Mother Knows Best: Tales of Homemade Horror

by Lindy Ryan, Sadie Mother Horror Hartmann

Genres: Anthologies; Horror

Synopsis

New and exclusive short stories and poems inspired by bad mothers from some of today' s fiercest women in horror. Featuring Rachel Harrison, Gwendolyn Kiste, Kristi DeMeester, and Kelsea Yu, edited by Lindy Ryan with a foreword by Sadie “ Mother Horror” Hartmann.
From mama trauma to smother mother, this all-new women in horror anthology features stories about the scariest monster of them all— our mothers.
"Twisted caregiving and inescapably tainted love abound in this intimate and visceral anthology from editor Ryan... These chilling tales impress." — Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW
“ Deliciously evocative and revealing...Not for the faint of heart.” — Midwest Book Review

 

Release date: May 7, 2024

Publisher: Black Spot Books

Print pages: 270

Sample

FOREWORD

by Sadie Hartmann, “Mother Horror”

Aword about mothers.

Not all mothers, of course. Just some.

An eternal mother worshipped for a thousand generations. A once-in-a-lifetime kind of mother. That kind of mother doesn’t happen by accident.

She is created into being through careful intention.

It is essential for special mothers to feel good about themselves, no matter the cost.

Any coping mechanism will do.

Gaslighting.

Blaming and shaming.

Excuses.

Denial.

Projecting.

Smothering.

Mothers have a dark, pitch-black void inside them. A wound. The wound is a flaw that must be covered up. There is a core belief that flaws are a weakness that leads to worthlessness. Mothers must be special, perfect–a treasure!

Other mothers embrace their imperfections.

Mediocrity.

Normalcy.

These are not real mothers.

To be celebrated and memorialized, there are particular behaviors and specific disciplines.

Methods.

You must rewrite history.

If anything paints the mother in a bad light…

Suggests otherwise…

The narrative must be recognized, minimized, and then trivialized.

Children will complain.

They will insist there are monsters under the bed that eat everyone they love except you.

It isn’t true.

They’re lying.

Daughters will refuse to follow in your footsteps, follow your lead, and listen to reason.

Convince them.

Manipulate. Control.

Children are curious. They’re always poking around where they don’t belong. They ask silly questions. They look for secrets and get into trouble.

Punish. Lock them away.

Children grow up. They get older and wiser, less dependent on their mothers. There are ways to make sure they never leave you.

Start early! You must sow seeds of doubt as soon as you can. Maturity creeps up like

an invasive weed in a garden: wrapping hearty tendrils around a young child’s heart, supplying extra strength.

Snip! Cut!

Quickly tie those apron strings! Extra tight, just in case.

Suffocate. Eradicate.

Whip up a batch of Mother’s medicine… Not to get better, no… To get worse.

You are the voice of reason. You are the last word.

Silence the other voices. The other influences.

You are the only thing a child needs. Help them lean not on their own understanding of the world they live in or the feelings they have but on your interpretation.

No right.

No wrong.

Just Mother’s advice. Mother knows best.

The love and adoration of your family is the air you breathe.

The nourishment of your soul.

And everything in this world is designed to take that away from you. To tear it asunder.

Fight.

Control.

Survive.

The mother has needs, and her needs are first.

If you are loved wholly and completely, you can share that love with your children.

So take it. Take it all.

It’s yours.

No apologies.

No excuses.

No responsibilities.

Everything you do is a sacrifice. You are the world’s greatest martyr.

Your children will need a constant reminder of everything you have ever done for them.

This will serve as the foundation for rejecting accusations.

How could you be blamed for anything if all you’ve ever done was out of service to others?

Your behavior is justified in perpetuity.

Your actions are pure.

Your feelings and intuitions are never questioned.

You are the glue that holds the whole world together.

Sons under your guidance will grow up to be husbands.

Fathers to uphold the mothers.

Procreators to give children to the mothers.

Daughters will become wives.

Other Mothers.

A circle.

The Eternal Mother. Forever worshipped and adored.

Mother. Knows. Best.

MOTHER BEAR

by Jacqueline West

Set me in the center of your stories.

Place me in the heart of the house

with ruffled curtains and geraniums,

bowls of porridge, wild cherry pie.

Tie on a bear-sized bonnet and apron.

Arrange skirts that nearly cover

my claws. Make me as docile as a toy,

broad and soft as a just-right bed.

Seat me in a bentwood chair to rock,

to crochet, to mend. Let children

picture themselves in my lap,

wrapped up tight in my strong arms.

Pretend that my love is sweet.

