Category: Contemporary Stories

Mom said we weren’t running away—that was a lie. 

She drove, the car devouring the winding grey river pavement stretching out before us. The surrounding mountains swelled wider and higher as we went, sheltering peaks blanketed by a vast quilt, tattered and aflame with all the colors of early autumn. Narrow patches of green still speckled the crispening landscape, summer leaves unwilling to relent to their fate—resilient, like we were trying to be. 

I sat in the passenger seat, my fingers laced and rubbing together as if they had minds of their own. The car felt empty with only the two of us. Someone was missing. Someone who should have been there.

Dad. 

He was back at home and—though I thought I knew why—I knew I didn’t understand. My tongue grew heavy, straining under the weight of the questions gathering at its tip, each one daring me to let them all spill out, to fill the emptiness that I so desperately wanted not to be there. I bit them back. I locked them away as best as I could. Yet somehow one question slipped through.

“Why… didn’t you let dad come with us?” 

Tension flashed across Mom’s face and Rage appeared atop her shoulders—a pulsating behemoth, red and thickening still as it fed upon her wrath, unabashed and with gluttonous abandon. Vile and fat, it weighed on her. From the quiver of her bottom lip and the puffy sternness in her eyes, I could see her resisting Rage’s call to slip into a bludgeoning, verbal offensive. 

Suffice to say, I had hit a tender spot. I hadn’t meant to.

“He didn’t want to come,” Mom snapped. A small bit of Rage bubbled over, causing her to swerve the car, startling me from watching the black shadows racing through the trees. “Apparently, he felt like he had more important things to spend his time on, people who were more important to him than his own family… The rat-faced bastard.” 

Tears glistened in Mom’s eyes as the car sped on. I held back my own, just nodding. Keeping silent. I learned a while back that talking when Mom was like this doesn’t do either of us any good. Rage would simply coax her into twisting my words, contort them into something that would better fit within the narrative Rage wove around her. Its whispers were a slow rumbling wind right before the storm. And Mom, by all accounts, seemed sometimes to enjoy the pummeling rains. 

My eyes leapt from tree to tree, chasing the shadows chasing me. In the glass of the passenger window, I caught a glimpse of Mom’s reflection. Her face reminded me of a deer caught in its own headlights; Rage really did enjoy crashing into her. I could see it in the whitening of her knuckles, in the flaring of her nostrils. Rage was tempting her now, steering toward her. It made her relive the wars, remember how the bombs would fall between her and dad. Remember how they would fling them at each. All through the hollow of the house, the explosions of screams and shouts would ricochet—through the hollow of me. Mom had nearly given into the crash. 

I found solace sometimes when I remembered that I wasn’t my mom, nor my dad. There were no bombs in me. But there were fears. And dams. Dams I had built to hold back the tears from falling. Sometimes they worked a little too well. 

As the car finally began to slow, I noticed the worn wooden sign that marked our destination. This was new. We’ve never camped here before. 

Mom pulled off the grey river road and started through the campground. Patches of weeds, slumbering and brittle, lined the cracked edges of the dirt like ripped and worn strips of fabric strewn everywhere. Dark thickets shaped the campsites, their shadows skeletal and eerie. Fear pricked my skin to gooseflesh, and I wished for Mom to turn back, for us to settle someplace else for the night, someplace that might have been warmer, friendlier. I swallowed my complaints. With Rage still perched and seething atop her shoulders, I knew she’d only object. Mom—Rage—was not the type to flee red flags…or to heed warnings. 

She pulled into a campsite squished beside the river. We remained for a moment, sitting together in the car. The quiet was nice. When I at last opened the door and stepped out, the babbling of the water and the tunes of nature played in my ears, soft and sweet. Interspersed were strange whispers, familiar yet unintelligible. I let them be. I wanted anything but for nervousness to harbor within me.

My hands rubbed against my thighs, an attempt at soothing. It helped.

As we got started pitching the tent, I noticed that Rage had begun to lull itself to sleep. Mom’s movements were softer, more gingerly. I could nearly hear the tender threading of space and nature as they started to sew her most recent battle wounds shut. Mom looked at me, her eyes almost smiling.  

“You mean the world to me, butter-bee,” Mom said as she pushed the last support rod through the tent’s hoops. “You know that, right? Whatever hardships we might face, whatever changes might come our way, everything I do… I do because I love you. I need you to know that.”

“I do, mom.” I didn’t let on that her words frightened me. “I do.” 

When the afternoon had grown old, Mom went to the river. She pulled off her shoes and her socks and she waded a ways in. As the water caressed her calves and the wind tousled her hair, she looked freer than ever I’ve seen her, as if some weighty burden—some impossible decision— had been lifted from her shoulders. I wanted to run out and join her, to wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight, tell her everything was going to be alright. But my feet remained planted. Sometimes time was better spent free and alone. So, I let her be… Free.

