mother…but just barely. Most of the hair was gone from her scalp, save a few locks at the back of her skull. And these were not the lustrous red he remembered, but a dry tangle of pale orange hairs like dried reeds or straw. Her lips had shriveled away from her blackened gums and her teeth seemed narrow, rodent-like, just gray with filth caked between them as if she’d chewed her way up out of the grave. The entire left side of her face was enormously swollen, just a great sac of pus and quivering larva.
“Why don’t you talk to mommy, Chuck?” she said, a couple of graveworms dropping from her mouth and frying up in the pan.
“Your dead,” he said and was surprised at how calm his voice was. “You…you shouldn’t be here. You’re dead.”
Mom fixed him with that single black, juicy eye. “That’s what your father said, Chuck. That’s exactly what he said. Right before his heart gave out and he hit the floor. Don’t worry, baby, I didn’t let your father die alone and unloved. I laid on top of him. He didn’t like it much. Especially when I told him how all his partners are robbing him blind and how his mother tried to abort him and?”
“Stop it!” Chuck said, more emotions rioting in him, filling his head with explosions like fireworks. Grief and pain and guilt and anger and horror, oh yes, lots of that.
Mom laughed and it was an awful, screeching sound like grinding metal. “Hungry, Chuck? Hungry? She reached into the pan and her fingers sizzled in the oil, black smoke coming off them. She snatched a piece of meat and placed it between her teeth. She did not chew as a human chewed, but like an animal, a dog or even a shark maybe, snapping her teeth down on it and pulling it whole into her mouth and down her throat. “Yummy. Now, Chuck, it’s time we spoke the truth about your father.”
Chuck was breathing very hard, part of him certain that none of this was even happening, that perhaps he was still in Mrs. Crowley’s apartment. “Your dead,” he said. “Go…go back to your grave.”
“I don’t want to, Chuck. I’ve been resurrected and I like it.” She ate another piece of meat with that same chomping, gulping action. “Your father liked men, Chucky. He liked the feel of a cock in his mouth. He liked to put his own up men’s asses. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Mom…”
“Oh, it’s true, Chuck. I should have known. All the while we were married, he was playing with other men. That explains why he always wanted to fuck me in the ass. I didn’t like it at first. But then later, yes, I liked it. When I was drunk I liked the feel of it. That was why I left, baby. Because your father was a queen and I like the feel of cocks in me. I liked to be fucked by men. Any men. I liked to be fucked by two or three men at the same time. I loved the feel of it.”
Chuck was crying now, tears running down his face.
Mom turned away from her fry pan. “Don’t be so weak, Chuck. Don’t be so fucking weak. You’re like him! You’re like your father! Soft and weak and gutless! I’d hoped there’d be more of me in you! I’d hoped you’d be strong! Strong like me!”
Chuck shook his head. “You weren’t strong! You…you killed yourself!”
Mom stopped, cocked her head to one side. She looked momentarily confused. That single black eye jittered in its socked, pulled in and pushed out, pulsing like a macabre slug. More mucus ran from it. The swollen bulge at her cheek trembled. It split open and a trickle of black blood ran from it. A plump, white worm emerged and dropped free, followed by another and another.
“Yes, Chuck, I did kill myself,” she said, examining the black surgical lacing that held her wrists closed. “Do you know what that was like? The loneliness and hopelessness and stark pain of it all? Alone, alone, alone! Lying on that floor, vomiting my guts out and thinking about my baby boy who did not love me anymore! Who would not even return my calls or send me cards on Mother’s Day! Do you know what that was like? To die alone, alone, alone?”
“Get out of this house!” Chuck shouted at her. “You’re not my mother!”
“Come here,” she said, holding her arms out to him.
“No!”
“Come here!”
“No!”
And he wouldn’t so she started coming to him, a green worm slinking from the ruined cavity of her nose. “You do as mother says or I’ll do something awful to you! I’ll call the clown, Chucky-fucky! I’ll call the clown here! Grimshanks will come and, oh, the terrible things he’ll do to you!”
Chuck just stood there, infinitely more disgusted by this thing that pretended to be his mother than he had been by Mrs. Crowley or even that clown. “You’re not my mother,” he said again. He did not say it in a whining, sobbing voice, but in a voice that was strong and sure. “You’re not my mother.”
Mom stopped for a moment. She did not seem to like what was happening here. This was not how it worked. Chuck was supposed to be terrified, on his knees, broken and sobbing. His willpower shattered by the horrors she so freely offered up.
Time for a new tactic. Time for something worse. Time for something that would strip his gears and lay him low.
Mom grinned, dripping and crumbling and raining worms. “Well, Chucky-fucky! Long time, no see! How did that old witch Mrs. Crowley treat you, eh? Tricks and treats and gobs and goodies?” The voice was that of the clown now. A sing-song voice of dementia from some slimy gutter in hell. “And you ran off, ran off, ran off, and left your friends! Tsk! Tsk! Do you know what she’ll do to them? Cut them and carve them and serve them up sweet! Boil their blood to broth and pickle their naughty underparts in dusty jars! Nibble, nibble, like a mouse! Who’s that nibbling at my house? Hee, hee, hee! Oh, they’ll suffer and they’ll whine and they’ll cry boo-hoo! And it’ll all be your fault! YOUR FUCKING FAULT!”
Chuck felt like he was going to fall right over. He felt dizzy and wobbly. No blood in his veins and no air in his lungs. Dear God, it was too much. It was like being back in that flooded street in Bethany with Tara and Brian and Jacob and the others. Once again, he could smell an eternity of circuses and carnivals and county fairs that had been stored up in some musty trunk. The cotton candy and hot dogs and popcorn. Yes, everything sweet and greasy and salty. The stink of elephant shit and hay and garbage. He could hear whistles and sirens and calliope music. It was coming from every direction, overloading his senses. And mom…Jesus, but the mom-thing was even starting to look like the clown. It could not be, but he was seeing it happen before his staring eyes. Green pom poms were erupting from her chest and a bright red ruffled collar thrust out from her throat. Her hands became oversized white gloves, the wrists still sutured.
It was happening.
It was really happening.
“Yes, they’ll suffer, all your friends will suffer,” the mom/clown-thing was telling him, her eyes lost in black diamonds, great red painted spheres of rouge appearing at her white, rounded cheeks. Except it wasn’t rouge, but the spilled blood of children. “But their suffering will be nothing in comparison to YOURS, you drooling, dick-licking, spineless little mama’s boy! Because I’m going to show you what old Grimshanks does with tasty little boys! I’ll show you all the vile, obscene things I make them do! I’ll show you what it’s like to beg for mommy and daddy! I’ll show you what I make them lick and suck and touch! Oh, you won’t be the same when I take your cherry, little boy! You’ll never be the same! You’ll beg me slit your throat just like all the others?”
Chuck knew he was defeated.
He could not fight against this thing. It would have him. It would take him and touch him and destroy him, make him beg for death, beg for it. You could not live after what this thing would do to you.
Beaten.
Violated.
Deflowered and soiled.
The clown advanced on him and a voice in his head said: Fight him. It’s all part of the game. The fear, the intimidation. That’s how it starts. And like a bully in the schoolyard, if you give into it, you’re done. When you weaken, it gets stronger. Fight! Fight! Fight! Do something! Anything!
Chuck stumbled into the kitchen, got the table between himself and that evil clown. How could he fight it? How could he honestly fight it? He did not know, but his hand reached out onto the counter by the sink. It found a glass jar filled with sugar and pelted it at the clown’s face. Chuck was a good athlete. Not just an exceptional soccer player, but a Little League pitcher that had, last summer, gotten his team into the state finals. He threw that
