#i was planning on going tomorrow and maybe treating myself to A New Marker Set since ive been doing so much traditional art lately

[swampdrive]

Fascinated by the insistence of the Michaels website that the store near my house apparently doesnt have a single marker for purchase???

[eskalations]

Smoke and Gunpowder, Chapter 2

A/N: I was not going to post this chapter so quickly after the last, but life happened and I needed a distraction. Earlier, my sweet dog of 17 years, passed on and this has been just about the hardest day of my life. His passing was peaceful, but it didn't make things any easier. I was in the middle of writing this chapter when I received the news, so this piece will always have a special place in my heart. I'm still not sure if I'm back in the swing of things with my writing, but I'm planning on going back and editing when I'm feeling more like myself.

So, today we have the meeting of Ray and Raina. While I wanted to do a chapter where there was more interaction between the two, this chapter seemed necessary for backstory purposes. I also realized I never specified the age changes for our lovely characters. Since Roy was born in 1885 and Riza was born in 1889 (canonically), I just decided to swap their ages. That's pretty much the only big change there is.

Please let me know how you enjoyed this chapter! I love getting feedback!

AO3 | FFN

Tumblr: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

This chapter is dedicated to Skippy (May 18th 2003 - May 29th 2020)

Augenblick, East Area - Summer of 1903

The town of Augenblick was less spectacular than she could have ever imagined.

'Blink and you'll just about miss it' The man had said as she exited the train earlier that day. He must have seen the look of surprise on her face at such a small station existing in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. There was no town in which the station was on the edge of, no bustling streets with families doing their Sunday shopping, no cars puttering down the road to their destination – all she could see were fields stretching out endlessly in every direction.

The man who had gotten off the train with her was long gone by the time she pulled out the booklet the Madame had given her. Honestly, she should have realized what this small blip of a town was going to look like by the map in front of her – there seemed to be nothing but green bleeding across the wrinkled pages.

At fourteen, she wouldn't call herself incredibly resourceful – but at least she could read directions. The Madame had circled her destination with a fat, red marker – making it stand out amongst all the greenery it was surrounded by.

The girl started walking and hoped that she was traveling in the right direction.

The dusty road crunched beneath her shoes and she had to cringe as small particles of dirt made their way between her toes. Maybe wearing the new shoes she had bought for this occasion hadn't been the best idea...but it was too late to change them now. She had wanted to impress Master Hawkeye by dressing as professionally as a young girl could, but now she was beginning to see why the Madame had kept insisting that she needed to wear something a little more comfortable.

'I want him to see me as a lady,' She had shared with her foster mother while buttoning up her crisp new blazer. All her clothes had been starched earlier that morning before she was set to be at the station and even her usually black unruly mane was combed and slicked to perfection. 'I want him to see me as an apprentice worth taking.'

The Madame had simply smiled at her young charge's determination, smoke pouring from her lips as she spoke.

'My dear – with the amount I'm paying him for your lessons – he would take you on even if you were a newborn baby,' The words did little to abate her nerves.

She didn't want the man to pour his efforts into her because he had to – she wanted him to teach her because he saw potential.

The amount of information she had on Master Hawkeye was scarce. She knew that he was an excellent freelance alchemist, who's early research had been compiled into a single publication that had made waves in the alchemy community.

However, that was it. After his first work was published, he retired to the country and was now known as a bit of a recluse. From the Madame's information, it seemed the military had propositioned him multiple times to become a State Alchemist, but to no avail. Raina found it hard to believe that he wouldn't jump on the opportunity since with that grand title also came grand funds for research.

The only other piece of information she had received from her source was that the man had a son who also lived with him. The age of said son was unknown to her still.

'Now you must be careful, dear,' Her older "sister" Margaret had warned her that morning, patting her head gently in an endearing fashion. 'You will be the only woman in the house – so, you must make sure they are treating you right. If they try anything funny, you have to promise to call us immediately.'

Madame Christmas had scoffed at the idea.

'Once they get her riled up once, they'll know better than to mess with her,' Madame Christmas insisted without worry, taking a long drag from her cigarette before exhaling a cloud of smoke. 'We've taught her well. She knows how to defend herself.'

Her foster mother wasn't wrong; she could defend herself. However, it had been a long time since she had lived with a male counterpart. She couldn't remember her father (her parents had died when she had been just three years of age) and the Madame rarely housed young men in the bar.

The thought of living alone with two men had caused her quite a bit of anxiety, but she wasn't going to let it stop her. Even as she trudged down the road, sun beating down mercilessly upon the top of her scalp – her gait was confident as she embarked on this new chapter of her life.

She had been walking for about half an hour before she came upon a small town. A groan unknowingly slipped from between her lips at the sight of it.