Pretend any golden-haired girl

who strode into my den would not

have been ripped to cherry-red shreds.

SO LOVELY IN THE DARK

by Jessica McHugh

Mama kept her favorite lipstick in a room without mirrors. They were unnecessary, she said, because of the pact.

When she told me the terms, they were meant as a warning, and they felt like one—austere secrets that created a fluttery sickness in me like a spider trapped in my ribcage—but as I aged, the terms felt right, even easy.

Especially at night.

I didn’t dare tell her how deeply I longed to make the same pact she had, but it must’ve been obvious, as bold as the sun streaming through purple curtains the first time she led me into her bedroom. The channel of indigo light maximized the emptiness of the space like envy maximized mine. She encouraged me to embrace the beams of shifting lilac that day and still does, but they don’t dazzle me the way they used to.

I suggested redecorating several times over the years—different curtains, a fresh coat of paint—but her response was always the same. She laughed away my suggestions like I was a babbling infant, and cradling my face, she said, “Purple is the color of royalty … and decomposition. You’ll learn to love it again.”

And maybe she was right. The first time she showed me her favorite lipstick, I was instantly enamored by its dark violet sheen. And its decadent drugstore aroma captivated me so completely I thought to myself, This is what purple smells like.

It was all so obvious, so beautiful. Life made perfect sense in that room. Just Mama, her favorite lipstick, and me.

But it didn’t stay simple for long. When she uncapped her lipstick a few days later, it had changed from its posh yet practical purple into a revolting ruby. I thought it a joke at first; somehow, Mama found a copy of the antique lipstick tube, with the same flecks of yellow and amethyst tarnish in the ravines of its twisted silver flesh, making it look just as bejeweled in the myrtle hue of her bedroom, and filled it with a scarlet lie.

But it wasn’t a joke. She affirmed it wasn’t a copy. It was the same lipstick, her one and only, her favorite.

The word was a wallop to the gut that emptied me of everything but an overwhelming feeling of betrayal. I was too young to know what betrayal felt like, yet it was all I could see, all I could taste, blistering and bitter as she swiped the impostor across her lips.

At that, she giggled in her carefree, condescending way and laid her hands upon my cheeks. Then the darkness came, whisking me away like a poisoned lullaby, and when I awoke alone, I forgot I was supposed to be angry.

The feeling of betrayal disappeared, too, and I soon became enamored by the lipstick’s strange characteristics. By watching Mama’s nightly rituals, I learned it was like the room, albeit with a wider spectrum. As she applied it and taunted me with air kisses before she left the house for her evening outings, it cycled pink and red, blue and black, like a bruise that refused to heal.

“What color would it be on me?” I asked, and she bopped me on the nose with a warble.

“You don’t need to worry about that, darling. Your lips are so lovely,

lovely, even in the dark.”

She said it frequently to deflect my questions, I assume. Of which there were many, about the lipstick, the pact, and how on earth she took the room’s colors with her when she left the house.

Mama shimmered as she strolled alone downtown, her lips neon pink against orchid skin. She never let me come along, but I saw her when I closed my eyes as if the streets of our gray city mirrored the circuits of my mind. It was torturous watching her walk the world so freely. I could’ve sworn I’d been that way once, but Mama said it was impossible. I’d always been there. In a way, I always would be, like Grammy and Papa before me. And as tempting as it was, I couldn’t leave for the same reason I couldn’t wear her favorite lipstick.

“It’s too much of a risk, my darling. What you’d sacrifice … what I’d lose … and for what? Yes, it might accentuate your beauty, but only for a moment, like fireworks that bloom and fade but leave the sky forever scorched.”

“It’s really that bad?”

“Worse, I’m afraid.” She shut the lipstick in its special box, tucked the box in its special drawer, and then sat next to me on the bed. “For a few moments of vibrance, your natural beauty will be stripped away. Not all at once, but eventually, with every coat and pucker, it will reduce you to ashes.”

“But you’re not ashes,” I said. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

She thanked me with a giggle, but her gaze was aimed at Grammy and Papa in the corner, their faces shrouded in plum shadows. Both were slumped in their chairs, but only Papa’s eyes were open, his chair rocking slightly from his foot intermittently kicking the floor.

Moving to the dressing table, she sighed. “The pact is a lifelong sacrifice, little one, and I will not see you consumed before your time. You’re too exceptional.”

Although those words rang through me from a young age, I was a preteen before they struck me odd enough to ask what she meant.

“Before my time? So, I’m going to be ashes no matter what?”

