by Martha Woods
It was leaning over the brink of the shelf when it came crashing down and fell right at the edge of the hot burner. Sara snatched the book up before it could catch fire and rushed it to the kitchen table.
As soon as she sat down, her phone started ringing. She pulled it out of her pocket and answered. “Hey, mom.”
“Hey, sweetie.” She sounded rushed. “How’s it going?”
“I'm making dumplings,” she announced proudly.
“I hope you make a bunch.”
“I will.”
“Hey, listen. I’m going to head home pretty soon.”
“It’s only 6.” She never got out early.
“I know. I got somebody else to cover the rest of my shift.”
“Really?” She nearly jumped with excitement.
“Yup.”
“I’ll get everything ready. I’ll see you soon.”
“Alright. Love you.”
“You too.”
Dinner had to be perfect so she took her time, pouring her energy into getting it done. Sara sautéed chicken and mixed up the dumpling mix, carefully plopping the little balls of dough into the broth and timing them just right so they didn’t get too hard. Everything was almost finished when she heard the door open, and her mother walked in.
“Hey.” She was sweaty with her bright red hair tied up in a messy bun. “Oh, my God, Sara. That looks amazing.” She walked up and gave her daughter a hug. Sara had placed the biscuits in a basket and on the table, along with a vase of carefully arranged orchids and surrounded by a row of candles.
“Thank you.”
Bridgett sat down to catch her breath. “So how was school?”
Sara sat across from her. “Tiring. I had a calculus exam today.”
“You aced it, though. I know you did.”
“I did, but it wasn’t easy.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I hope so. You want some soup,” Sara started to sit up.
“Let me just go and get dressed first. I need a shower.”
Suddenly Sara heard her mum scream. She hopped over the glass she had dropped and rushed to get up to her mother's room as fast as she could.
When she reached the bedroom door, it was locked so Sara backed up and threw her shoulder into it. “Mom!” The door flew open so hard she hit the ground.
Sara didn’t see it until she looked up and its white-hot eyes met hers. It wasn’t human. It was moving underneath the pale skin of a man. The second Sara saw it, it was gone, through the open window.
Chapter 2
“Mom!” Sara pulled out her phone and ran into the bathroom. Her mother’s pale body had blocked off the drain, sending a mixture of blood and water trickling over the edge of the tub. Sara didn’t want to move or even think. To do so would be to acknowledge that she was alive, the world was real and that her mother was actually dead. Sara couldn’t open her eyes because every time she did Sara saw her mother eyes. They were so green, they popped, sneaking out from behind the shower curtain.
Sara stood up, her back turned to the bathtub, drenched in bloody water, trying to decide what to do. They were going to have to be reunited. “I’m coming.” There was blood pouring from her mangled neck. Sara kissed her on the forehead and walked out into her room to where her closet was.
She chose her favorite black cocktail dress. She was supposed to wear it for her graduation party. She looked in the mirror. Her face might have been stained with tears and covered in blood, but it didn't match her short black hair. It still curved in around the chin, enhancing her porcelain doll features.
She topped her outfit off with a pair of black stilettos. Then she walked back into her bathroom and pulled out a bottle of OxyContin and poured a handful into her hand.
Once she made the decision to do it, Sara felt relieved. There was no reason to grieve any longer, no need to cry. She was going to be with her mother. Even if there were no afterlife, then at least she would be free. If you don’t exist, you can’t feel pain, or grieve or cry. She wouldn’t feel empty. She wouldn’t feel anything. She would be gone, and she wouldn’t have to live without her mother. This was her only option.
She walked out to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Her tears were dry. She almost felt like smiling. It would be easier this way. She wouldn’t have to sit and wait for her mother to come home. There would be no separation, no earthly obligations. The dead don’t need nurses. They don’t have hospitals either. Sara would be joined with her mother in death.
She looked down at the bottle of OxyContin. She’d heard that opiate overdose was a sweet death, painless and easy.
Sara walked into her mother’s bathroom. Where she laid down next to her and ran her finger along her mother’s jawline. This was the woman that had held her when she was a child, smiling down, dancing her fingers over Sara's cheeks to make her laugh. Bridgett fed her, clothed her and brought her life. Now she had her throat ripped out, and her body was so pale it was blue.
They were meant to be together. Every moment they were apart was torture. This was the right thing to do. Sara popped the pills in her mouth and swallowed them. Then she walked back to the bed and laid her head on the pillow giving off the scent of her mother’s perfume.
Chapter 3
Sara fell through the clouds, slipping down the ladder of consciousness. The sound of the shower passed away, along with the water trickling over the tub. She was falling faster, barely aware of her existence, so much so that she didn’t feel the needle piercing into her arm. She thrashed around and tried to sit up nearly slamming into the head of a cop looking down at her.
“Sara, I need you to calm down and tell me what happened here.” Somebody with rubber gloves lifted her eyelids and shone a light in her eyes.
