cw: psychological horror, implied/referenced incest
I have always known how my mother breathes. I know the soft puffs of air that come from her mouth in place of snores. That’s for dad and I to make. His is like a motorboat and mine the revving of a monster engine. I know she sometimes struggles with the initial inhale, but past the first exhale is fine.
Seeing a machine breathe for her is not fine. Seeing that mask instead of the face I’ve known since birth is not fine.
Nothing about this is fine, and it says so in my expression because dad sees it, stands from where he’s been sitting beside the hospital bed for days, and takes me into his arms. I welcome it. I always welcome dad’s hugs even when I feel the tension in him that’s battling the urge to go back to my mother.
I’m no longer a child. The application form in my bag is proof enough, berating me for taking six years too long to complete it. My dad says so when all twenty-two years of me cling to him longer than I should and he laughs. Dry and scratchy, it sends a wave of relief at me. I haven’t heard him laugh since we moved mother to this hospital.
“Come now,” He says, dropping a kiss on my head and giving me a last squeeze. “Don’t you want to greet your mum?”
I think I give him an answer, but it gets lost as a muffled mumble in his shirt. I’m not ready to let go. There’s a beating heart and a chest that rises and falls properly with no help so near me I don’t want to let it go. It feels like a sin if I do.
I get one shaky breath in and out before dad does eventually make the first move. He gently pushes me away and leaves me for mother. Dad is right, of course. I should greet her, but to what use? This is one of her bad days and only dad, who goes nowhere else, could catch her awake, lucid, and not in excruciating pain.
I still take the seat beside the bed. Dad’s back acting as a sentinel across from me, his hand clasping mother’s. In the short time he’s left her, the wedding band that’s gone too big for her fingers has slipped off. In practiced motions, he slips it back on and I watch as the two bands shine as the brightest gold under the fluorescent lights of a drab hospital room.
Drab to my standards, anyway. Our house is full of colour and energy and mother lying so still in her bed seems to have taken that away, too. I’ve long forgone the weekly flowers. Dad can’t stop his allergies from acting up and mother’s not awake often to complain about the lack of them.
It’s easy to choose the side I take on that matter.
I take mother’s other hand and smile. It’s so small. There are scars and callouses there that I’ve never known the story of and I trace them. Still, it looks pristine in my hold. Beautiful.
My smile widens.
“Hi mum,” I say and from there comes a stream of narrating what I’ve done throughout the day – cleaning the house, welfare checks of our pets, gruelling grunt work at the office, and so on.
The application form for changing my skin burns through my bag and I don’t mention it to mother. It’s not any of her business, but anyone else looking at the details of it would say otherwise. No matter. With how my luck has been lately, I wouldn’t need to do anything at all and mother’s breathing machine would malfunction right at this moment.
I smile at the imagined scenario. It’s the very one that prompted me to apply for her skin.
Ever since mother’s blood oxygen levels could no longer be sustained by a simple tank at home and she wept at night because of the pain, dad has never left her side.
I lie. He has never left her side in the whole time I’ve been aware that they were my parents. Even in the times he should be away and doing his philanthropist work, he always finds a way to come back home – to come back to mother. I loved it when he played hooky. It means more time with him and the house is always livelier with him.
I loved it less when I realised he played hooky only for mother.
“Oh, mum,” I say out loud and freely after I’ve convinced dad to get some coffee for us both. I’m still holding her hand. “If only you could see dad now. You’ll understand me, won’t you? I’m your son, after all. You’ll understand why I’m doing this, right?”
I don’t get an answer and I pinch her hand until that porcelain finish on her skin finally has a blemish. I watch, fascinated, as her body struggles to signal the blood flow in that area to go back to normal. What a waste to keep it this way indeed.
She doesn’t so much as flinch. Her eyelids are still shut and still. Not dreaming, then. Just… sleeping.
I stand and my seat scrapes against the floor in a screech. Mother doesn’t stir. I lean over and cup her too small and thin face. No reaction. The skin is smoother and a finer quality than her hand. She took care of it better. Beautiful.
But these past few months have taken its toll and I could feel her bones more than I can her skin. Her cheeks are close to sunken than full and I worry… For mother? Oh no, never.
“If you see how much he never wants to leave your side, you’ll understand me, won’t you, mum?” I say, tucking a stray hair behind her hair. I smile down at her. “You’ll understand why I want your skin, won’t you? You’ll do it for your dear son, mum, and you’ll be happy for it.”
As I look down at mother’s resting (not restful, no) face, I remember the times I’ve wanted to claw at it. So many times I’ve had to wrangle the urge to wreck this face into an unbearable enough state that even dad, with all his love, can’t look at it anymore.
Then what? What else is there for him but to look at me instead?
But now mother is dying, and I have an application form for a skin change in my bag. The one I have is just a copy. The real one with ink and all the official stamps and signatures is in the queue, ready to be processed the moment mother never exhales again.
I know her breathing so intimately enough to have the right to stop it, don’t I?
There’s no longer the urge to ruin mother’s face. I no longer have to dig my carefully manicured fingers (perfect for – ) into my palms every time she smiles at me. Of course it’s gone.
Why would I ruin the face that’ll be mine soon? Why ruin something that’s tried and tested to be loved by dad, no matter if it’s frowning, snarling, or smiling?
“But don’t you worry, mum,” I say, already sitting back down. I take her hand again. I think it twitches. “I’ll take real good care of dad for you. That’s what a dutiful son’s for, right?”
She doesn’t answer, and dad comes back. There’s a furrow in his brow that only clears up when his gaze slides past me and onto my mother’s prone figure. His eyes are hungry as they take her in, like a man starved for years and not someone who was gone for a few minutes.
I look back at mother.
Yes.
Beautiful and mine.
This has been cross-posted on Tumblr and AO3.
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