The strange whispers in the wind called to me again. I didn’t acknowledge them.

As the sun slid further down across the vibrant watercolor sky, my hands rubbed again against my thighs and I finally dared to call out to her, “It might be nice to go for a stroll along the river. The sunset looks lovely.” 

“I’d like that,” Mom said over her shoulder. “Wait for me.” 

I waited, my eyes on the sky.

When Mom returned to the shore, she slipped back into her socks and her shoes, and we started along the river’s edge. River spray soaked the chill evening air as it brushed across my skin, tickling my cheeks red and teasing my nose with all the woodsy spices of autumn. The fallen leaves and twigs crunched and snapped beneath our steps, a soft accompaniment to the songbirds’ evening lullabies echoing through the trees. 

We stepped lighter, both Mom and me. Rage was still there, of course, slumbering and draped across Mom’s shoulders, but for the first time in a long time—despite the call of autumn’s decay—a proper smile bloomed across Mom’s face. I smiled then, too, a half-smile. Something still loomed between us, words unspoken, thoughts unshared. I could feel it. It made me nervous.

We continued through the quiet until a frog’s croak broke the peace. I glanced down and thought it odd how the frog hopped past Mom and me. Its legs sprang with such a fierce determination, it seemed almost like a sign to turn back, to cling to the moment for as long as it might last.

It wasn’t long.

Mom stopped and turned to me. Sorrow sat low on her brow, and I could sense Rage beginning to stir. She opened her mouth to speak, and it was as though my heart knew. It stepped up to the starting line of a race of which some more knowing part of me had wished I wouldn’t have had to partake.

She spoke.

“I think it’s time, butter-bee, that you and I had a talk…”

A truth laced through her words as they hung between us, dangling from a thread thin as hope. The shadows shifted in the darkening woods surrounding me. They drew closer, sharper. A breath caught in my throat as my heart’s suspicion became my own. Mom meant to lead us down a path I had almost managed to convince myself we’d never have to tread. 

I wasn’t ready. Would I ever be? 

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for some time now, actually.” Mom’s voice wavered. “This isn’t easy to say, but I spoke with your father before we left. We both agreed it’s long past time we…”

Mom’s words faded to utter gibberish. I couldn’t understand her. I didn’t want to.

Sometimes moms and dads fight. Sometimes children rock themselves to sleep at night to the lullabies of exploding shouts and the clashing of words like swords clamoring through a fight. It’s all a part of life. A part of our lives.

I lost myself in Mom’s unclear droning, in the murmurs of the forest as the trees stretched and grew around us. The sun passed below the mountaintops and my blood turned to ice. I couldn’t move—but my hands twitched. They rattled at my sides as though some nightmare locked away within me was desperate to rip its way free. My hands ran themselves along my forearms, rubbing, caressing—

They were moving but I wasn’t moving them.

I couldn’t… I couldn’t feel my hands…

Shadows gathered behind Mom and her nothing words. They crawled over each other, moving across the decaying carpet of the earth. Towards me. They were silhouettes coalescing, mouths gaping, obsidian teeth gleaming as their eyes, shimmering like starlight, tore into me. I wanted to turn, to flee. But Mom had dug her hands into my shoulders. She was shaking me, screaming at me. 

I could hear nothing. Nothing but those strange whispers like a slow rumbling wind before a storm. I was not my mom, nor my dad. But I was their child. I had finally found my bombs.

And so I set them free.

As the shadows devoured me, I screamed. Their dark tendrils slithered across my body. Settling on my hands, they borrowed their way in, staining my skin with all the colors of secrets kept in the dark.

When at last I looked up at Mom, I saw understanding in her eyes—she did have Rage after all. I had my own behemoth now, tar black and oozing from my rattling hands. I wondered if this was something I could scrub off with soap and warm water, if this was something I could run away from. But the truth shined in Mom’s eyes, watery and bright: there was no running away. Not from this. 

Not from Dread. 

The next few days were tense. I had no words to say, so silence settled in like leaves falling into place. On my hands, Dread weighed heavily, always drizzling in streams like the night sky spangled with silver stars. When at last we had packed away the campsite and stowed our belongings in the trunk, Mom paused and knelt, her eyes even with mine. She said nothing. Perhaps in some small way, she blamed herself for what happened to me. But I didn’t blame her or dad, nor myself. 

When Mom wrapped me in a hug, her whole body shook, and her tears streamed dampness through my hair. She had told the truth, when she said we weren’t running away. I understood that then. These monsters—these behemoth feelings—they were a part of us. There was no more running. 

We started home, towards whatever changes were there waiting for us.

Mom drove.