Augenblick was small – so small you could hardly justify its place on the map. From what she could see, it was comprised of one long row of buildings lining two sides of a dirt road that spanned just about 100 meters. From the looks of the way the lots were set up, it seemed that they were all commercial.

A few people milled about, swinging bags full of produce as they went about their morning routine. There were stands set up in front of the buildings where farmers were selling their goods to residents and chatting merrily with their neighbors. This version of the Sunday Market was very different from the bustling one back in Central that Raina was familiar with.

Gripping her suitcase tightly in her sweaty palm, the girl continued to trudge forward. She had passed a school house and a general store before finally getting stopped by a curious shopper.

"Can I help you, dearie?" An elderly woman asked, taking notice of the map clutched in her hands. After giving the girl a once over, she continued with her line of questioning. "You don't look to be from around here – are you looking for something?"

Raina was caught between wanting to find the Hawkeye residence on her own – to prove her status as an independent young lady – and wanting to get some help since the map's lines were starting to bleed together in the heat of the midday sun.

"Yes," The girl said, accepting that this was a small concession to make in her journey to becoming a worthy young apprentice. She could always be independent tomorrow. "I am looking for the Hawkeye residence."

The woman looked at her strangely for a moment. Raina's confident stance did not waver though – she knew it probably looked strange for a young girl to seek out an older man, but she wasn't here to worry about appearances. After a brief pause, the woman answered her cautiously.

"It's just down main," The elder spoke slowly, still unsure of what the young girl's motive was. "If you keep walking that direction, you will come to a fork in the road. Take a right if you're looking for the Hawkeye residence, take a left if you want to traverse the desert."

Raina laughed nervously at her dark humor. At this point, she wasn't sure which path the woman considered to be more dangerous.

"Thank you!" Before she could take her leave though, the woman's hand reached out to grab her wrist. This stopped the young girl dead in her tracks as she was met with a serious set of dark eyes, concern evident in the way the woman drew her near to speak quietly in her ear.

"What do you want with that old man, child?" Her voice was low, suspicion blending with worry. Raina glanced nervously at the shoppers who passed them, but none even batted an eye at the strange scene in front of them. The woman tightened her grip again, forcing the girl's gaze back to her own. "If you need any help, all you have to do is tell us."

Shaking her wrist from the woman's grasp, Raina brought her hand protectively to her chest – map and all.

"I am an apprentice, ma'am," The girl insisted, tone bordering on rude. These country folks may be fine with lecturing young ladies and manhandling them in the streets, but she certainly was not. "I am here to learn alchemy from Master Hawkeye and that is all."

She could tell the older woman was affronted by such a brash response, not used to a girl speaking to her elders in such a way – however, she recovered quickly. The surprised look on her face morphed into one of sympathy.

"I didn't mean to offend you, child," The lady insisted, picking up the bag of vegetables she had dropped to her side at the beginning of their conversation. "I just know that the elder Hawkeye is not one to be trusted. Ever since the death of his wife, his behavior has been strange. We've rarely seen him for the past few years – the only one that ever comes into town is his son."

The people mulling around the market were now eyeing them – pausing at the stands nearby to watch the encounter while still attempting to appear casual. They would pick up an apple, turn it in their hands to check if it had any soft spots, and then glance quickly over at them. She could tell by her faces that, at the mention of Berthold Hawkeye, she had set the subject for Sunday gossip amongst the small populace.

"Just because someone does not wish to mingle with others does not mean they are any less trustworthy than you or I," Raina insisted, defending her new teacher from the accusations of the lady in front of her. Already this town was a little too judgmental for her taste. "I could care less how social he is as long as he is a dutiful teacher."

"Child," The woman pleaded, a hint of desperation in her tone as Raina made to walk away, suitcase swinging in her hand. Luckily, she did not grab her this time – however the fear that infused her tone, had the young girl turning to regard her once more.

"I know it seems like I am simply an old gossip who has nothing better to do," Raina fought the urge to raise her brows at the expression since that was precisely what she had pegged the woman as. "But you must listen to me – there is something wrong with that man."

The genuine concern in the woman's voice caused a shiver to run up her spine. Raina would have argued it was just a chill – however, in the middle of summer, that was unlikely. Seeing that she now had the young girl's attention, the woman continued.

"His son was so gaunt during the first few years after his mother's death, that it looked like a breeze would knock him over," The woman revealed, her voice so low that even someone walking past them would have to strain to hear her words. "He finished school early and after that – well he just disappeared. We didn't see him for months then suddenly one day he walked up to Mrs. Roth's stand to buy potatoes. By that time, he had filled out a bit – but there was a haunted look in his eyes."

Raina's curiosity was piqued, though she couldn't help but have some doubts in regards to the woman's claims.

