When her mother’s voice spoke up, it did not say what she expected.
She almost entered the clearing again. She saw herself slowly approach Victor, bend down to pick up the stone, cold on one side and warm on the other where it split his skin, and stand over his body, legs spread, and raise that stone high over her head.
But she’d never be able to hurl it down at his skull. He deserved it, no doubt about that, but she couldn’t murder him. If it was in self-defense, she would find a way to deal with the emotional wreckage it brought, but to kill him when he was defenseless was to reduce herself to his level.
“He was trying to kill me,” she said.
And what’s Victor trying to do? Show you a good time?
His arms pulled back, his body arched into a yoga pose, and he screamed. The sound was rage tinged with genuine pain. She had hurt him, perhaps quite badly. Maybe he would let her go.
Of all the pathetic hopes, that one was the worst and she knew it even as she thought it. What the hell was she doing? Waiting for him to get up and steady his feet like a boxer who has been knocked down before resuming her escape?
She turned from the tree and ran down the path into the darkness.
His next scream was much louder and echoed through the trees as if his voice had taken on a life of its own.
FIFTY-ONE
Victor was asleep when his mother came into his bedroom for the last time. He was lucid and resting only lightly, so the faint squeak of the door hinges brought him fully awake.
She had drugged him a few times, ground-up Tylenol PM in soda, he guessed, and he’d wake up in the middle of night with her on top of him and his thing buried inside her warmth. Or she would have it in her mouth or simply be caressing it. He’d try to fight his way free from the drugged stupor, but he never could. He could only let her finish, let her get what she wanted, and fall back into a dark world where his nightmares were preferable to his reality.
He would never be able to objectively assess how years and years of this destroyed his mind, but he was aware that it molded him into something other than he could have been. In some other world, there was another Victor who never had sex with his mother, who never had to wrestle with the moral anguish those moments wrought upon him. That Victor knew nothing of abortions that killed children he was never meant to father. That Victor was happy. He would never know that Victor and for that, she had to die.
She walked to the side of his bed, slipped off the silk nightgown she wore for these visits, lifted the comforter and eased beneath. Her skin was smooth and if he blocked out what was really happening, he could allow the sensation of skin against skin to excite him enough to give her what she wanted.
Her hands slowly traced over his bare chest and down toward the edge of his boxers. Her hot breath teased his ear and she whispered so quietly that if he were drugged, the words would be lost forever. “You’re Mommy’s little angel, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re so special, Victor. Destined for greatness. I love you so much. It hurts how much I love you.”
Her fingertips teased the top of his groin and he seized her wrist. He turned on her so quickly that she recoiled and would have fallen out of the bed if he hadn’t been holding her. Her breasts dangled toward the mattress like sagging dough.
“No more,” he said.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“No more.” He was breathing very heavily. He had thought about this moment at great length but now that it was here he couldn’t carry through with it. The carving knife was tucked between the mattress and the bedspring but he couldn’t stab his mother. No matter what she had done to him, no matter how damaged he was as a result, he would not be able to slice her throat and feel her hot blood splash across his face.
“You’re Mommy’s little prince,” she said. “You love Mommy, don’t you?”
“You can’t have what you want anymore.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How dare you refuse your mother what she has a right to. I am your mother. You are my son. I love you more than any other person ever could or will. That is why I give you everything of me. That is why I want to be one with you.”
“No,” he said through clenched teeth. “Please.”
Her free hand touched the side of his face and gently caressed down toward his chin where she cupped it the way she used to do when he was a little boy. “My poor baby,” she said. “You need your Mommy. She’ll make everything okay again. I promise.”
“No more,” he said again. “No more deaths.”
“Is that what bothers you? Don’t worry about that, honey. I had the doctors remove my uterus. I can’t have any children. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“No. No more. Never again. Get away from me.
She yanked out of his grip and got out of bed. She stood before him, hands on her hips, with her sex glistening in the faint light from the windows. “You are being a bad, little boy.”
“I’m not a boy!”
“So, you’re a man now? A man like your father? Is that what you want? I should have cut off his cock. You want me to cut off yours?”
“Go away!”
She shook her head. “You don’t get to tell me to do anything. I’m your mother.”
“I wish you were dead,” he said.
“Your father said the same thing but he couldn’t do it. He was just a pussy. He thought killing others would make him tough. Look what happened to him.”
“Please leave me alone!” he screamed.
She stepped back as if his scream had physically hit her, but her comeback was so quick and unexpected that Victor had no time to prepare.
She seized the lamp on the nightstand and smashed it into his face.
That bitch had knocked him unconscious.
He woke in the dark. His crotch hurt. She had gotten what she wanted. If he didn’t kill her, she would keep taking it from him again and again. And if he couldn’t kill her, he would have to be like his father and put a gun in his mouth. The trigger would be as smooth as the insides of her thighs.
The moonlight streaming through the window blinded him for a moment and his bed was cold and damp. But he wasn’t in bed, or even in his bedroom. He was outside on the grass. Where was his mother? Would she be back?
No, he had killed her. He was sure of it. She wasn’t alive. She wasn’t on this mountain. She wasn’t--
Blood Mountain.
Everything came back and order reasserted itself. His mother hadn’t hit him in the head; it had been that other bitch. Mercy.
He managed to get himself onto all-fours with minimal pain, but when he tried to take a deep breath, his chest hitched, something constricted his throat, and he gagged violently. He coughed out a glob of something. Two pieces of teeth shone in the mess of blood and mucus like jewels. He gently touched his lips, which were tender, and slipped his fingers beneath to the gums. Where his front teeth had been were two jagged fangs. His touch vibrated electric shocks of pain into his jaw and around his head to the back where that bitch had hit him with a rock.
He sat back on his calves and waited for the dizziness to pass. He picked up his knife (he’d been lucky not to impale himself) and screamed as loud as he could. The sound reverberated all around him, might have even shaken the trees. The holler kept pouring out of him as if the floodgate to the reservoir of suffering within him had swung wide.