She painted a fresh coat onto the barrel of her bottom lip; it shone in iridescent jewel

tones I swear smelled like all the best and worst parts of a carnival. The cloying scent made me swoon when she spoke.

“Yes, but it’ll be worth it. Besides, you don’t need this stuff.” She dressed her mouth with a final swipe. “Your lips are already so lovely, even in the dark.”

I tried to preserve my vibrancy the way she wanted, but the older I got, the more I thought about her favorite lipstick. What started as a splash of adoration became a whirling obsession in my body. With all its colors doubling, blending, and bursting like flame, and the aching pressure to hold it all in, I broke faster than I would’ve thought. Unable to contain my kaleidoscopic mania, I started giving it away.

So ravenous was my desire to feel sacrificial luxury upon my lips that I let people have their fill of my other parts. I knotted up strangers in my rich brown hair and let them drink my flesh like honey wine. I took my lovely mouth to midnight blue alleyways and sank the white moons of my fingernails into tumultuous umber seas, and never once in my rainbow debauchery did I feel consumed. Quite the opposite.

But despite my satisfaction, I returned from every encounter craving the lipstick even more. I spent entire nights awake, picturing how I’d sneak into Mama’s room, quiet as a virus. I wouldn’t even try to take it, just … use it … and let it use me. Sixty seconds, maybe less, to slide that slick aromatic paint over my mouth and know, at last, how it feels to be free.

Years passed while I explored those midnight fantasies, my skin still buzzing from the pale-yellow teeth I begged to carve into me hours before.

***

Mama kept her favorite lipstick in a tarnished silver box in a room without mirrors. She said if the sun wanted to dance with something reflective, it had no choice but to chase one of us.

“The chase keeps you alive. Be it for light, for love, or for …” The room went magenta for a moment, and she hummed as if catching a whiff of a delicious memory.

“For what, Mama?”

She rolled her gaze from me to Grammy, whose tremors had become so violent her knobby wrists sounded like a hammer missing a nail when they smacked the chair. Kneeling beside her, Mama held Grammy’s hands and pressed her lips to the papery skin until the old woman stopped shaking. “For stillness,” she whispered, her lips leaving a purple-black stain, like the tarnish consuming the silver box.

I wondered if Grammy ever wore Mama’s lipstick. Or if it used to belong to her. Maybe it was passed from mother to daughter for generations, and Grammy delighted in the lip print on her hand.

But she looked so terrified of it. Her tremors had ceased temporarily, but only on the outside. Her eyeballs shivered between droopy lids. Her veins quaked beneath unnaturally still limbs. And behind her pale, shrunken lips and yellow teeth, her tongue twisted around a scream she’d never expel.

She and Papa were so frail by the end, it was a miracle the tremors didn’t shudder their bony bodies to pieces. They were soft once, though. I recall the rosy silk of my grandmother’s skin with better clarity than Mama’s now. The more I think about it, the realer it seems, like I could reach into last week and touch Papa’s red-blond stubble, scratchy against my fingertips but delicate as dandelion fluff against my cheek.

I hated seeing my grandparents in those chairs, their papery fingers weakly reaching out to me while Mama sat on the bed, hands folded neatly on her lap, watching in fascination. They wanted to hold. They wanted to comfort. They wanted to love me in a way Mama never could.

Now I think maybe they did.

We hardly talk about them anymore. Mama actually stopped before they were gone, so I did, too. Sometimes, I forgot they were still there, their bodies deteriorating so dramatically that, in the dim purple light, I couldn’t distinguish them from their chairs until their eyes opened. Long after they passed, I still saw their broken shadows cast across that part of the room and caught myself waiting for those watery orbs to shine at me from the mulberry gloom.

The day they died, I—well, it’s hard to remember now. I know I was there, but it’s foggy, like so many things these days. I think they were in their chairs like always, mumbling, trembling, watching Mama’s lipstick plump her pale mouth into an amaryllis bulb primed to bloom. Then, the chairs were empty, and all that remained was Mama, me, and my desire, which became increasingly harder to control. The struggle affected me so intensely that I no longer recognized the person I saw in rearview mirrors and dive bar bathrooms.

Mama changed, too. She wore the box’s corrosion-like opera gloves. Her skin still cycled through purple hues, but the texture and shape also changed. Sometimes, she was soft and vibrant, and sometimes, she was as stretched and malformed as the deceptive shadows on the rocking chairs.

“A certain type of beauty makes the world go round,” she said. “Even if it’s a lie. The most beautiful things are kept in ugly boxes. That way, no one tries to steal their magic. That’s what keeps them lush and generous, staying unseen … and untouched. Touch can be a ruinous thing. To the butterfly and the curious child with stolen color on their fingertips. And to be one and the same …” She ran a hand through my thinning hair and sighed. “That’s what awaits you if you give in to your desire to steal from me.”