"Madame," The young girl began carefully, lowering her tone to match the volume of the elder. The townspeople were still watching them – however, their interest seemed to have lessened once their conversation had become harder to hear. "I don't think it's fair to assume that something bad happened to him during that time. He and his father could have taken a vacation."

"No one left that house." The woman insisted, causing another chill to run through the girl. The older woman spoke with such conviction – like she knew that whatever it was she suspected was true.

"Maybe they were just enjoying some time alone together after the son finished school?" Raina tried to reason with the woman, desperately grasping for straws in an attempt to abate her fears. "Why does his disappearance have to mean something bad happened?"

The serious look in the woman's eyes was one that Raina would remember for a long time after.

"Because he was covered in bruises when he returned."

It was this conversation that had Raina shaking slightly on the doorstep of the Hawkeye residence. After the old woman had finally let her continue on her way, she was left with more fear and anxiety than before. She was more fearful now than she had been when she had originally been told she was being shipped out for alchemy instruction.

The house was nothing spectacular. It looked like it could have been grand once upon a time, but the broken shutters and overgrown garden implied that once hard times had hit, all efforts of upkeep had been abandoned. Even so, the view from the porch was one that's beauty couldn't be denied – the rolling green fields that surrounded the home for miles looked as though they were straight out of a painting.

Raina took a deep breath. She could do this. No amount of town gossip was going to keep her from doing what she had come here to do. She had been waiting her whole life for this and that old biddy was not going to ruin her chances of becoming a great alchemist.

As far back as she could remember, she had been studying alchemy. Madame Christmas liked to joke that the young girl had practically forced her to read alchemical essays to her at bedtime before she was able to read them on her own. One of her favorite alchemical works had always been the book of research Berthold Hawkeye had published a few years before her birth. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined she would have the honor of studying under him.

It was this realization that had her fist raising resolutely to the door. She was not timid. She was not shy. She was not scared. No one could deter her from the goals she had already set out to achieve. She would knock on this door and accept whatever fate lay on the other side.

But before her hand could even come in contact with wood, the door was swinging wide open in front of her.

Raina stood frozen. Well, she certainly hadn't been expecting that. Her fist fell swiftly to her side.

Standing before her was a young man only three or four years her senior. He was tall – certainly taller than she was – with a sturdy build that marked years of hard labor. His skin was golden, much like his hair, and there seemed to be a fine sheen of sweat covering him as if he had just come in from the fields. She watched as a droplet traversed down the weather worn features of his face before dropping off his sharp chin.

She had begun to sweat herself at his sudden appearance. She tried to tell herself that it was from the heat - but later she would question if that had really been it at all.

Despite his humble background, the man's spine straightened automatically at the sight of the young girl on his doorstep. Assuming the role of a gentleman – though looking nothing like one in ripped pants and a sweaty white shirt – he bowed his head in greeting to her.

"I must apologize," His voice was deep, much deeper than the voices of the boys she had gone to school with. "I did not realize you had arrived, Miss Mustang."

Being addressed so formally, she realized what set him apart from the boys at her school. He was not a boy; he was a man. His voice was too deep to be that of a boy's and his features were too hard to still be touched by the innocence of childhood. In the face of his own maturity, she puffed out her chest a bit before primly joining her hands in front of her.

"Hello, Mr. Hawkeye," She answered, clearing her throat to adopt a much deeper tone that would better match his own. "Please, just call me Raina. Miss Hawkeye sounds much too formal when we are going to be housemates."

The young man appeared unimpressed by her words, causing another bout of sweat to break out beneath her starched white shirt. Any hopes that she had conceived of the two of them being friends, seemed to be thrown farther and farther out the window as their staring contest continued. His amber eyes beat into her own, resembling those of a hawk's.

'Fitting,' she thought wryly to herself, as his gaze dropped to the suitcase she had laid to rest at her feet. Her hand itched to pick it up and turn right back around, leaving this house and his unnerving stare in the dust – but he surprised her.

Picking up her suitcase himself – the young man stood to the side of the doorway and gestured for her to make her way inside. The expression on his face was unreadable, but the grim lines of his face softened as she hesitantly stepped forward into the humid air of the home.

The inside of the house was much like the outside – dark and rundown. She could see a living area with a small stone fireplace off to the side, the furniture worn from many years of use. There was a door at the back of the room that she assumed led to a dining area and kitchen. The stairs were nestled in the corner of the area, leading to where she assumed the bedrooms and bathroom would be.

It was certainly different from what she was used to – but she guessed it could be considered cozy.

Careful to school her features, she turned back towards the younger Hawkeye. She didn't want him to think of her as a spoiled city girl. Despite their rough start, she still held on to the hope that they could be friends. She must not have covered her reaction quickly enough though, because when she met his gaze, there was a knowing look in his eye.

