Storytellersunplugged

by Gerard Houarner

For Storytellersunplugged’s “October story” tradition, I’m reaching back to 1995 to post a piece from a Necropolitan Press small press magazine called The End (#3), edited by Jeffrey Thomas. It earned an Honorable Mention in the 9^th Annual Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

The Lost Mothers

“Eat your chicken soup,” she commands, keeping the steaming spoonful of yellowish liquid hovering by my mouth.

“Wear your hat,” another advises, thrusting a mass of prickly wool into my hands. “And your scarf.”

“Did you wash behind your ears?” inquires the one scrubbing the skin from the back of my skull.

They dance around me like gaudy, flower print scarves caught in a whirlwind. Smiling all the time, even when they scold, as if they’re afraid I might run away. As if I could.

“Run out to the store and get me a milk, Peter,” one of them says as she closes my hand around some change she has placed in my palm.

“Rub your mommy’s feet, why don’t you, dear,” another whispers, then puckers her too-red lips in an expression of pleading.

Peppermint-scented words drift down from the one towering over me, arms outstretched: “Give your mommy a nice, big hug.”

But when they think they’re alone, when they think I’m still out there on the never-ending, always perfectly trimmed and treeless lawn trying to find the way back to my own land, they say other things.

“I wish he was hung like his father, old Hook,” grumbles one into her tea cup.

“That old fool spoiled the little darling, letting him tinker with bells and play with tiger lilies,” complains another, rattling the pans she’s putting back into the cabinet.

“Maybe he’ll grow up some day and take care of us all,” cries another excitedly over the electric hum of her appliance.

I draw myself into the fetal position and desperately suck my thumb.

“Every mother’s dream,” they all reply.

And to myself, I chant, I’ll never grow up, I’ll never grow up, I’ll never grow up…

end

** The Lost Mothers is, of course, © Gerard Houarner.

I’ve played with the world of Oz in similar, just more elaborate, ways in the recently published The Oz Suite, available from www.eibonvalepress.co.uk (along with amazon, hororr-mall, etc - there’s even a relatively inexpensive $12 trade edition). If you’re curious, you can check out some samples that are up for a brief period on my site, http://www.cith.org/gerard/secretpage.htm (the third sample, mistakenly unidentified on the page, follows the * divider and is from “The Wizard Will See You Now.”)

Happy Horrors!