I recoiled, wanting to both deny and confess to it by crumpling in shame, but I couldn’t do either once her rigid hand moved to my cheek. Darkness bloomed like watercolors in my vision, but it didn’t fill every space like usual, didn’t box me in. Somewhere between reality and the timeless place her cradling sent me, I floated in the ether of her voice.

“This is growing up. This is the pact. It learns all your curves and colors, fears, and fetishes, and falls in love with the spark of power it’ll transform into a blaze. Once that happens, there’s no turning it off, no turning back. That’s your life now. It’s feeling like the last healthy vein in a world run by vampires. It’s pride and fear and learning all too slowly that desire is the greatest force in this world—stronger than needing, stronger than having—and if someone’s able to harness that energy, it spells destruction for everyone involved. From outside and within, they could control you, even occupy you. And as both legal tenant and squatter, they renovate as they see fit, with zero concern for frame or foundation.”

I wanted to understand her so badly, if only to convince her not to send me back into the dark. But I couldn’t. I was too ashamed to admit my desire didn’t feel like that. I craved warmer, more malleable things and nights that wrapped their gratitude around me like a tomato vine embracing its stake. My yearning didn’t fulfill me the way her lipstick would, but it made me feel alive, as vibrant as Mama after her nights

downtown.

In reality, I was more like the lipstick after her evenings out: worn-down, chapped, and muddy gray. The first time I saw the cosmetic devoid of color, I thought it meant I’d finally outgrown my obsession. But as I slept, its colors entered me the way I entered the darkness brought on by Mama’s touch, and as desire flared anew inside me, the lipstick flared, too. In its bruised silver box, its color and light returned as if I’d helped recharge its beauty.

I asked her once if someone could agree to the lipstick pact without knowing it. “Like, if you really wanted it, deep down, could you somehow agree without actually agreeing?”

One side of her mouth twitched up her cheek. “Well, of course, Violet. Otherwise, no one would agree.”

***

 

Mama kept her favorite lipstick in the warped bottom drawer of a dark oak dressing table in a room without mirrors. What good were they anyway, she said as she rocked the drawer back into its nest. Real beauty couldn’t be seen; it was something you felt, deep down, in cycles fertile and fallow, shifting like lipstick.

“Your favorite will be the same,” she said. “If that’s what you choose.”

“I thought I didn’t have a choice.”

“To sacrifice your color according to the terms of the pact, no. But you can choose how you wield your power. When you find your favorite lipstick, you’ll know what to do.”

But at that moment, I knew I didn’t want my own favorite. I wanted hers.

Like a sort of sweet torture, Mama held her lipstick aloft, twisted out a fresh inch of rose-gold gloss, and patted the spot beside her on the bed. As I scuttled to her, my heart fluttered with a feeling of lust and fate so strong it could only be hope. The seeds sown by my first glimpse of that forbidden cosmetic sprouted tendrils that tied me to every color on the spectrum of Mama’s charity.

Then she capped it. It was like seeing the purple lipstick go red all over again. I was throttled, opened, and emptied by her betrayal. And I refused to accept it a moment longer.

Weeping, I threw myself at her feet and begged to wear it. Just a little. Just once.

She pouted. “But your lips are—”

“Don’t say it! Please, just make it stop. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”

She stared at me in shock, then at the empty gray chairs rocking under the weight of memory.

I hated those chairs, hard and cobwebbed in misery, but they looked comfortable now, the seats softer, the wood cool and smooth as brass.

Or maybe I was just tired. My back ached terribly. My legs, too.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

I shook my head with a whimper. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Reaching out a lavender hand, she smiled. “Because your lips are so lovely, even in the dark.”

When she touched my cheek, her fingers seemed to pass through my face, into my neck and chest, and out the other side of me, but not before grabbing what she needed.

As light and form returned, faint figures appeared, calling me closer, calling me deeper, calling me theirs. But even then, they only ever found me at the end of the road. Like the terms of the pact, like finally wearing Mama’s lipstick. I wanted to ask why there was no journey, no discovery, no struggle to find the light. But I had no voice where she sent me, only breath that ran out faster and faster, and when the sound of the juddering drawer cut through the din of my suffocation, it opened like a promise in my body, pleading for me to trade royalty for decomposition. It’s a plea I answered time and time again, but that time, the last time, I gave it a resounding “yes.”

***

Mama keeps her favorite lipstick in the longing of a little girl lost in a room without mirrors.

