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CHAPTER EIGHT
Sunlight streams through the glass window, warming my face as I wake. This time, I welcome the calm stillness of my flesh, grateful to the needles that didn’t come to me last night. Mother never allowed me to open the blinds. She didn’t want the neighbors looking in on me, said I was… a risk. Mother didn’t get the chance to stop me last night, not with her being stuck in the basement.
My sleep would have been perfect had it not been for the faint shouts coming from downstairs. Mother always told me it was soundproof. That the noise I would make was incapable of escaping the thick walls and heavy-duty door, but I never screamed. I hardly ever made a peep. I just believed her.
Stripping myself out of my blood-stained shirt, I think of all the ways I could keep her quiet. Pieces of it stick to my skin, leaving behind pinkish stains on my creamy flesh. I trace their shape on my breasts, moaning slightly when I circle my nipples. I toy with them for a bit, pinching and pulling with his name on my lips until I drip on the blood-riddled sheets.
With my limbs loose and orgasm seeping down my thighs, I stand before the window, soaking in the morning light while people I’ve never seen before walk outside. Some watch as I twirl in front of the window, absorbing this little bit of freedom before I enter the darkness. I catch the gaze of a few men who are brave enough to look, but none of them feel as good as when my uncle’s glare runs down my body. He’s who I’m doing this for.
Drawing the blinds closed again, I slink through the house, whistling my uncle’s cheery tune before stepping into the shadowed bathroom for an untimed shower. I take advantage of this moment of peace, turning the water as hot as possible to melt the stress away from my body. It feels otherworldly, scrubbing myself raw while using all of my mother’s good shampoo and soap. She would kill me if she saw me now, wounds reopened, smelling of hydrangeas and vanilla.
Forty minutes later, when I’ve made up for lost time, I walk out smelling like flowers, which is better than dirt, but not nearly as enticing as my uncle’s spicy aroma. I visualize the fragrance wafting into my pores, covering every inch of my bare skin until I’m made of nothing but him. Right now, it’s only a fantasy, but soon, after I finish up here, it’ll become the reality I’ve been dreaming of.
For once, I wish the stairs didn’t groan beneath my weight. I would have liked to watch Mother for a bit, observe her in the same light she’s put me in countless times. It seems only fair, but we can’t always get what we want.
“Maude…” Mother’s tone is strained, fatigued from calling out my name all night. The rawness behind her voice is no worse than her knuckles, though. Gashes split her skin into pieces, leaving chunks hanging off in strips as she continues to beat them against the concrete wall. With each knock, little droplets spray against the cement, creating a beautifully gruesome piece of art. I’m too busy focusing on the swollen, black, and blue skin of her hands to notice the flayed ring around her wrists.
“You knew that wouldn’t work.” I tried countless times to slide my hands out of the rusting metal the first couple of times she threw me down here. I even attempted to break my thumbs to make the process easier. All I ever succeeded in doing was creating scars upon scars until my flesh was too thick to feel. I didn’t mind. I love the pain, but my mother isn’t equipped to handle the sensation.
“Get. Me. OUT.”
“Not yet,” I explain, dropping my hand from the lamp string above to sit across from her on the floor. The second my ass hits the ground, she lunges forward, coming at me with a furious, frenzied screech. I don’t flinch as the tips of her slicing nails come inches away from my face, confident that all she’ll meet is air.
She does. “Augh! Let me fucking go, Maude! This isn’t fucking funny! I am still your mother! You need to respect me, you little fucking shit!”
I respond by slithering into her lap, violently snaring my hands in her tangled hair to lock her in place against my lips. She fights me, but I fought at first, too. I pushed and punched and cried against my uncle’s punishing grip, weeping as his mouth explored parts of me I never knew existed. But all I needed to do was stop fighting. Stop resisting, and let the love overflow the fear. It changed my life.
And now, I’m going to change hers.
“Do you know I was so scared when you left me, Mother? You put me in front of this man’s doorstep. A man I never knew. A man you never spoke about, and you just left me there.”
“Maude, I—”
“I hated you,” I breathe, pulling my lips away the slightest bit to swallow the sorrow in her gaze. “And then I thanked you for every night I got to lay underneath him.”
This time when I kiss her, she doesn’t struggle as much, almost ruefully accepting me with open lips before crying out in my mouth. Her blood, from her tongue trapped between my teeth, runs like a faucet down my throat. It isn’t as sweet as I’d like, but it’ll do for now. “Did you feel that, Mother? That sharp, stinging, nauseating pain? That’s exactly what I felt when you came back. When you ripped me from the greatest love of my life.”
Crying, with blood dripping from the side of her mouth, Mother shakes her head. “No. That wasn’t love, Maude! That was a mistake! That was—”
“That was my everything.” All the love I never got at home, the touching, the kissing—the fucking… it was everything that should have been given to me from the beginning. It was our legacy, our right.Our name. “You gave me a glimpse of it, of what a real family could be, and you took that away like it meant nothing!”
The back of my hand stings all the way up my arm when I slam it against her cheek, but it’s all worth it when the burst of blood sprays against my lips. How fragile we are, to be so broken after a simple little slap. “Stop crying, Mom. I’m just getting you ready for the good part.”
My steps echo in the concrete chamber, bouncing off the walls in a haunting, melodic tune as I dip between the ceiling-high storage boxes. There Jim sits, eyes greyer than they were earlier this morning. Somehow, death turned his creepy, unnatural blue stare into something beautiful.
“What are you doing? What is… is that—”
Dragging Jim’s corpse into the center of the room, inches away from Mother’s twitching feet, I utter, “You know he shoved his fingers inside me at the dinner table? When you were sitting right there, fawning over all the lies he spilled, he was playing with my cunt. Can you believe it?” Her eyes fill with tears as she takes in Jim’s stiff, unmoving body. But they never fall. Of course, they don’t. Mother didn’t care about him, just like she didn’t care about Ross, Jensen, Dominick, or any of the others. She doesn’t care unless you can do something for her. None of them have, and neither have I. I’ve neglected my mother's needs the same way she ignored mine.
What kind of daughter does that make me?
What kind ofGreenedoes that make me?
My uncle would be so ashamed that I’ve kept everything I know to myself, but I’m going to change that now. She can’t run, not from me. Not from this.
“What did you do, Maude?” The first time she asks, the question comes out as a whisper, barely a pass of breath through her teeth. But the second? “What the fuck did you do, Maude! You sick little shit! What the fuck did you do?!” Now that’s the mother I know.
“I got rid of the distraction. You should be thanking me.” If only she knew the plans he had for us. My mother. My poor, stupid little mother was only a front.Iwas what he wanted.Iwas who he would come for when the night blanketed the world. AndIwould be the one she blamed when she caught another one of her boyfriends inside me. “I saved you from another piece of shit man, and now I’m going to free you from the lies you’ve lived for so long.”
