From the moment I was born, my mother wished I was dead…
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From the moment I was born, my mother wished I was dead
From the moment I was born, my mother wished I was dead.
After all, she made a point of telling me every day.
“I hate you,” she’d spit, her words like caustic acid, each one landing with exquisite precision. “I regret having you.” Her face would appear around the corner when she said it, sudden and intent, as though she had been waiting there, listening for me.
Every day, the moment my father left the house, she would turn to me, her eyes glowing with resentment. “Stupid child,” she’d hiss, before stalking closer. Her words were just as sharp as her slaps.
As I grew older, she grew thinner, more brittle. It was as though something in her had been stretched past its limit and left there. Her skin was cracked with dried blood as if it had split then healed then split again. When she smiled, it looked strained, as though it might fracture if it widened too far.
“It should have been you,” she’d whisper.
Every morning, I awoke with my head throbbing, like poison had been dripping into my ear all night. I learned to move quietly through the house. To avoid corners. I was like prey avoiding the eyes of the predator, never wanting to catch her attention, always holding my breath just so. There was always the sense that something about her required careful handling, like glass that had already cracked but hadn’t yet shattered.
As the years passed, she changed in ways that disturbed me. Her shoulders narrowed. Her posture drew inward, her fingers elongated and thinned, everything was all sharp edges and bone. She never entered a room fully, instead seeping in at the edges. In doorways. In the shadows. In the narrow space between the wall and the frame. Half-seen, but always aware. Her face would appear first, peering around the corner, her expression already formed and dripping with malice.
The rest of her followed in pieces, never quite aligning, like a snake that had to force herself into the shape of a body. I told myself it was the light. Or that I was tired.
Once, I saw her at the end of the hall. Her body remained in shadow, one shoulder pressed to the wall, but her head… her head was tilted toward me at an angle that should have been impossible from that distance. Drawn forward. Stretched. Watching.
Her smile widened when she realised I could see it. I blinked, and she was as she always was.
“You ruined everything,” she sneered softly.
When I was older, someone said it to me. A teacher, maybe. Or a neighbour. I don't remember who. Only the words: *She must be proud of you.*
I didn't argue. I let it pass, the way I had learned to let most things pass. But later, I tried to picture her somewhere else. Outside. Walking. Speaking to someone who was not me, in a voice that was not that voice. I tried for a long time.
I couldn't do it.
It was around then that I began to notice the ceiling. A faint discolouration in the living room, just beyond where the light reached properly. I found myself standing beneath it more often than I meant to. Looking up.
One night, I woke to the sound of something above me.
I went into the living room. The mark was darker now. Deeper. I stood there for a long time, looking up. At first there was nothing. And then… something moved. A shape, barely there at first, then resolving slowly, as though it were emerging through the surface. A thin line emerging, lengthening slowly, steadily, as though being drawn down by a weight that refused to release it.
My stomach turned before my mind understood.
Skin.
Her neck extended from the darkness above, impossibly long, impossibly thin, the skin along it drawn tight and uneven, marked with faint lines that looked like old breaks, healed badly. And then her head appeared. Slowly. Dragging into view.
She was looking directly at me. And at that moment, everything shrank down to a single point. My face burned, my fingers grew ice cold and my legs… my legs did not move. I understood, distantly, that I had told them to but they did not move. And I could not breathe.
“I hate you,” she rasped. “I wish you were dead.”
Her voice was wrong. Pressed against my ear, against the back of my skull, circling the drain of my thoughts, unable to escape. And standing there, looking up at her, I found myself trying, desperately, to place her somewhere that made sense.
But the harder I reached for it, the less there was to hold onto.
There were no mornings with her at the table. No afternoons, no ordinary moments that belonged to anything resembling a life. Only corners. Doorways. Half-seen glimpses. A face appearing where it should not have been, a voice snapping and striking my back.
Something dropped in me, fast and vertiginous, like missing a step in the dark. I realised that I could not remember the last time I had seen her move from one place to another. Not properly. Not in a way that joined one moment to the next. She had never arrived. She had only ever been there.
I stood with that for a moment. The house around me. The dark above me. The sound of my own breathing, too loud, too close. And then I remembered.
Not all at once but in pieces, just like the way she had always arrived. Her absence. The ceiling. The particular sound the house had made that morning, before I had understood what sounds meant.
She had not wanted release. I knew that now, looking up at her. There was no peace in her face. There had never been. Whatever had driven her to it had been the same thing that drove everything she did - the same curdled, patient, particular hatred that had always been meant for me.
She had not left.
Maybe she could not. Maybe the hatred was simply too dense, too consuming, too much *her* to dissolve into nothing. Or maybe, and this was the thought I could not quiet, she had chosen this. Had looked at whatever waited beyond and chosen, instead, to stay. To remain exactly where she was most herself.
Her mouth moved. The same words. They would always be the same words.
I didn't know, anymore, whether she was real. Whether any of this was something outside me or only the shape my mind had made from years of her. Perhaps there was no difference. Perhaps that was the point.
