He hoped the creaking outside his window was just the trees being torn asunder by the storm and that his mother hasn't gotten caught up in the ropes again. She insisted on leaving them to dry after she'd bathed them in tar and then she forgot about them.
It'd been so hot the past few days that the tar had all but melted off entirely, bathing the base of the tree in glistening night. No matter how much he'd warned her about it, begged her to come back and take then down, to it the bottle away and keep herself safe but she couldn't hear him.
He always hoped that one day she would hear him knocking on his window but she never looked up. He hoped she might see him pushing the vase of flowers but she just blamed the cat and walked away, a bottle clutched in one hand and crumpled flowers in the other.
When the storm came his first thought was how he wished he could go outside and play in the rain one last time. Then he heard the creaking. It began as the wind picked up, as if the branches were the switch his mother used on him from time to time.
He couldn't quite point out when it stopped sounding like branches and started sounding like rope but somehow he already knew what had happened. Come morning he peered under the curtains to see his mother's bloodshot eyes peering back, glazed and unblinking.
He stayed there staring at her until she woke up that night and saw him too. For the first time in over fifty years his mother could see him and hear him and talk to him and he could talk to her and... and...
She was sad. She was so very, very sad. So very disappointed. She blamed herself for not punishing him enough, she blamed him for continuing to misbehave until that afternoon where she'd hit him one tine too many and snapped his frail bird-like neck.
She honestly thought he'd be in heaven.
He honestly thought death would change her.
They were both very, very wrong.
It'd been so hot the past few days that the tar had all but melted off entirely, bathing the base of the tree in glistening night. No matter how much he'd warned her about it, begged her to come back and take then down, to it the bottle away and keep herself safe but she couldn't hear him.
He always hoped that one day she would hear him knocking on his window but she never looked up. He hoped she might see him pushing the vase of flowers but she just blamed the cat and walked away, a bottle clutched in one hand and crumpled flowers in the other.
When the storm came his first thought was how he wished he could go outside and play in the rain one last time. Then he heard the creaking. It began as the wind picked up, as if the branches were the switch his mother used on him from time to time.
He couldn't quite point out when it stopped sounding like branches and started sounding like rope but somehow he already knew what had happened. Come morning he peered under the curtains to see his mother's bloodshot eyes peering back, glazed and unblinking.
He stayed there staring at her until she woke up that night and saw him too. For the first time in over fifty years his mother could see him and hear him and talk to him and he could talk to her and... and...
She was sad. She was so very, very sad. So very disappointed. She blamed herself for not punishing him enough, she blamed him for continuing to misbehave until that afternoon where she'd hit him one tine too many and snapped his frail bird-like neck.
She honestly thought he'd be in heaven.
He honestly thought death would change her.
They were both very, very wrong.
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