Calm? With her mother lying dead a few feet away and every sound threatening to drill into her ears. She was in some of the worst pain of her life. “What did you do to me?” She tried to get up but a medic resembling a quarterback stepped into her line of sight and held her down.
“What do you mean what did I do?” The cop stood back, laughing. “What did you do?”
“What did you inject me with?” The medic was still holding her down.
“Narcan,” he responded. “You took a bottle of OxyContin.
“Why were you trying to kill yourself?” A female officer came in, her tight blond bun and straight lips left a sour taste in Sara’s mouth.
“I can’t I-I’m fucking dying here--torn apart.”
The male cop turned to the female who nodded her head. Then he reached down and pulled her off the ground so the medic could lift her up onto a gurney. Sara felt like she was being tossed around in a bottle full of glass.
A cop came up behind her and grabbed her arms, chaining them to the top of the gurney.
“The fuck!”
The female cop sat down on the bed, a cocky grin creeping up over her thin lips. “What happened here, Sara?”
“Fuck you!” She spat.
“You want to be like that?
“My life has turned into a living hell,” muttered Sara.
“How so?” She was going to push for answers, but Sara wasn’t going to give her any. Instead, Sara stayed as quiet as she possibly could and stared up at the ceiling, trying to bear the pain. “You know what I think happened here, Sara? I believe that you ripped your mother’s throat out and tried to kill yourself.”
Sara bit down on her lower lip as hard as she could to keep her mouth quiet and distract herself from the pain.
“Why’d you kill her Sara?”
The taste of salt crept its way out of Sara’s lower lip.
“We know you did it.” The man’s voice came from behind her.
“There're bite wounds on the body,” the woman added.
“I didn’t kill my mother!” She thrashed her head around.
“Ri-I-I-I-I-ght,” the woman laughed. “Now you want to tell us what actually happened?”
Her body was screami
ng like it was being stretched apart. “That thing!”
“A thing?” the man laughed.
“It came in from the window,” she groaned.
“Alright. Let’s go.” The medic came behind her and started wheeling her out of the house.
She couldn’t see anything except the midnight black sky and the medic’s face staring down at her. “I didn’t do it.” She managed to make her voice calm.
“It won’t matter,” he whispered to her.
Sara thought she would go to heaven. Instead she felt she was in hell, being tortured by her own body.
“Sara Bishop.” The female’s cold voice came from behind her when they stopped at the back of the ambulance. “You are under arrest for the murder of Bridgett Bishop. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.” The woman’s face came into view.
The pain was too much to bear. It was writhing through her, turning her insides apart. “Why not jail?” She could barely speak.
“You’re going to undergo a psych eval to see if you’re fit to stand trial first.”
Chapter 4
The entire time she was laying, chained to a gurney in the ambulance, Sara kept her eyes shut and bit down on her tongue while the antidote twisted through her. She didn’t notice when they stopped, it was only when the air changed from cold to freezing and the sharp fluorescent lights started digging underneath her eyelids.
The male voices were telling her to stand and the cold scraping of the cuffs painfully rubbed against her wrists as they grabbed her off the gurney. When she got to her feet, her knees gave out, and they had to keep hold of her as they pulled her through a succession of rooms.
First, there was a bathroom where she caught a glimpse of her face. Half of her body had been caked in blackened dried blood that had congealed inside her hair, standing it up on one end. They took her to another room where they forced her to take her clothes off and hosed her down. The water felt like it was tearing her skin off and she was starting to feel her stomach churn.
A cold-eyed blond nurse ushered her into a small square room with a bed and metal toilet after forcing her to change into a pair of thin blue scrubs. “The pills are going to come up, and you’re going to need this.” She handed Sara a paper cup filled with pills. “There’s muscle relaxers in here as well as tranquilizers.
“I’m going to die.” She sat down on the bed with her arms wrapped around her chests. “It’s too much.”
“Well, you’re not going to feel right for a while. It could take a few months to get your head right, but the pain resides after a day or two.”
The woman knelt down to face her.
“What?”
She met Sara’s eyes. “You’re fucked. You’re going to go to prison, and they’re never going to let you out. You might as well accept that now; otherwise, it’s going to get a lot worse.” She stood up.
“I’d never kill her,” shouted Sara.
“You don’t know yourself as well as you think you do.” She handed Sara a cup of water. “Drink the whole thing and take the pills or we’re going to tie you down and give you a shot.”
Sara did just that and laid down on the hard bed. It was a metal frame with a high school gym mat for a mattress, it felt so terrible that when she laid down on it, her back screamed and her entrails threatened to split open her stomach.
The pills slowly crept their way in, infusing her blood and easing the tension. The cramping pain never stopped, though. It stuck with her like her grief, which exploded when what was left of the OxyContin came up. She couldn’t sleep. She knew what would happen if she did. Her mind would torment her with images of her mother and the terrible injustice she was facing.
