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Winston hated his mother.
The box spring squealed as he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. A man of about fifty. He had stopped counting. She was calling again. Shadows hung heavy, not yet penetrated by the weak morning light that filtered through the moth-eaten curtains. Winston slid his feet into his threadbare slippers, the soles of which threatened to detach themselves at any moment.
Shuffling down the staircase, careful to avoid the protruding nail in the fourth step, Winston made his way to the kitchen. The ancient wood sighed beneath his feet; one would think the house to be too old, too dead, to harbor anything living within. Shuddering with every gust of wind that passed it by, one would have expected it to collapse years ago. Yet here it stood.
“Winston!”
“Coming,” he grumbled, knowing his answer would not be loud enough for her to hear. He was not in a hurry. Reaching for one of the cleaner-looking bowls, he fished through the pantry and began to shake the remnants of the bran flakes into it. A pour from the milk bottle that was sitting on the counter, the contents lukewarm. No clean spoons presented themselves, and as Winston headed for the only other piece of silverware- a soup ladle- the shrill cry rang out once more. He drew in a quick breath through his teeth, balling his hands into fists.
“I said I’m coming!” He shouted, abandoning the bowl of cereal and dragging himself through the kitchen door into the living room. Sitting before him on the stained, drab couch was his mother. The upholstery had once been an elegant shade of rosy pink, now an unsightly brown, and the frame bowed in the middle where she sat, nearly touching the floor beneath. Winston stood silent with his arms crossed, waiting for her to catch sight of him.
“Took you long enough,” she rasped, eyeing him with contempt.
“What do you want?”
“I could use something to eat.”
Winston turned back to the kitchen. For a moment he considered giving her his now congealing bowl of bran flakes, but thought better of it. He instead rifled through the bag of white bread to locate the least moldy slice, and tossed it into the toaster while he prepared a weak cup of tea. Winston spread margarine on the toast and set it along with the tea in front of her on the coffee table. With silence she dismissed him, and he slunk out of the room.
Poking his bran flakes with his ladle, Winston tried to remember the last time he had eaten a good meal. It had been several years since his mother had begun to rapidly decline, which had, in turn, forced him out of his job and out of his own home to become a full-time caretaker. Caretaker? Taking care of what? The house was filthy. Where would he find any time to clean it? The dining room had become so contaminated with black mold that Winston had eventually decided to seal it off permanently, for it was nearly impossible to breathe in there. Likewise, the downstairs bathroom had flooded, making it a rather attractive area for termites to build their nest. When several species of mushrooms began propagating in the damp bath mat, Winston closed off that space as well. The decision to decommission the only lavatory on the bottom floor led to the horrors of the bedpan, as his mother could no longer climb the stairs.
“Winston!”
What could it possibly be now? Winston exhaled. He lifted himself grudgingly from the wooden chair he had been sitting in. His first step yielded a familiar crunch, and he quickly lifted his foot to check. Another cockroach. Winston grimaced. Apart from its two human residents, the domicile hosted a microcosm of insects. The house was not unlike the carcass of a whale on the ocean floor, waves of scavengers slowly eating away at the flesh until all that remains is a skeleton of what former glory this creature once had. It was a curious thing that this edifice, even after death, could still support some form of life.
“Winston!”
He trudged into the living room and felt his mother’s prickly stare, her eyes two accusatory slits.
“You’re useless,” she hissed. “Why don’t you get a job?”
This again.
“For the love of God, Denise, I can't get a job if I always have to take care of you. I can’t even leave the house. You keep me trapped in here like some mutt at the pound!” His once calm and controlled voice had risen to a shriek. Years of pent up anger and resentment welled up inside of him, a scalding geyser on the brink of eruption.
“You know what? Every morning when I wake up I pray that I won’t have to hear the sound of your voice ringing in my ears anymore.” Before his mother could respond, Winston had exited the room, oblivious to the stench of death that pervaded the air.
As the sun set in the sky, the shadows returned to their places, falling over a man sitting on his bare mattress, head cradled in his hands. Over the uneaten cereal on the kitchen table. Over the unused bedpan on the shelf. Over the dark spots in the couch, littered with detritus and writhing clumps of maggots. Over the long-decomposed corpse of an old woman, surrounded by stacks upon stacks of plates and cups, their contents untouched.
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