"I know it's not much, Miss Mustang," He emphasized his use of her formal name, pointedly ignoring the fact that she had asked him to call her Raina earlier. His words were polite, but she could hear a harsh undertone in them. "But I assure you that you will find everything you'll need to further pursue your alchemical studies within these walls."

Embarrassed at the censure evident in his tone, the young girl gave a quick nod of understanding.

"Yes, sir."

Satisfied with her quiet response, he gestured for her to follow him up the stairs. She grabbed her suitcase in her sweaty palm before following his orders.

"My father is having one of his bad days, so you will have to wait until tomorrow to make his acquaintance," Raina could feel herself deflating in disappointment, her footfalls heavy on the old wooden stairs. She had really hoped she'd be meeting her master upon arrival. "However, I am sure you are tired from your journey and will want this afternoon to rest."

"Oh, I'm not tired," Raina insisted, despite the aching in her feet. "What are your plans for the rest of the day?"

Without batting an eye, the young man turned to look at her over his shoulder.

"I'm going hunting," His words implied that he figured this answer would somehow affect her sensibilities.

Being raised in a bar though, Raina had never been the squeamish type.

"Can I come?" She asked innocently, following behind him as he led her down a hall at the top of the stairs. The strong set of his shoulders stiffened in surprise at her request, stopping him mid-step.

"I don't know," He answered slowly, clearly caught off guard by her words. The surprise on his face was short lived though as his features quickly settled back into the stoic expression he seemed to be so fond of. "Are you going to scare off our dinner?"

"Our dinner?"

The young Hawkeye had to grin as he continued to lead her forward. Like a dutiful guest, she followed closely behind – waiting for an answer.

"Surely you don't think I am going down to the market to get our food for tonight?" He finally asked, his hand turning the knob of a door leading to what she assumed to be her bedroom. A few doors down, she could just make out movement underneath the door that resided at the end of the long stretch of hallway.

"Of course not," She answered evenly as she stepped into the room, setting her suitcase by her feet. There was a bed, a dresser, and a desk. It wasn't much, but it would do. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the young man studying her face. If he was looking for a negative reaction this time around, she wasn't going to give it to him.

"So," She started, crossing her arms over her chest and turning to meet his gaze once more. "When do we leave?"

His answering smirk made her heart soar – though she would never admit it.

"Half an hour."

Her heart continued to beat sporadically even after he had closed the door behind him, leaving her to unpack and dress for their outing. However, the heavy beating of her heart wasn't from the small smile he had given her or the moment of softness she glimpsed in his eyes before taking his leave.

No, her heart was beating because she had seen the bruises on the back of his arms through the material of his shirt.

Falling back upon the mattress, she stared blankly up at the ceiling. Just what kind of secrets were hiding within these walls and just what did it all mean for her?

[mogdaze-blog]

Motherly Secrets - Short Story

I can’t exactly remember where I was when I got the news that mother had fallen ill. At work, probably, because I can remember it derailing the flow of my day.

The drive back to Tucson to see her was harder than expected. She’d suffered, the doctor told me, from a series of small strokes in rapid succession - like being shot by a machine-gun, he said. She was able to talk and move a little, but she wasn’t going to walk again, and the most optimistic estimates for her life expectancy still gave her only just South of six months. I was going to have to drop everything and go home, to take care of her in her last, bedridden days.

Anyone who’d think of me as heartless for saying that has clearly never met my mother. In terms of love, care, and affection during my childhood, she ranked somewhere between an old pinecone and an inanimate slab of polished granite. She never beat me or called me names, sure, but her heart was never in the whole “motherhood” thing. As the years went by, I started to feel less like a kid and more like a tumour - this big, unsightly lump of flesh that kept her from living life to the fullest.

It’s hard, making someone your main priority, when you know you were never theirs. But if childhood had taught me anything, it was coping with that exact feeling.

I breathed a long, pained sigh, like a premature death rattle, as I pulled in past the city limits. The second I was of age, I got the hell out of this place, leaving my mother as a fading ghost in the rear-view mirror. Hadn’t been back in the twelve years since, hadn’t ever planned on coming back. Until now.

The house was almost exactly as I’d rembered it, apart from a few changes to the garden. A modest, detached home in the suburbs of Green Valley, with a front fence painted blue and overstuffed hanging baskets dangling on either side of the front window like garish, oversized earrings. The only light on inside was in the top-left window: the room where my mother was staying, and would stay until the end of her days.

It was like stepping back into a photo album full of my worst memories. There was no love here, no joy. Only cold, brutal indifference.