What did the woman mean when she said that she didn’t know herself as well as she thought? Was there some madness creeping up inside her? Did she hallucinate the monster flying out the window? Maybe she entered a psychiatric state and killed her mother. It made sense. Monsters like that didn’t exist.
It was impossible.
As the hours crept by and Sara sat on the edge of the bed, the guilt started creeping in. She couldn’t trust her own mind, not when she saw things like that creature, staring at her like a snake ready to open its jaws and devour her. Something had made her tear her mother’s throat out.
The police would know. They’d detect pieces of tissue inside her mouth. They’d probably find saliva rimming the wound, and there would, of course, be dental records that could match her teeth to the shape of the bite.
Why did she do that? Was she losing her mind? She had to be. There were times when she’d do nothing but pace around looking for things to clean around the house, desperate to pass the time till her mother got home. Perhaps her mother’s schedule had built up subconscious resentment that caused her to explode. Maybe the nurse was right. She didn’t know herself like she thought she did.
* * *
She’d never forgive herself for doing it. She felt dirty in her own skin like she could tear it off just to get rid of the pain of what she’d done. It overshadowed the cramps, still writhing around in her body. It kept her staring at the wall, contorted like a pretzel. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t deserve to, and the dread kept her from doing so. It would force her to accept the reality of her own existence. She killed her mother. She wasn’t supposed to exist.
She stayed like that, hour after hour, allowing the sickening sight of her mother’s black, gaping wounds burn itself into the back of her mind. She kept that image there as a form of penance, reaffirming her self-hatred, reminding her of what she’d done. The worse it felt, the better. She deserved every single ounce of pain and a thousand times more.
She built a mental pool of scorching hellfire around herself, consisting of guilt and self-hatred. She wouldn’t allow herself to grieve. Instead, she dove into that pool and did everything she could to torture herself. She killed her mother. She deserved worse than death-no solace, no rest, just torture.
As the hours went by, the tears came and left. Her heart broke a thousand times, and memories of her and her mother crept in.
The string of events passed her by, one by one, each a milestone, marking the maddeningly slow passage of time spent waiting. Soon, the silence became another form of torture. Her mind screamed as she realized she was in a cell, barely small enough for her to pace around and the only thing that could keep her company was her own thoughts. They began to run out, and her mind grew blank as she waited for something, anything to happen.
Nothing did. Every time she heard a noise, the slamming of a door or keys clanking, she jumped up to see who it was, but nobody came. She didn’t know what time it was, whether the night had passed or not. There was no way of knowing how long she’d been there. It could’ve been hours. It could’ve been days.
After an infinite amount of time, a hatch opened up on the door, and a thick hand pushed through a tray of porridge and milk.
“Hey,” she shot up off the bed. “What is going on?” There was no answer, so she took the tray and tried to bend down so she could see through the opening. As soon she took her food, it snapped shut, and she threw the bowl across the room. There was a paper cup of filled with several pills.
She huddled on the bed and tried to close her eyes. The voices started shortly after that. She heard her mother walking in through the front door while she was bending down and pulling out a roasted chicken from the oven. When she turned around, she saw her mother’s neck gaping open, spraying blood all over the carpet.
Other visions were of her in the woods all alone, searching through the brush until she found her mother, pale with maggots eating at her corpse.
Every image cemented her guilt and reaffirmed that she had killed her mother. That certainty grew into a serpent, stronger th
an the cramps. It had left her eyes raw from crying and her mind dull. It got so bad that she started rocking back and forth. Every time her tailbone rubbed against the mat, a spark lit and spread throughout her body and as she rocked faster and faster, those sparks grew into a blaze of energy that engulfed her body and sent her thrashing and writhing with foam spewing out of her mouth until she blacked out and woke up on the floor.
There was a tray sitting on the door hatch. It was a sandwich wrapped in a thin plastic bag. When she opened it, there was a thick piece of bologna and a slimy piece of cheese crushed in between two slices of thick bread. It went down the drain, but the pills looked tempting. There were two little blues, those would be the tranquilizers and a pink. That was the muscle relaxer. It would ease the rest of the pain, and the drugs would help with her cramps. She grabbed a tiny water bottle sitting next to the sandwich and opened it to take the pills, shivering from whatever caused her to black out.
She put the bottle to her lips. Don’t take those.
She found herself compelled to run over and throw them in the toilet, and fell down on her knees, losing what little was left in her stomach. She was starting to hear voices. She’d been questioning her sanity this whole time. Now, she knew for certain that she was crazy.
Chapter 5
She blacked out several more times that day, each time hearing a voice inside her head. Sometimes it told her she would be okay. Other times it told her to stop. It would stop her from dwelling on her guilt and thoughts of her own insanity, but schizophrenics are always certain that they aren’t crazy. Once she screamed back at it saying, “I killed her!” She immediately fell to the ground with phantom arms, warm and loving, wrapped around her.