But she was still there. And I was still looking up.
#entertainment
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From the moment I was born, my mother wished I was dead.
After all, she made a point of telling me every day.
“I hate you,” she’d spit, her words like caustic acid, each one landing with exquisite precision. “I regret having you.” Her face would appear around the corner when she said it, sudden and intent, as though she had been waiting there, listening for me.
Every day, the moment my father left the house, she would turn to me, her eyes glowing with resentment. “Stupid child,” she’d hiss, before stalking closer. Her words were just as sharp as her slaps.
As I grew older, she grew thinner, more brittle. It was as though something in her had been stretched past its limit and left there. Her skin was cracked with dried blood as if it had split then healed then split again. When she smiled, it looked strained, as though it might fracture if it widened too far.
“It should have been you,” she’d whisper.
Every morning, I awoke with my head throbbing, like poison had been dripping into my ear all night. I learned to move quietly through the house. To avoid corners. I was like prey avoiding the eyes of the predator, never wanting to catch her attention, always holding my breath just so. There was always the sense that something about her required careful handling, like glass that had already cracked but hadn’t yet shattered.
As the years passed, she changed in ways that disturbed me. Her shoulders narrowed. Her posture drew inward, her fingers elongated and thinned, everything was all sharp edges and bone. She never entered a room fully, instead seeping in at the edges. In doorways. In the shadows. In the narrow space between the wall and the frame. Half-seen, but always aware. Her face would appear first, peering around the corner, her expression already formed and dripping with malice.
The rest of her followed in pieces, never quite aligning, like a snake that had to force herself into the shape of a body. I told myself it was the light. Or that I was tired.
Once, I saw her at the end of the hall. Her body remained in shadow, one shoulder pressed to the wall, but her head… her head was tilted toward me at an angle that should have been impossible from that distance. Drawn forward. Stretched. Watching.
Her smile widened when she realised I could see it. I blinked, and she was as she always was.
“You ruined everything,” she sneered softly.
When I was older, someone said it to me. A teacher, maybe. Or a neighbour. I don't remember who. Only the words: *She must be proud of you.*
I didn't argue. I let it pass, the way I had learned to let most things pass. But later, I tried to picture her somewhere else. Outside. Walking. Speaking to someone who was not me, in a voice that was not that voice. I tried for a long time.
I couldn't do it.
It was around then that I began to notice the ceiling. A faint discolouration in the living room, just beyond where the light reached properly. I found myself standing beneath it more often than I meant to. Looking up.
One night, I woke to the sound of something above me.
I went into the living room. The mark was darker now. Deeper. I stood there for a long time, looking up. At first there was nothing. And then… something moved. A shape, barely there at first, then resolving slowly, as though it were emerging through the surface. A thin line emerging, lengthening slowly, steadily, as though being drawn down by a weight that refused to release it.
My stomach turned before my mind understood.
Skin.
Her neck extended from the darkness above, impossibly long, impossibly thin, the skin along it drawn tight and uneven, marked with faint lines that looked like old breaks, healed badly. And then her head appeared. Slowly. Dragging into view.
She was looking directly at me. And at that moment, everything shrank down to a single point. My face burned, my fingers grew ice cold and my legs… my legs did not move. I understood, distantly, that I had told them to but they did not move. And I could not breathe.
“I hate you,” she rasped. “I wish you were dead.”
Her voice was wrong. Pressed against my ear, against the back of my skull, circling the drain of my thoughts, unable to escape. And standing there, looking up at her, I found myself trying, desperately, to place her somewhere that made sense.
But the harder I reached for it, the less there was to hold onto.
There were no mornings with her at the table. No afternoons, no ordinary moments that belonged to anything resembling a life. Only corners. Doorways. Half-seen glimpses. A face appearing where it should not have been, a voice snapping and striking my back.
Something dropped in me, fast and vertiginous, like missing a step in the dark. I realised that I could not remember the last time I had seen her move from one place to another. Not properly. Not in a way that joined one moment to the next. She had never arrived. She had only ever been there.
I stood with that for a moment. The house around me. The dark above me. The sound of my own breathing, too loud, too close. And then I remembered.
Not all at once but in pieces, just like the way she had always arrived. Her absence. The ceiling. The particular sound the house had made that morning, before I had understood what sounds meant.
She had not wanted release. I knew that now, looking up at her. There was no peace in her face. There had never been. Whatever had driven her to it had been the same thing that drove everything she did - the same curdled, patient, particular hatred that had always been meant for me.
She had not left.
Maybe she could not. Maybe the hatred was simply too dense, too consuming, too much *her* to dissolve into nothing. Or maybe, and this was the thought I could not quiet, she had chosen this. Had looked at whatever waited beyond and chosen, instead, to stay. To remain exactly where she was most herself.
Her mouth moved. The same words. They would always be the same words.
I didn't know, anymore, whether she was real. Whether any of this was something outside me or only the shape my mind had made from years of her. Perhaps there was no difference. Perhaps that was the point.
But she was still there. And I was still looking up.
#entertainment
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