Most of the furniture in the living room and the hallway were all wrapped in plastic, ready to be removed. Mother wouldn’t be using them again, after all. It gave the grim impression that the whole house was just waiting for her to finally buy the farm, and then they could all move on with their lives too. Or maybe that was just projection on my part. Who knows?

“You must be Tania,” said a tired-looking woman in a nurse’s uniform, standing on the stairs, “your mother’s in bed upstairs, I left all her medicine in a cabinet nearby. You should have everything you need.”

This was Mary: mother’s carer, until I arrived to take up the mantel, Dr. Hartmann had mentioned her in his call. I gave her a curt nod and she filed past me, leaving out of the front door, and leaving me alone with the beast. In the silence of the stairway, you could hear her mechanically-assisted breathing echoing out from the open door of the bedroom.

Mom had been suffering from a number of problems for a while, the strokes were just the final nail in the coffin.

“Is that you, little missy?” She hissed, before evening hearing me. That frail, spiteful voice still made me wince. A decade away, and she still had this power over me. It made me more angry than afraid.

“I’m a grown woman, mother,” I said, finally plucking up the courage to ascend the staircase, “you know I don’t like being called that. I always did tell you.”

I stared at her through the bedroom door and found myself shuddering. She looked like the personification of the word “wretched”: this thin, decrepit bag of bones, hooked up to more wires and tubes than an old television set, looking child-sized in the bed she was confined to. Her mouth was covered up by an oxygen mask, but her eyes were still visible.

Those wet, hateful little eyes. A pig’s eyes,

“So you came back,” mother said with a long, wheezing laugh, “honestly, Tania, I didn’t expect I’d get to see you again. I thought you’d already washed your hands of me.”

She coughed and spluttered intermittently. It always sounded like it hurt.

“Of course I came back, mother,” I said, “I want to move on with my life, but to do that, I’m gonna need to tie all this off first. A clean break.”

I didn’t owe her any niceties, not after the way she’s treated me. I’d done a lot of research into the concept of childhood emotional neglect since I’d left the freezer-box mother called home, and I could say with total confidence that she was practically the textbook definition. Why should she get special treatment? A miserable life had earned her a miserable end, and if anyone deserved a sense of closure, it was me. Not her.

“You were always ungrateful, Tania,” she said, averting her eyes from my presence, “my momma, she beat the living crap out of me, did you know that? And my daddy, well he just stood around and watched. Said it was women’s issues, said he didn’t ought to get involved. When I left those sons of bitches and never looked back, I had a damn good reason to. What the hell was your reason for abandoning your mother, Tania?”

Shaking my head, I walked over to mother’s medicine cabinet and began rearranging the bottles of pills and ointments into their proper places. There was no winning with her.

“Can’t abandon someone who was never there, mother,” I said, “I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone.”

Mother made a spiteful little noise and turned her shrivelled head back towards me.

“I did more for you than you’ll ever know, Tania. Seeing you be so god damn disrespectful to me like this, it makes me sick.” She said.

I finally snapped, and turned to meet her gaze.

“Why did you even want me back here, huh? Why? Ever since I got here, all you’ve done is bitch and moan about me,” I said, feeling the skin on my cheeks turning crimson, “what do you want me to do?”

She paused, before taking a long, deep inhale from her oxygen mask. The way it distorted her voice made her sound almost monstrous. Again, maybe that was just projection on my part.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “you can make yourself useful and clean out the attic. Keep what you want, throw the rest in the garbage. You can sleep in your old room until then, I’m too tired to keep arguing with you. You’re impossible, Tania.”

The vitriol was new. What I’d always been used to from my mother was a cold, consistent apathy - never any questions to ask me, and always flat, one-word answers for mine. Maybe I was impossible, because I didn’t have the energy to talk to her any longer. I let my dying mother go to sleep, while I retired to my old bedroom - the walls still plastered with photos of early-2000s boybands and pop singers who were big at the time.

In a way, that was appropriate. If there was one thing my mother was always good at, without fail, it was making me feel small.

***

The next morning, I woke up early to get started on the attic, while mother still snored loudly into the miniature echo-chamber of her oxygen mask. Every slow, robotic noise she made set my teeth on edge. The sooner I could be done with all this donkey-work, the sooner I could rest a little easier while waiting for my mother to finally die.

It was junk, mostly. Disused furniture, broken lights, Christmas decorations that felt ancient to me. I heaved it all into garbage bags and left it in the hallway downstairs, extracting it bag by bag, the attic looking marginally less awful each time. I vacuumed up some of the dust and refuse, worrying that the longer I stayed up there, the more likely it’d be that I’d contract some form of bronchitis.

