MY SON IS A MONSTER BUT I AM NO BETTER
My mother found comfort inside the pages of a paperback journal. I found it outside amongst the paperbark trees. We’d both flee to our independent solitudes after each fight between us, hence, we’d frequently find ourselves estranged from one another. Yet as a child, I longed to be close to her. It was no use; she talked to the journal more than she did to me, and I talked more to the trees. Neither of these things gave us any response. Perhaps that’s why we did it.
Despite our lack of sensible conversation, and often lack of proxy, I would attempt to spend each quiet moment beside her. During our calmer nights, I’d sit on a stool next to her armchair, my head resting on the handle. We wouldn’t talk, but she’d thrust her glass towards me as an offering, eyes still fixated on the period drama unfolding on TV. I hated the taste of that starchy wine, she did too; yet I’d gladly take a sip just to feel what she felt. On nights where a storm took its form in my mother’s foul words, I found myself mourning that dull and distasteful exchange as I bathed in the thunder.
Outside, I’d cool down through the one-sided conversation with the trees, kicking rocks, and cursing at swarms of flying foxes gliding overhead. I’d often find a spider helplessly weaving a web in the dark; my mother had most likely destroyed its home earlier. In the cruelty of my anger, I’d grab it, tear it limb by limb – pretending, of course, that I was my mother, and my hands were her words, and the spider was me. I’d feel guilty once I had returned to my senses, yet I kept going back to that same monstrous act. I couldn’t help it; the violence had wrapped itself around my DNA generations prior.
My mother was born with a terrible curse. Her temper wasn’t just fiery, it was engulfed in flames and doused in blood. And I, cursed with being her son, had it just the same. When I was a teenager and no longer feared her more than I feared myself, this shared temper caused our arguments to consist of a sickening back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I felt the same as they did; endless. Endlessly lost. Yet I did not give up, and neither did my mother. We built upon each other’s flaws until we ended up with a tower of destructive tendencies, and as it came crashing down, so did we. Once more, my mother locked herself in her room, and I locked myself out, letting the smoke of the bush fill my lungs until I suffocated on the warmth of Mother Nature.
When I turned eighteen and locked myself out for the last time, the journal stayed by my mother’s side like an infant child still suckling. She did not wave goodbye, did not utter a word. Instead, she turned to her terrible habit of picking up a pen. I wonder what she wrote that day more than I wonder what she was writing throughout my entire childhood. Sometimes, I’ll find myself unable to rest, theorising the possibilities of the parting words she never said, my son is a monster but I am no better. I will never truly get to know. When she dies, she will be buried with that journal. I will attend her funeral and when I look in the casket, I will stare at the leather-bound cover lodged between her arms instead of her familiar, silent face.
I will go on to have a daughter, perhaps a son; they will share the curse of our bloodline. We will only get along on quiet nights when I let them take a drag of my cigarette, and I will begin to confine in a journal instead of the trees – perhaps I am already doing that. They will turn to destruction, picking spiders straight from their webs, and I will curse them for their violent sins. They will curse me back, and when they work up the courage to leave I will not say goodbye. Instead, I will take my pen and write on my last blank page; my child is a monster, but I taught them better.
L. C. Goldsworthee, 18, Australia ✯ TT: @lcgoldsworthee ✯ BACK TO FICTION: OUROBOROS
“L. C. Goldsworthee exists to create. He is inspired by cowboys, psychology, and mythology.”