of hooks. The forearm tightens, then releases.

The toes that are left follow suit. They crimp and ease in a steady beat.

The thing’s eyelids open slowly and stop at half-mast, revealing eyes that are clouded by a rolling fog. Ships could get lost in them.

The mouth gaps as if hanging on strings attached to the rising head. It levels, and the cheeks sag.

The body lulls and swaggers. It spins slightly like a top-heavy bottle before falling to the floor in a thick, sticky thud. It wiggles. It worms. It gets up on all fours like a beast. Its hair falls into the smeared mess across the floor and drags it to the corners of the tiny room.

It stands up on slow legs. It falls, then moves back upward. It rolls up to a steady pose. It looks into the mirror without seeing. The cold water runs. It stands.

In a quick moment, it grabs at the water. It brings its face down and slams its mouth into the faucet. The cheap metal pinches under the teeth that split with hairline fractures. The hands roam wild. The tongue leaches. It clamps down again. Splintered teeth rattle into the sink basin and down the drain.

The fingers twist and grab. One latches onto the handle and involuntarily shuts down the water flow besides a few last drips. The sink goes silent, and the persistent biting quits soon after. The face rises to stare in the mirror again. The mouth looks shattered.

The body stands at a still salute. It stays and stays. Ready. Inactive. In a state of hibernation, outside of slight twitches and small sway of weight.

Then it moves. With a force and purpose. It rams against the closed door and shakes the entire frame. The cheap, inner surface cracks away to sawdust with the next blow. Its hands break into the door’s hollow chamber. They grope at the space.

The crowd downstairs responds and builds an echo chamber. The thing in the bathroom’s hands purge forward, rattling the door, and bodies stumble at an attempt to make it up the stairs.

The tight staircase packs like an overfilled subway car, and a few of the bodies spill over the wooden railing to land below with heavy thuds. They fall like heavy rain. The bathroom door shakes in time.

The thin outer layer of the door gives way. Crooked fingers reach through to the open air and swipe at nothing. The sunken face follows. The mass squeezes into the slotted hole until the hinges give way and release the door with a yawn. The thing falls with it and lands in the hallway, free from the confining bathroom.

It stands in a slow arch. Its head turns and jangles the limp hair towards the stairs. A group of others pushes against the slanted wardrobe. They push it back. The gap increases, and they break through. Both sides meet in the slanting light coming from the window down the hall.

The bathroom thing merges with the coming crowd. They mingle as a mass around the hall, filling it from wall to wall.

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Outside the house, the street ebbs and flows with tides of them. Groups form and disperse like so many waves crashing against smooth rock. A single door is smothered with warped figures. They slam with increasing force toward the sounds coming from the inside.

Someone knocks on the inner wall. On the door. Against the front window. They shout. They jump up and down. They rattle the aggressors. They draw them in.

The person inside is still alive. They waited it out as long as they could. They formulated a plan. They aim to execute it.

The street clears as the milling bodies curve toward the grouping at the door. They spread outward and creep toward the edge of the window.

The person is dressed to the nines in outdoor gear and sports an oversized hiking backpack. It’s topped with a heavily rolled sleeping bag. Car keys jingle, wrapped in between their fingers.

They peek out the window. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get. They knock off the knocking and run as quietly as possible to the garage. They know time is tight. The moment the motor fires up, it will set off the stopwatch. It might only be a window of seconds. They hope those seconds add up to around thirty. That’s all the time they need.

They hop in the car. They insert the key. They take a breath. They count to a long three. They turn the key and push the button that opens the garage door.

The car revs to life. The door rolls open. The masses outside shift in time. The person throws the car in reverse and slam on the gas pedal.

The tires spin and squeal on smooth concrete. They catch, finally, and propel the car backwards, into the first few bodies. They bounce off, land on the incoming crowd, and are pushed back and forth to be pinned between the two moving objects. Pinballs going for bonus points.

The car is slammed and tilts to the right, almost jutting up. It skids backwards and curves off the straight course.

It accelerates and rams into the streetlamp. The post buckles, and the top-heavy light falls with a resounding crash into the street.

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The hallway comes to life. The bodies shift and move, triggered by a loud crash. Those downstairs filter out to the street. Those occupying the stairs filter to the ground floor, and those upstairs filter onto the staircase.

It moves toward the back of the descending crowd. It shuffles past the bathroom door with no hesitation or reflection on its previously caught state. It moves past the wardrobe that does not register as its former attempt at safety.

It moves down the stairs that have been under its feet for most of its life. It moves past the chair that sinks and folds into the form of its body.

It moves to the cracked open window. It steps over other bodies that litter the floor. One of them its former son. It steps between the shoulder blades and adjusts for the moving ground. It leaves the house and filters to the street like all the others.

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The person comes to and swipes the exploded white bag out of the way. The car horn blares. The roof and hood are dented in, following the outline of the fallen pole.

The back windshield is cracked and hangs loose in the frame. Fingers and the tops of heads grab through the outer cracks. The car is surrounded. The front windows start to fog with the panicked breaths.

The horn doesn’t stop.

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The bodies on the street merge on the sound. They wrap around the object. They enclose it like a warm blanket. A cocoon.

The thing’s weight gives it an advantage over the others. It swings its mass forward and knocks the ones less steady out of the way.

It reaches the object and presses its mouth against the smooth surface. It’s close enough to catch movement with its milky eyes.

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A gnarled woman slams into the driver’s side window. She sucks at the glass. Her fists pound until small fractures spread like spider webs.

Other hands join. She slams her face into the glass. They both split.

The driver screams. The horn blares. A death rattle.

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The surface gives. It stuffs its mouth in. It follows a shrill alarm. It does what it does. It bites down. It grabs a mouthful of something soft and forgiving. It bites and bites.

It stops with a wet face. The sound dies. It pulls back out. It stands. It does nothing.

A street over another engine fires to life.

It moves. Its bulking mass fills the street as another body in the crowd. They move in a unison that might just make a mother proud.