I’d given up all hope of finding anything interesting somewhere after the third cracked fibreglass Santa model, but found my curiosity piqued again when I discovered a little wooden chest peeking out from underneath a garbage bag full of shattered baubles. It was only a little bigger than a shoebox, I guessed, with a little padlock on the front. Feeling tired from lugging all the bags, I decided to take a break and take the mystery box downstairs with me.

A quick visit from a pair of bolt-cutters under the kitchen sink, and all of the box’s mysteries has been laid bare before me: a stack of old photos in a brown envelope, a cassette player with four matching tapes, and a little cloth bag - no bigger than an apple - tied up with string.

I admit, it was exciting, feeling like I’d stumbled on a real mystery in the midst of this graveyard. I hadn’t expected to have any kind of fun here, so what little I could glean from a box of old artefacts, I’d hold onto tightly and never let go. This was my mystery now.

First, the photos - all polaroids, probably taken in the seventies or the eighties. The first few were just of my mother, when she was much younger, before I ever came into the picture. There was something different about her, something…lighter. Like it was taken before some great weight was lowered onto her shoulders.

Figures, I thought with a grim eye-roll, and continued flipping through.

When I got to the bottom of the stack, the final photo made me pause. It was mother, still, when she was young and happy and beautiful, but she had a little boy with her. They stood together, holding hands, smiling for the photo. I’d never seen her look so cheerful in the flesh - it was like staring into The Twilight Zone.

I flipped the photo, and saw “Me & Jack” scrawled across the back in soft-tip marker. My curiosity was intense and harrowing - it occurred to me, upon looking at this photo, that really I knew almost nothing about my mother. It’d always been just the two of us - no dad, no grandparents. Just me and blank, distant mom.

So it begged the question: who the hell is Jack?

For a second I considered just asking my mother, but I dismissed the notion just as quickly. The second she sensed she could hurt me by withholding information, she’d just clam up and watch with relish as I squirmed. Every little act was a power play now, so I had to do it myself.

The audio tapes, I figured, might have some clues. Each was numbered, so I decided to push them into the recorder and listen. All of them were the voice of my mother from a different time, so much calmer, so much sweeter. The following is the contents of those tapes.

—

Tape 1:

Little Jack is six today, I can’t believe how fast he’s growing. Such a big boy, so tall and broad for his age. I’m not sure why I’m recording this, suppose it’s because I’ve never really felt like this before, and I wanted to remember that this was all real. We can both listen to it when he’s grown, and we’ll laugh that I was ever worried about all this. I feel new, somehow, like I’ve been reborn. He still holds my hand when I take him to school - those lovely little hands of his. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop holding his hand, even when he’s grown. What did I do to be blessed with a little boy like this?

Maybe it doesn’t all have to be bad. Guess mom was wrong, there’s hope for me after all.

Tape 2:

God, fuck. Just fucking…fuck. He’s got a heart condition, it’s defective. It’s fucking defective. The doctor says he can just deteriorate at any time, like a bomb where nobody knows how long the god damn fuse is. My perfect little boy, and his life might end before it even begins. Is it because I was happy for once? Is that it? Did I anger the fucking gods or something? I just don’t…understand. Why did it have to be me?

I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I just don’t know anymore. And there’s nobody left who can help me.

Tape 3:

I’ve been thinking about Jack lately. I’ve come to terms with the whole heart thing - really, the not knowing is worse than the end. We all have to die some time, of course, it’s just nicer to have a reasonable expectation for when that’s going to be. But, I think I’ve solved that problem now. No more waiting, no more worrying, no more uncertainly for my beautiful little boy. Such a big boy for his age. He’s crossing my mind more and more, like an itch I just can’t seem to scratch, but I know how I can scratch it.

No more false expectations. I think I can solve this. It’s all gonna be back on track again.

Tape 4:

Tonight’s the night. —

By the time I’d popped out the fourth cassette, I was shaking, with tears in my eyes. So she’d had a son before she’d had me, little Jack, and she never once mentioned it. She never mentioned any of it. To hear her like that, so happy, so alive, it was to me as unnatural as watching rain fall up and time go backwards. The most prescient question before was who the hell Jack was, but now I knew, and a new question had risen to the forefront.

What the hell had she done to him?

I knew my mother was a master of non-contact torture, but part of me still couldn’t bring myself to believe that she was a murderer. Another thing I knew is that I couldn’t possibly just ask her about it, because if she had even an inch to wriggle out of it, who could blame her for taking it? All that was left was the little cloth bag, tied up with a single piece of string.

When I pulled away that string, I did so with the precision of a bomb disposal expert cutting a wire. The sides of the cloth fell outwards like a flower in bloom, revealing what had been sitting inside for all these years. It took me a moment to realise exactly what it was - the small, gnarled little thing - but the second I got it, I shrieked at the top of my lungs and scrambled backwards.