I’ve agreed to the terms. I’ll sacrifice whatever it takes. I’ll enter the pact gleefully and walk the city streets with my mouth open, a strong woman like Mama, for as long as I can until we’re both ashes.

I tell her this, and my knees instantly buckle. I need to sit down, just for a moment.

Mama is a stalk of lavender wheat, thin but thriving as she helps me to a rocking chair. My bones creak and crackle as she lowers me, and when she kisses me on the forehead, I feel the wetness of her lipstick like an open wound.

I whisper, trembling, “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m not lovely anymore. I’m pale and empty and so very confused. The pact didn’t strip my color. I did. I gave it away.”

When she tilts her head, her face sinks into itself, and the purple light finds new canyons in which to cast its shadows. She lifts my chin with a bony finger, her expression more forgiving than expected. “Oh, my sweet little Violet … of course you did.”

I struggle to lift my head, so she helps me, centering it between my shoulders as she purrs, “Thank you, child. You’ve given me so much. I knew you were special, but I never expected all this. The others desired what they couldn’t have but didn’t want to live and die for it as you did. The power you generated with that hunger was like none I’ve felt in all my years in this world. You’ve kept me alive far longer, but you also made me feel more alive than I have in ages. You’re so lovely, even now, pale, and empty in the dark. I cherish you for that. But our time as mother and daughter is almost over, your strength is almost gone, and I need to find another source.”

There’s a strange fog in the room now. She floats through it to the dressing table, opens the broken drawer, removes the tarnished box, and bends to the lid so dramatically her spine appears to unfold in spikes all the way up her back. She looks like a piece of broken scaffolding struggling under the weight of the box, which she opens with a labored grunt.

“Mama …”

My voice is a faint alien thing that barely tumbles off my tongue. She hears me but doesn’t turn until her lips are fully dressed. The lipstick softens her up a bit, but she’s mostly cheekbones and melancholy as she glides to me again, the moist purple pillar twisted to its limit and extended to my face. The nearer it draws to my lips, the brighter it grows, and the more I can taste its creamy poison through scent alone. I try to close the distance between us, but I’m shaking too much to steer my body.

She exhales a chuckle, and when she presses the moist purple stick to my lips, my tremors stop. The room is clear again, and I am a child entering the lilac space for the first time.

“I want to see myself, Mama! A mirror, please! Any mirror!”

But then she kisses me, and I feel the makeup drain from my lips into hers. My voice is an earthquake again, and my bones pound the chair as I shiver.

Smiling fondly, she says, “Oh, Violet, you were the mirror. You reflected everything—desire, beauty, color, death—and from that, you generated the power the lipstick demanded. Armed with that tool, you allowed me to hunt comfortably these last few weeks, unashamed and aglow. I won’t forget you for that. Even when you forget me.”

“I would never forget you, Mama.”

“You will. You’ll forget me the way you forgot your real parents. Your home. Your name.”

She twists on the cap, places her favorite lipstick in its tarnished box, and closes it inside the broken drawer. Bathed in magenta light, she bends to me in the chair. “If you’re still here when I get back, don’t be afraid of what you’ll hear. It’s the way of the pact.”

She touches my cheek, but the darkness doesn’t come—only the gray dust of the years I lost in that room. I think I might be lost in it forever, that Mama will never return.

But she does. Through the fog, I see her enter the room and open her arms to the purple light. A small figure twitches behind her, and she turns with

an encouraging cheer.

“Go on. Embrace it,” she says, but the little girl toddling into the room shakes her head.

“I don’t like purple.”

Mama hums. “That’s okay. You’ll learn to love it, Violet.” Smiling at me through the ashes, she says, “Just like your Grammy.”

 

ALMONDS

by Lisa Kröger

Maddie knew the exact distance from the turnoff on the turnpike to the start of her mother’s driveway. She didn’t know how far in miles or feet. Nor did she know it in minutes or seconds.

But she did know that she had just enough time to pull out her lipstick from her purse, apply the color to her lips, blot, apply again, check herself in the mirror, and pop her lips together three times. Then, she’d put the makeup back in her purse just as she turned her car into the driveway.

Maddie knew this because she did this every time she visited her mother, without fail. So she could avoid the dreaded—

“You look tired.” Her mother stood aside in the doorway so Maddie could enter.

Maddie tossed her keys and purse on the table in the foyer. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.

“Hey, hon,” her mother said, holding out her arms for a hug. “Don’t take it that way, please.” She held her daughter at a distance, her hands squeezing Maddie’s shoulders, and looked her up and down. “I’m just worried about you. That’s all.”

