I think Mother died this morning. I am not sure. We had been rough-housing the night before, a rare but always pleasant occurrence, and Mother, in her usual fits of melodrama, fell dramatically to the floor, crying out that I had hurt her. Stay away, stay away, she had moaned as I got her onto the long couch in the living room, tugging a throw blanket over her. She had twisted and groaned a bit more before finally falling asleep. I burrowed myself in the far corner for my vigil and fell asleep there.

When I awoke in the morning, she was right where I had left her on the couch. The blanket was half on the floor, half twisted in her legs. Her face was turned towards the draped window, the muted sunlight over her face. For a moment, I wondered if the light was hurting her eyes but she never blinked. Her mouth was slack and would not close no matter how often I lifted her jaw and held it there. She felt cold, perhaps, and unusually malleable. I lifted and tossed limbs with little regard for how they landed. She did not react.

Giddily, I realized Mother was dead. I scurried around the house, flinging open doors and cabinets with abandon. Mother hated when I did that, but now I could do it as much as I wanted. A list! I needed a list! A list of everything Mother would never let me do.

First thing, eat. Mother never let me eat. The very sight of me typically repulsed her and set her off into shrieking fits. Sometimes she threw things. Sometimes they hit. I would curl myself up as small as possible and hide very quiet, very nicely in rooms or crevices or tiny little spaces made by two pieces of furniture. That would work, for a while, and then Mother would stumble across me, as if she had sensed my essence, and the shrieking would start again.

The thought of finally being able to eat made my mouth water. Saliva dripped from my lips in heavy globules, splattered the creaky hardwood floors before I remembered to use one of Mother’s rags to clean my face. She kept the house relatively tidy, but I always managed to find a place to hide. Houses always had room for many things. Mother never thought so, she seemed to always hate me, but I knew she never meant it. She was frail, Mother was, and that was likely what led to her death.

It wouldn’t do to let her food go to waste. I helped myself to the cupboards of the kitchen, nibbling on cookie packets straight through the plastic casings, breaking open aluminum cans and glass jars over the sink to keep the floors clean. I slurped the juices, jams, and thick, sweet viscous liquids I couldn’t have fathomed before. My fingers, long, bony, were coated in all sorts of flavors and I had to take great care in licking them clean, mindful of the way my teeth dragged against the skin. It was all delicious, I think.

I had to pace myself. I had to make things last. I had never gone outside before, and promptly added that to my list. The thought of it frightened me, so I mentally pushed it down, down, way down, when I had exhausted all my other desires.

Have a conversation, I thought. Mother rarely let me speak to her. On the rare occasions Mother didn’t immediately scream at the sight of me, whether standing alone in a room or twisted into a hiding spot, I would try to speak with her. I could barely open my mouth before it upset her and she ran away, sometimes straight out of the house. I obviously could not follow her, so I would watch from the nearest window and make sounds to myself, the ones I would hear from the television—The television!

I could watch television and learn to talk! Mother never let me watch television either. I wasn’t sure how to turn on the television in the living room. The television was a sleek rectangle with no buttons. I remembered a remote and started tossing every cushion, pillow and discarded magazine. I found it underneath Mother’s body, which had started to become stiff. It made it easier to move her around. I tucked the blanket back around her. I regretted not righting her head earlier or finding something to hold her jaw shut. Her head was stuck turned toward the afternoon sun. A fly had found its way into her open mouth.

I pressed buttons on the remote until the television turned on. I obediently sat in front of it and watched the program, some kind of cooking show. Every so often, I’d hear a word I liked and would repeat it. Dice, caramelize, sauté. The first words came out as whispers, as if Mother would wake up and scream and run again. I would get up to go check on her, confirm her death, and come back to the floor and try again. My voice rose in strength and volume with each attempt. Basil, onion, knife. Sometimes another person would join the cook and I paid very close attention here. I needed to know how people talked to each other if I were to have a conversation.

I mimicked their sentences, their cadences and tried to imitate the way their bodies move. I don’t think I had the same body as them, as bony and long as I was, and I wasn’t sure I could do what they were doing with their faces but I tried my best. Smiling was hard. People smiled a lot when they talked. People liked it when you smiled. I tried in the mirrors in the bathrooms and bedrooms, but the way my mouth opened made it difficult to control the saliva as it dripped over.

The cooking program changed to another cooking program to some news segment and I watched all of them. The sun had set. The house was dark again, but I had no problem seeing.

The next morning, Mother had a few more flies on her. She was soft again. The cooking program had mentioned keeping food fresh on ice, so I took some from the freezer and put them underneath her. It wasn’t enough. ‘Go outside’ nudged itself further up my haphazard list. Outside had ice. Mother needed ice.

I ate whatever was in the fridge. The Styrofoam containers were quite alright and the pasta inside was savory. I chewed through a couple more aluminum cans over the sink, delighted in the way the dark liquid fizzled and crackled inside my mouth.

Time was never my strong suit and without Mother around, I found it even harder to grasp. The kitchen became sparse, empty of any kind of food. Mother seemed to melt into the couch, the number of flies and bugs increasing and then slowly decreasing. The skin on Mother’s face grew wet and sloughed off, then it began to dry and harden, twisting into grooves along her bones. I threw more blankets over her. I pulled more ice from the freezer, but there seemed to be more liquid under Mother now, and I didn’t like the way it made my fingers slick and slippery.

The hunger started gnawing at me. Strangely, though Mother never let me eat before, I had never felt such hunger. As the sun came and went, the hunger sharpened my clarity of thought. Of course, of course, Mother fed me. She herself was sufficient food. Her presence, her feelings, it was all nourishing me. And Mother felt so strongly all the time when she was home. She didn’t want me to starve. I said sorry to Mother’s body a few times.

The doorbell rang. I could not remember the last time the bell had rung. In the beginning, when Mother first came here, the doorbell rang many, many times. Friends, family, people with boxes of all kinds of sizes, people Mother only opened the door cautiously for before quickly shutting. A conversation, I thought, I can have a conversation! I fretted, pacing back and forth. I was very nervous in a way I barely recognized. I hadn’t felt this way since I first met Mother, watching her from the dark crevice of a closet wondering when was the best time to show myself.

It rang again. Impatient. I went to the door, pawing at the locks. My dexterity was poor and I misjudged the direction to slide the chain in, and yanked it clean off its track. I tossed it to the floor with a heavy clunk. I opened the door just a sliver, as Mother had.

It was a woman, like Mother. She seemed maybe a little upset before she saw me and her face quickly morphed to an expression I often saw on Mother’s face whenever she caught me trying to crawl out of a room without her notice.

H-hello, she said.

Hello, I replied. It came out perfectly. The woman must have thought so too, for her lips turned up into a smile although I saw her jaw muscles work hard.

Can I help you, I continued.

I live next door. The smell, she said. Are you alright?

I felt my mouth water. My stomach grumbled. This woman was like Mother, I realized. Nourishing. I hurried to wipe at my mouth, but that only seemed to startle the woman.

Please, I said, come in. I smiled big and wide, showing her all my teeth. My mother and I would love for you to come in.

I pulled her in.

Nergal Malham

Nergal Malham is a tiny Assyrian born and raised in Chicago. Her work has previously appeared in Cleaning Up Glitter, GASHER Journal, The Bookends Review, and Grim & Gilded.