It was a tiny, mummified hand. The hand she never wanted to give up holding.

“What the hell are you screaming about?” My mother, the child-killer, called down from above, “you damn near gave me a heart attack.”

A heart attack would have been too good for her. I wanted to call the police, have them apprehend her, let her eke out the last few months of her miserable life rotting in a jail cell, or at least the secure wing of a hospital, her thin, veiny wrists handcuffed to the sides of the bed. But I was selfish - I knew that even if they arrested her, they’d never find out why she did what she did. She’d wrench that vicious little mouth of her’s shut, and never speak another word, just to spite them. There was nothing they could threaten her with, she was - for all intents and purposes - already dead.

No, if I wanted answers - and I did - I’d need to yank them out of the old bat’s mouth myself.

With a shaking hand, I grabbed a chef’s knife from the kitchen, and hid it behind my back. Mother was ranting as I mounted the stairs, asking why I was being so rude as to ignore her. She was, after all, just asking me simple questions. Was I too ignorant to even comprehend that?

She still looked the same. Logically, of course I knew that’d be the case. But, after knowing that somehow, for some reason, she’d killed a little boy, I felt like on some level I should have been able to read it on her. I wanted to believe that an act like that would have to change a person, make them less human - mentally and physically. But no, it was that same little broken doll, wrapped in blankets.

“And finally, Queen Tania arrives,” mother said, her voice laden with venom, “such an honour for you to finally grace me with your presence. Have you even cleaned out there–”

“I know, mother. I know what you did.” I said.

I hadn’t expected it to come out like that, but there it was, just hanging in the air between us.

“What are you talking about?” She asked, indignant.

“Jack, mother. I know about Jack.”

When I said that name, something changed. Something in those small, shiny eyes.

“I still don’t know what you’re…”

“Give it up, mom,” I cut her off, “I found the box. I saw the pictures, I heard the tapes. I saw the…I saw the hand, mother. I’ve seen everything now.”

Silence. Total and overwhelming, like being locked in a pressure chamber. Mother just stared at me with an expression I couldn’t quite place, partially hidden underneath her oxygen mask. I was on the verge of tears.

“Jack…” She said, sounding almost, almost mournful, “that was meant to be private, Tania. Nobody was ever meant to know, it was going to be our little secret - mine, and his. Though I suppose that doesn’t matter much anymore, does it?”

I walked to her bedside, knowing I was on the precipice of doing something I regretted. The chef’s knife felt heavy in my hand when I first picked it up, but the longer I looked at my mother, the lighter it seemed to feel.

“Tell me what happened, mother,” I said, trying to hold back the sob that I felt was priming itself at the base of my throat, “I want to know everything that happened to Jack.”

“Do you really, though?” She asked, “because once you know, you can’t go back. It’ll stay with you long after I’m worm-food, Tania.”

“Just. Fucking. Tell me.”

Mother sighed again and turned her head away from me on the pillow, just like she’d done when she called me ungrateful the day before. It was almost funny, knowing she couldn’t take my judgement now, after all this.

“I ate him, Tania.”

My left leg turned to putty below the knee and I almost fell backwards. Of all the thousand scenarios I’d run over in my head since seeing the hand, somehow this wasn’t one of them. Even in the end, my expectations of her were just too high. She was more loathsome than I’d ever been able to imagine.

“You what?” I asked, voice pregnant with burgeoning sobs.

“Not alive, girl, I’m not an animal,” she said; there was no pleasure or anger in her voice now, just that same indifference I was always used to, “it was humane. I drugged his food with sleeping pills one evening, and once he was out I bent him over the tub and slit his throat. He was dead in about two minutes, didn’t even feel anything. He went out a lot better than I’m going to. The rest, I butchered and cooked.”

I was going to say something, but instead, I just vomited into a waste paper basket near the portable medicine cabinet. I couldn’t help but picture that sweet-looking little boy from the photos, little Jack, my brother from long, long ago, lying grey and lifeless over the edge of a porcelain bathtub - his neck split upon by a wide, red smile. She was a killer, she was a cannibal. She was my mother.

“I don’t understand,” I said through tears, “I thought you loved him.”

“I do love him,” she said, “I never stopped loving him. Not even for a second, not even when I was watching him bleed down the drain. I always loved my little boy.”

The knife was itching to taste my mother’s blood, but I tried to maintain control. I knew what she’s done now - an image I’d never clear from my head until the day I die - but I still had to know why. I needed to know why.

“When you get a little older, Tania, you’ll realise that all of life runs in cycles,” she said, “and if anything seems like it doesn’t, well, that’s only because you’ve not looked at it for long enough. Everyone’s in the loop, and the loop has to close eventually.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“My parents, Tania, I told you they abused me. They took away my power, made me feel like nothing - that’s why I escaped, and I swore nobody would ever take power away from me again,” she said, “I never wanted a husband, I wanted to stay independent. Jack came out of a one night stand, and I had him myself a few months later. I’ve never loved anything as much, before or since.”