Then, she pulled Maddie in for a hug, and for one moment, Maddie let herself melt into her mother, smelling her perfume, Red Door by Elizabeth Arden, the same thing she’d worn for decades. Red Door mixed with the stale smell of cigarettes. There was some comfort to be had in consistency.

Then, Maddie felt her mother pat her hands along her back.

“Have you put on weight?”

Maddie pulled away. “Jesus, Mom.”

Her mother shrugged. “What? You carry it well, at least.” She looked down at her manicure. “I never could carry that kind of weight. I don’t have the build for it. But you—you take after your father’s side.”

Maddie closed her eyes, took in a big breath. This week was going to be a mistake.

***

Maddie unpacked her suitcase in what had once been her childhood bedroom. Her double bed was still there, but her dresser had been replaced by a behemoth treadmill. Maddie folded her clothes and stacked them on the machine. Her mother wouldn’t be using it after her surgery anyway, and Maddie knew she wouldn’t touch the thing. She slid her suitcase under the bed and joined her mother in the kitchen, where the table was laid with two plates.

Her mother stood at the stove, a boiling stock pot in front of her.

“Is it okay for you to be having food?” Maddie said, walking to the fridge. She opened it, found a half-drunk bottle of chardonnay, and pulled it out.

“I’m on all liquids after midnight. Water only. But the doctor said I can have a light dinner tonight.” She nodded to a cabinet just behind Maddie. “Glasses are in there. Ice is in the freezer. Use the tray, though. The ice maker is broken again. I don’t know how I’m going to fix it.”

“I’m sure it’s still under warranty. When did you buy it?”

“Last year.” Her mother shook her head furiously as Maddie reached into the cabinet and removed a stemless wine glass. “Not those. Those are for red. Use the smaller ones with the stem.”

Maddie exhaled deeply. Then she grabbed the stemmed glass and poured herself a chardonnay.

“Leave room for ice.”

“I don’t need it, Mom, it’s fine.”

“It’ll melt as you drink.

Always helps me drink a lot less.”

***

Maddie’s mother microwaved leftover boiled chicken breasts and opened a can of asparagus. They ate in silence. Well, her mother ate while Maddie picked at her food with her fork, mostly just moving it around the plate. If her mother noticed, she didn’t say anything. It occurred to Maddie that maybe her mother was even a little proud of her daughter for showing such restraint around food.

***

Later that night, Maddie was predictably hungry. Her mother found her standing in front of the pantry.

“I always grab a handful of almonds if I get peckish at night.” As her mother spoke, she picked a piece of imaginary lint off her shoulder to avoid looking at Maddie.

“Mom, you don’t have food.” Maddie looked over the cans of vegetables, the jars of olives, the Costco-sized container of raw almonds. “I’ll go shopping tomorrow night once I get you home and resting.”

“I just went shopping, Madison.”

Maddie smiled. “You will be in bed with a large patch over your eye.”

“Don’t get old,” her mother said. “I don’t recommend it. It’s horrible.”

Maddie looked at her mother, petite and thin, in her large black-rimmed glasses. She looked so small and old—more frail than the last time Maddie was here.

***

A little bit later, Maddie sat in her room, an enormous tub of almonds in bed beside her. Her mother cautioned her to only eat a handful, but Maddie had only heard that as a challenge. She was nothing if not petty. Following her mother’s cataract surgery tomorrow, she’d head to the store and get some real food. In the meantime, almonds. She dug into the tub, pulled out a large mass of nuts, and shoved them into her mouth, the latest Stephen King book in her other hand. As it turned out, Maddie was not good at juggling because as soon as she turned the page, the tub of almonds fell from her hands, sending almonds skittering across the floor.

“Shit.” She put down her book and got to her hands and knees, scooping up the almonds. They were everywhere. Under the bed, across the room, everywhere. Most of it proved to be an easy cleanup, except for under the treadmill, too narrow of a space for Maddie to sweep her hand under. It took a few good pushes, but eventually, she got the treadmill moved just enough to finish cleaning the floor, which—

“What is that?”

In front of her was a hole in the floor, previously hidden by the treadmill. Perfectly round, maybe five inches in diameter. Maddie got close enough to peer down. It was deep and dark, at least a foot if she had to guess, which didn’t make sense, as her bedroom was on the second floor, directly above the living room. How deep were the floors?

Curiosity took over, and Maddie grabbed her phone, using the flashlight to get a better look. With the light, she could see that the whole was deeper than her original estimate. Even stranger, it was round the entire way down, more of a tube or tunnel than a hole. Maddie looked around for something she could drop down. Her gaze landed on the almonds.

