any hard drugs, Mother burnt my vinyl curtains to create a tar-like mixture she could huff. Once high, she insisted we have a series of home-Olympic strength competitions that included arm wrestling, leg locking, and kickboxing. These were followed by a medal ceremony in which Mother awarded herself the two remaining tin cans of food on board. I went to bed hungry. This was probably for the best because my stomach was already so full of swallowed blood.
Bored on Wednesday, Mother dislodged a ceiling panel and went up into the cabin’s airshaft. She emerged adorned with several pieces of apocalyptic jewelry she had fashioned from living rats.
Thursday was a delight of secret packing. Although most of my sparse possessions had been transformed into some type of weapon, I had been able to hold onto one pair of decent underwear, elastic still relatively sturdy, for my first meeting with Brady. That night I decided to set things as right with Mother as I could.
“Mother, I want you to know that despite all that’s happened, you’ll always be my mother, and I love you.”
She seemed to possibly absorb this. Her fingers fidgeted with her rattail necklace. “I can’t believe they did away with television ten years ago,” she said. “I really didn’t see that coming at all.”
I get up in the early hours of morning, dress, and start towards the exit pod. Suddenly the shadow of the doorway takes form and I feel a grave disruption in my breathing that gives way to unmistakable pain. Mother, wearing an eye patch donned for purely aesthetic reasons, is holding a homemade knife. As she pulls the blade from my chest, I see that it has been whittled from a tin pork-n-beans can. Its label is still partially on.
Knowing I have just minutes, perhaps seconds to live, I don’t dabble in the muck of blame or anger. Circle of life, I decide. Mother giveth, Mother taketh away. But I can’t live with Brady thinking that perhaps I’d gotten cold feet, or worse, never loved him at all. I use my last remaining strength to scrape towards the WordCall console.
To my surprise, it is already lit up. There is a message between us, except the words are not my own.
Fluidtransfer69:
You better hurry up and do it. Good ‘ol Tons-of-Fun is ready to bolt.
Cargobabe:
Consider it done. I love you, ‘Brady.’
Fluidtransfer69:
I love you, Sicko.
“Sorry to burst your bubble.” Mother hoists me over her shoulder and begins walking. “He’s a steady I met back in the pen, pre-freeze. Been in wait ever since for an opportunity to spring me. As a former felon, he wasn’t be allowed to buy my permacapusle, so when he found out I’d be going up for auction he decided to get to me through you.”
The room is starting to turn a dark shade of magenta, waving at the edges like a flag of silk. Mother hoists me down and then latches something around my wrists and neck. I realize I’m in the prison capsule.
Before closing the lid, she unzips the purse on my waist and removes all my shower ration cards. From the inside of the capsule, her voice sounds echoey and god-like.
“Don’t worry, I’m freezing you, not leaving you to die. It’s just a flesh wound. Albeit a deep one. I’m going to have to dump you somewhere that no one will find you for fifty years or so, long enough for me and Skinner, or Brady, or whatever you called him, to have a nice life together without you showing up to blow the whistle.”
With that, the cold smoke starts. It burns in a surprising way. The fact that this should not be happening to me, that Mother and my pretend boyfriend formerly known as Brady are bad people and I am not, doesn’t provide quite as much insulation from the pain as I might like. In fact, I am very cold, so cold that no one thing can be any different from another. My thoughts and my left arm are equal-sized chunks of ice. The small window of the capsule begins to frost over and I know this is my chance: this where I get to make the face that I
Bored on Wednesday, Mother dislodged a ceiling panel and went up into the cabin’s airshaft. She emerged adorned with several pieces of apocalyptic jewelry she had fashioned from living rats.
Thursday was a delight of secret packing. Although most of my sparse possessions had been transformed into some type of weapon, I had been able to hold onto one pair of decent underwear, elastic still relatively sturdy, for my first meeting with Brady. That night I decided to set things as right with Mother as I could.
“Mother, I want you to know that despite all that’s happened, you’ll always be my mother, and I love you.”
She seemed to possibly absorb this. Her fingers fidgeted with her rattail necklace. “I can’t believe they did away with television ten years ago,” she said. “I really didn’t see that coming at all.”
I get up in the early hours of morning, dress, and start towards the exit pod. Suddenly the shadow of the doorway takes form and I feel a grave disruption in my breathing that gives way to unmistakable pain. Mother, wearing an eye patch donned for purely aesthetic reasons, is holding a homemade knife. As she pulls the blade from my chest, I see that it has been whittled from a tin pork-n-beans can. Its label is still partially on.
Knowing I have just minutes, perhaps seconds to live, I don’t dabble in the muck of blame or anger. Circle of life, I decide. Mother giveth, Mother taketh away. But I can’t live with Brady thinking that perhaps I’d gotten cold feet, or worse, never loved him at all. I use my last remaining strength to scrape towards the WordCall console.
To my surprise, it is already lit up. There is a message between us, except the words are not my own.
Fluidtransfer69:
You better hurry up and do it. Good ‘ol Tons-of-Fun is ready to bolt.
Cargobabe:
Consider it done. I love you, ‘Brady.’
Fluidtransfer69:
I love you, Sicko.
“Sorry to burst your bubble.” Mother hoists me over her shoulder and begins walking. “He’s a steady I met back in the pen, pre-freeze. Been in wait ever since for an opportunity to spring me. As a former felon, he wasn’t be allowed to buy my permacapusle, so when he found out I’d be going up for auction he decided to get to me through you.”
The room is starting to turn a dark shade of magenta, waving at the edges like a flag of silk. Mother hoists me down and then latches something around my wrists and neck. I realize I’m in the prison capsule.
Before closing the lid, she unzips the purse on my waist and removes all my shower ration cards. From the inside of the capsule, her voice sounds echoey and god-like.
“Don’t worry, I’m freezing you, not leaving you to die. It’s just a flesh wound. Albeit a deep one. I’m going to have to dump you somewhere that no one will find you for fifty years or so, long enough for me and Skinner, or Brady, or whatever you called him, to have a nice life together without you showing up to blow the whistle.”
With that, the cold smoke starts. It burns in a surprising way. The fact that this should not be happening to me, that Mother and my pretend boyfriend formerly known as Brady are bad people and I am not, doesn’t provide quite as much insulation from the pain as I might like. In fact, I am very cold, so cold that no one thing can be any different from another. My thoughts and my left arm are equal-sized chunks of ice. The small window of the capsule begins to frost over and I know this is my chance: this where I get to make the face that I
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