I’d always known that my mother had never loved me, but somehow, that still hurt to hear.

“Those first six years before his diagnosis, Tania, that was the happiest I’d ever been. I felt like life had finally turned around - but when I realised that little Jack could die at any time, I woke up from the fantasy. I’d been lying to myself the whole damn time. You see, little missy…”

“Don’t fucking call me that.” I said, venting some of my confusion and fury.

“You see, Tania,” she corrected herself, each word oozing with spite, “there are two ways a person can take your power away from you. They can abuse you, and attack you, and physically dominate you - like my mother did to me. The other way is in making someone love you, like Jack did. And I did love him, I really did, but it made me weak. It took my power away, and that’s why he had to die.”

“Then why the fuck did you eat him?” I asked, thinking the rest of her insanity wasn’t even worth questioning.

“Because I loved him, Tania, I don’t expect you to understand, you’re a loveless little creature. Jack had to die so I could keep my promise to myself, but I ate him so he’d never have to leave me. We could be together forever - one body, one mind, one soul.”

By this point, I’d collapsed onto my knees and just started crying into my hands. Mother kept talking.

“I did you a great kindness, one that I suppose at least now you could fully appreciate,” she said, “I had you when I got lonely, but I knew that I was still the same person I was when I ate Jack. If I wanted you to be safe - and believe me, Tania, I did - I knew the only way to do that was to not love you. I’d keep my power, and you’d keep your life. Fair trade. Seems almost funny now, doesn’t it?”

“Funny?” I asked through gritted teeth, “what it seems is evil, mother, evil and fucking insane.”

She turned back to me, our eyes meeting again.

“Cycles, Tania. It was all pointless in the end - because here I am, weak, defenceless, and there you are, holding that knife, ready to kill me. Ball’s in your court, you’ve got all the power,” she said, her voice betraying a sick sense of gallows humour, “the loop closes. I became my mother, and you become me. It’ll keep going, until the end of time. Cycles, always cycles.”

It made me sick to my stomach, but she was right. It’d all panned out exactly like she said - but I would refuse her being right one last time. I didn’t have the strength to let go of the knife, but I poured everything I had into keeping the blade away from her. I wouldn’t close the loop, I refused to, I wouldn’t complete the cycle.

“No,” I said to her, “don’t you dare try to put this on anyone else but you. Your mother was a shit to you, and I’m sorry about that, but you’re twice the monster she was. You killed a little boy, your own little boy! You murdered him and then you ate him. You alone fucking did that, not anyone else.”

Even below the oxygen mask, I saw mother’s lips curl back over yellow, coffee-stained teeth. Not quite a smile, just the animalistic baring of fangs. For a split second, it felt like the facade matched the interior.

“Not quite,” she said, “I was bearing child at the time, Tania. You ate him too. You could even say Jack is gonna be with both of us for…”

Mother never got to finish that sentence. Before I’d even had the foresight to stop myself, I’d plunged the chef’s knife into the centre of her chest. Red bloomed from the wound, soaking into the sheets around her, as she coughed a little storm of blood into the oxygen mask. Mother’s shiny little pig eyes seemed to go flat and glassy, and she slumped back into her pillow, stone dead.

I let out a long, loud scream. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to stop.

***

But it did stop, in the end. I still believe mother was wrong: all things stop in the end. Life isn’t made of loops and cycles, it’s made of threads - it’s messy, it’s disorganised, it’s chaotic, but you always have choice. Mother, for a person so obsessed with gaining and keeping power at all costs, was so quick to assume that none of us have any. When I’d gotten my mind back, I called the local police precinct and turned myself in, told them every last detail and gave them all the evidence they needed to piece together what’d happened.

The trial was short, and the jury was sympathetic. It’s hard to not look at someone who murdered a child-eating killer as a dragon slayer rather than a cold-blooded murderer herself. The judge figured my time was better spent in a psychiatric ward than prison, where I could try to undo some of what my mother had done to me, and scrape every little piece of her black, cancerous memory from my brain. Once I’ve done that, I can go back to life again, and try to pick up where I left off.

I don’t think about her as often as I used to now, thankfully, though occasionally she’ll wander across my mind. The last thoughts I had of her was wondering what she must have been thinking when I stabbed her. In the narrative I imagine her head was putting together in her final few seconds, she probably pictured me running off into the night, screaming and covered in blood, wanting desperately to keep the power I’d gained, and destined to repeat all of her mistakes.

Mother was wrong about that too. I plan on making my own.