I always hated my mother. Even as a child, I couldn’t stand the sight of her. Hell, just knowing that she was in the house with me was too much to bear sometimes, and I’d skedaddle for a while and roam the trailer park, kicking cats and throwing rocks at smaller children. When I’d come home, usually at dusk, I’d try my best to sneak to my room, but she always caught me. The crazy bitch didn’t spank me or send me to bed without dinner, no, she fucking covered me with kisses. “Oh, I was so worried! Never do that again!” She knew that that was the worst thing she could do, and she did it with glee in her eyes.

I don’t know why I hated her. From an objective standpoint, she was a fairly decent mother. But hate her I did, and that hatred only grew with me. When I was in the eighth grade, I knocked her teeth down her throat when she told me to have a good day at school (she knew I detested school, and when she said it, there was this mocking little infliction in her voice, smug bitch). Of course, I wound up doing time, first at the Industrial Home for Children in Salem (a penitentiary for the pint-sized set) and then a group home in Keyser where half the kids were fags and the other half were punks. Four years after my adventure began, I went home. Mom was right there in court that day, begging for my release, blubbering and pleading, practically on her knees. I never wanted to kill someone so bad in my life.

Keep me here, I thought as the judge made his ruling, keep me away from here or I’ll kill her. I swear.

That night, back in my old room (“I kept it just the way you had it”), I decided to do it. Once I was sure she was asleep, I crept out to the driveway and cut breaklines on her minivan.

The next morning, I woke up to a note on the fridge. “Went to Wal-Mart. Be back soon. Love you.”

Wal-Mart was halfway across town. She’d most likely taken the interstate.

I flipped on the TV in the living room hoping for hell on earth, and was dumbfounded when I actually got it. Twenty cars in a burning heap, smoke, fire, limbs, and first responders everywhere.

Mom’s dead, I thought, and then tittered. The bitch is dead!

That day was the best I’d ever had. I watched what I wanted on TV (I ordered so much porn I expect Chris Matthews to come striding out of the closet), masturbated on the living room floor, and did my best David Lee Roth jump off the couch over and over again. Finally, I capped it all off by ordering a pizza with the credit card mom kept taped behind the fridge for emergencies.

The guy who delivered the pizza turned out to be a hot chick with black hair and dark eyes. I thought about bonking her over the head and dragging her inside for a little fun, but decided against it. At my age, I figured, a rape charge would put me away for life.

So would murder.

I swallowed and pushed that thought out of my head.

Plus, I found out long ago that sex wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When I was at that group home, me and this girl ran away one night and did something nasty behind a hardware store. See, the boys’ group home was on Riverside Drive and the girls’ home was on Main Street, directly across a vast field. Some of the guys would sneak out at night and meet the girls, you know, talk, fuck, things like that. My roommate at the time (this was August 2005) was screwing this black girl, and her roommate was single, so dude tried to hook us up. My first question… “What does she look like?”

“Ah, man, she’s hot,” he replied, “long brown hair, fuckin’…you know…almond eyes. Her tits are kinda small, but ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.”

No, indeed there wasn’t. A lot of men like big old boobies, but not me. I’ve always liked them tiny. Hell, I saw this girl in a Hustler once that had, no shit, the chest of a 9-year-old boy: I beat it to her so much that, after a while, the pages stuck together.

Anyway, I figured I’d go get some pussy. That night, we snuck out the back door and stole across the field. In the summertime, it was so overgrown that you could stand straight up and still not be seen. Seemed like we were lost in that damn thing for hours before we came to a clearing. Littered with beach towels, cigarette butts, used condoms, and abandoned panties, it was a fifteen-year-old’s paradise.

No one was there yet, so we hunkered down and lit up a blunt. When we were done with that, we smoked a couple cigarettes. Finally, just as we were starting to get worried, they show up. His girl was okay, a little on the heavy side, but mine was smokin’. Tall, thin, long auburn hair, perky little tits…ummmmm.

Dude and his chick started banging right off the bat, and my girl wasn’t really comfortable, so we walked off and wound up on Main Street. “You ever fuck in an alleyway?” she asked me just…out of the blue.

“No,” I said. Truth was, I’d never fucked anywhere.

“Let’s go.”

She turned out to be a freak. She let me do everything to her, and I mean everything. I enjoyed it, sure, but it didn’t live up to expectations at all. I don’t know what I imagined sex would be, but it was a letdown. I came three times, but…honestly, my hand was better than that skank by a lot.

“So,” she panted as she pulled her panties up, “how was it?”

I socked her in the face, knocking her to the ground.

“I’ve had better,” I said, and walked off.

Anyway, I decided to jerk off again, but after dinner. I sat on the couch and ate pizza while watching pay-per-view movies. When it was gone, I ordered another porn, and whacked off in my underwear.

Around midnight, I went upstairs to bed. No one had called yet, no somber-toned cops or hospital officials, and I was starting to get antsy. Of course, CNN said nearly fifty people were dead, so they were probably overrun with casualties.

I didn’t expect to sleep much that night, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out, and stayed that way until a loud crash woke me sometime before dawn, scaring me so bad I nearly screamed.

At this point, I was still fuzzy-headed, so I just sat there for a minute, wondering if the crash was real or just a figment of my imagination.

Smash! Something glass exploded on the floor like a bomb.

My heart clenched. Shit. Someone was robbing the place.

Don’t be a badass, I told myself, just sit here and wait it out.

For a full five minutes, nothing else happened. Then, the bottom step creaked.

“Daryl!” mom cried, “look at this mess!”

A sledgehammer of fright pulverized my heart where it sat. I knew even then, fucking knew, that she was dead. The dark, grating quality of her voice couldn’t have been made by living vocal cords.

“You’re in big trouble, mister!”

The second step creaked.

The third.

“You ruined the living room, young man!”

Her voice echoed hollowly up the hall. She was at the top of the stairs now, her footsteps coming closer and closer. I tried to move but couldn’t; I was frozen in place and she was coming, a charred, skeletal ghoul with lumps of burnt flesh hanging from her bones, singed strands of hair sticking up from her skull at odd angles, and burst eyesballs in her gaping sockets.

“You ruined the van, too!”

She was outside the door.

For nearly five full minutes, I sat in place, my heart pounding against my chest, waiting for it to come.

Finally, the doorknob rattled.

I screamed and broke the bonds of terror. I leapt off the bed and dove through the window as, beyond me, wrapped in the sickly-sweet scent of burned flesh, mom entered the room.

The next thing I remember is waking in the hospital, a nurse worriedly hovering over me. A concussion, they said, suicide attempt; the news of mom’s death was just too much to handle.

Sure. I let them believe that. I let the staff here at the group home believe it too. Poor boy, driven mad by losing his beloved mother.

Hell, I tried to let myself believe it for a while, but I know it’s bullshit. She’s here, right now, as we speak. This group home, like the last one, is in an old house in the country. I was coming down the back stairs earlier this evening, and there, at the bottom, peering in through the window, was the rotten face of my mother.

They had to give me a sedative. I didn’t swallow it, though. If I did, I’d be dead.

Because she’s still here, waiting. In fact, I heard steps on the stairs now.

Is that you, mommy?

*

Joseph Rubas is, perhaps, the most twisted man in America. He currently resides in a padded room under the guard of the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF, MI5, Mossad, and the Catholic Church. His fiction can be found at any fine purveyor of filth.