With her phone for a light, she dropped one almond. It fell and fell until the light no longer hit. Maddie guessed that the hole must be deep because she never heard the sound of the almond hitting the bottom.

If there was a bottom.

Maddie shivered. Why had she thought that? Of course, it must have a bottom—right?

Nausea swept over her, and she moved to the bed, not bothering to push the treadmill back into place. She didn’t want to think about that hole anymore—except that she did. It was the only thing rolling around in her head, no matter how hard she tried to think about anything else.

Maddie thought about her mother and how she hadn’t wanted to come home. That made her a bad daughter. She knew that. But her sister had kids of her own, a husband, a life. Who would take care of the kids? No, she couldn’t afford a babysitter. And their father had left many years ago. Their mother was alone, something that Maddie had said many times in therapy was the old woman’s own fault. But this was different. Her mother really did need her, and Maddie couldn’t say no.

Would she be a

terrible person to admit that she almost hadn’t come? Or that she thought maybe her mother’s failing eyesight would be a blessing? That maybe her mother seeing her oldest daughter blurry was better than seeing her crystal clear—that maybe the lack of clarity would keep the criticism away.

Maddie’s mother had been a beauty when she was younger. More than once, they’d been stopped in public, people commenting on how her mother looked. “Do you know who you look like?” It was almost always some movie star. And it wasn’t a surprise, with her mother’s dark curls and emerald eyes. But they slowly stopped; Maddie didn’t remember when exactly. It wasn’t as if it was something that they marked with a little scratch on the calendar or even something they talked about after. Maddie only noticed it had stopped when she was a preteen, and someone turned to her mother and said, “Do you know—”

Her mother smiled, looked down, her practiced modesty, and said, “Yes, I’ve heard that a lot.”

At the same time, the man was saying, “That you have a beautiful daughter.”

Maddie didn’t remember what else was said. Only that her mother had pressed her lips in one thin line and pulled Maddie away. Later in the car, Maddie said, “That was nice of him to say that.” It was the first time she had heard someone not related to her—not a teacher, not an adult who was obliged to be complimentary—say something so nice to her.

“People say we are pretty, Maddie,” her mother replied. “I personally have never seen what they must see.”

Maddie never brought it up again.

Now, so many years later, Maddie lay in bed, with her mother sleeping downstairs, and wondered if that statement had been the one-time slip of her mother’s mask, showing the soft underside of self-consciousness. Or if it was a slight dig to her daughter, making sure Maddie knew exactly how her mother felt about her.

Even now, she didn’t know.

Maddie tried to close her eyes, to take a deep breath, to try and find sleep.

It wouldn’t come.

Her mother slept unbothered downstairs. And she was up here, reliving every

moment of her childhood. Maddie had always had insomnia. It had plagued her since childhood.

“Oh, you were awful,” her mother had said once, a few years ago. “Never slept, up at all hours of the night. Even as an older child, not a baby, mind you. I would’ve given you up if it had been socially acceptable to do something like that.”

“You gave away my dog.” It was the only thing that Maddie could think to say.

Her mother had laughed. “That damn animal dug up all of my flower bulbs from the back bed. It never did grow hardly a thing even after I sent him away.”

Her mother had been smoking a Virginia Slim, taking long drags as she spoke.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Madison,” she said. “You hated that dog, too.”

Maddie didn’t. But she also didn’t say anything else about it.

She opened her eyes again, stared at the ceiling. She wouldn’t survive a week with her mother, not even if her mother wore eye coverings and was medicated. This house was stifling.

And then there was that hole.

She wondered if her mother knew it was there. She wondered how long it had been there. She wondered who had put it there.

Or if it had simply grown there, like a cancer.

Maddie’s brain gnawed at that word: grown.

She imagined that it must have begun small, like a black dot, and spread. She could see the picture in her mind: a dot like a freckle becoming a pockmark, becoming a divot, becoming a hole, becoming a tunnel.

The image grew until her legs twitched at the very thought of it. She rolled over and stared at the mess she’d made in the room—the furniture pushed to the side, the pile of almonds.

The hole.

Maddie slid from the bed to the floor, inching toward it.

It looked like it had grown by maybe an inch or an inch and a half. But that was in her

mind. It had to be.

Still, she picked up an almond and tossed it in, just as she had before.

She watched as it fell into the darkness. Again, she didn’t hear it hit the bottom.

This time, though, she saw small tendrils of smoke curling up from the darkness.

Cigarette smoke. No mistaking that smell.

Maddie watched, worried for just a second that maybe there was a fire that could spread. But she relaxed once she realized the wispy puffs wafted away into nothing.

In front of her, the perimeter of the hole stretched. It shuddered as if cold.

Maddie’s eyes grew wide, her skin cold, as she realized it was growing. Another inch, at least.

Now, it seemed to be at least seven or eight inches across.

Hands shaking, Maddie reached for her phone, turning on the flashlight once again. There was no doubt about it: the hole had changed. It was bigger now, and the perimeter was no longer perfectly round but more organic.

Like a breathing thing.

Maddie shivered. She shouldn’t think things like that. The odor of stale cigarettes still hung in the air, and she felt as if she might retch.

Still, she kept looking inside, which had changed, too. The hole had now changed in color, a beige that could only be described as flesh.

Skin. The hole in the floor that went down to nowhere was covered in skin.

It shook as if vibrating. And then shuddered another wisp of cigarette smoke directly into Maddie’s face.

Breathing. It was breathing.

She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face, a reflex. And she thought she heard a laugh from deep within.

I would’ve given you

away if I could.

And then, she dropped the phone. It simply slid from her hand, and she watched as it dropped deep down, the hole slowly swallowing the small light.

Maddie reacted from pure instinct and thrust her hand into the hole after her phone. Instead, she felt the soft and pliant mounds of flesh and nothing more. She pulled back her hand with a jerk.

She sat back, her heart beating a fast rhythm against her chest, and pressed her palms against her face. The growing hole in the floor didn’t make any logical sense, yet here she was looking at it. She couldn’t believe how stupid she had been, dangling her phone over that thing. What did she expect would happen? Now, she had lost her phone to who knows where.

Then, an idea dawned.

Her phone had tracking.

“Jesus, thank you. Or Steve Jobs.” She went through her bag and pulled out her laptop. It should—

“Yes!” She could use Find My Phone, and there it was. A blinking blue dot in a circle. It didn’t have much accuracy, but she could tell it was here in the house. It wasn’t gone.

Placing the laptop on the bed, far from the hungry mouth in the floor, Maddie took a deep breath and scooted closer to the hole, rolling up her right-hand sleeve as she did.

She squeezed her eyes shut and plunged her hand in, doing it fast, forcefully, before she could talk herself out of it. She lowered her body to the floor until she fished into the hole nearly up to shoulder. The hole had grown wider, and she felt around until her fingers grazed what felt like the top of her phone. She reached deeper, straining her fingertips.

A puff of smoke rose, carrying a laugh on its hazy tendrils.

The weight looks good on you. You carry it well.

She ignored the voice, which was maybe in her head or maybe within the thing on the floor. She wasn’t sure. But she was sure that she almost had her phone.

She just had to reach a little bit more.

Her fingertips pushed it down just a bit.

She strained.

And then she felt the hole pushing back against her. She could feel the fleshiness, now wet with a viscous material. It made a sucking sound as she moved her fingers around in it. The sound itself surprised her, and Maddie’s reflex was to pull her hand up.

But she couldn’t. The hole was closing now, around her arm.

The skin of the hole breathed in and out. Maddie could feel the motion with each inhale and exhale.

She panicked, trying with all her might to pull her hand back, but she couldn’t, no matter how hard she pulled.

Maddie thought to scream, but instead, pulled once again, blood rushing to her face and tears welling in her eyes. She used her left hand to get leverage, but stopped when it felt as if her own skin at her shoulder was ripping away, bone popping from joint.

She screamed, but she only heard a whimper in her ears, as if the sound echoed from a place far away.

***

The next morning, Maddie’s mother came to wake her daughter but found no Maddie. Instead, she found that the bed had been made, the laptop closed on top of the duvet, and her clothes neatly folded on the treadmill, which had returned to its original place.

 

JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER

by N. J. Ember

She has her mother’s teeth so she knows how to consume.

One of Medea’s children—nearly eaten in the womb. 

From biblical to umbilical, unbroken is this tie.

She doesn’t have her mother’s smile and so,

she can’t detect her lies. 

She doesn’t have her mother’s eyes,

but mother’s temper lives all too well 

deep inside her skin and bones,

on a tether so no one can tell.

Mother said that she must break her

in order to build her up, so that she’s strong.

Trauma gifted from mother tongue to mother tongue,

each generation keeps getting it wrong. 

In the blood there lives a curse of women beaten black and blue

and if you’re really lucky Mother will gift back to you.

Never mind how you’re born from between her thighs,

to her you’re nothing but a liar.

But you don’t have her eyes. ...