Paige grimaced at yet another one of Dad’s mushy concoctions. She and her little sister Emily had been distraught after their mother disappeared last year, and the moments in which their father tried to cook only reinforced the longing. Mom had a knack for bringing out the best of every meal, to the point where the other children in the neighborhood were jealous of their culinary riches. But now, it had been the inedible gruel that Dad made nearly every night. Emily thrust her fork into the slop, inadvertently launching a few bits onto her shirt. She was livid, and Paige was just as upset.
“Can we just have some cereal?” Paige whined as her face remained crooked, the green bits of broccoli and bland cornmeal staring back at her from the plate.
“Girls, you know we can’t just have cereal every night. Last night was a one-time thing,” he reiterated. “Plus, I infused it with all of the vitamins and minerals you need to get strong. Then you can become the women that you ought to be.” The girls knew what he meant behind that statement. The type of women that weren’t like their mother. He scarfed down another spoonful, hoping to suppress his own gagging.
“I won’t eat it,” Emily protested. “I don’t like it.”
“You haven’t even tried it.”
“I know, Dad, but I can still smell it. I won’t eat it.”
“C’mon, honey, it’s not so bad,” he said as he reached for the salt. “Maybe if you just-“
“No! I won’t eat it!”
Dad didn’t like the screaming. He had always warned them that he would begin screaming back if they didn’t listen. Paige understood what he was trying to do–dominate them. Emily didn’t get the memo, and so she fought every time.
“Fine! Go to your room!”
“No!”
“Go to your room!”
“I… said… NO!” Emily then let out a shrill scream. This was too much for Dad, who had told her too many times to stop yelling in that high-pitched voice because it activated his tinnitus.
With a swift motion, he grabbed her plate and hurled it across the room, watching it smack into a wall with porcelain and mush flying in all directions. “Look what you made me do. Now go to your room!”
Emily ran away as a teary-eyed mess. Paige rolled her eyes as she watched Dad picking up tiny bits of the fine plate from the couch and carpet, muttering under his breath about “expensive stuff” and “ brats being ungrateful”, knowing that the reason they had to use the finer plates was that he was too lazy to either clean the dishes that had piled up for several days or load the dishwasher. Paige quietly took her plate to the kitchen, dumped the remaining slop from it, and washed it by hand. She looked at the little infusing machine with the bright green liquid that Dad used to make his meals. Rather, the little machine that Dad threw food into before his sludgy meals came out. Once she was done with the wash, Paige walked to her room and prepared for sleep. She would deal with the remaining dishes in the morning.
Paige listened to Emily’s residual sobbing under her covers. They could hear him pacing downstairs, engrossed in some uninteresting adult conversation at the lowest volume that Dad could muster as a whisper. She tried putting her own pillow over her head to muffle Emily’s sobs, but she was too locked into her sister’s sorrow to ignore it.
“Emily, please stop. We need to get some sleep.”
“I can’t. I’m too hungry, and I’m scared Dad is going to come in here and yell at me again.”
“Well what do you want me to do?”
Emily began to quiet down. “Can you get me something to eat?”
“Em, you know I can’t go in the kitchen right now. I’ll make too much noise and Dad will definitely come here.”
“Then can you get my stuffy?” Emily kept a small green unicorn with a bright yellow horn near her as much as she could. It was with the laundry – Dad failed to clean their clothes that week.
“I can’t get Mr. Unicorn right now. He’s all the way in the basement.”
“Paige,” she whined, “I really need something. I can’t sleep.”
Paige huffed and threw her covers off the bed as she put on her soft brown bear slippers and prepared for her mission. Neither of them had been down in the basement for nearly two years, so she needed to be ready. Emily whispered a “thank you” as Paige sneaked through the doorway.
Down the hallway, down the steps, down the hallway, down the steps. That was how Mom taught her to get to the basement if she ever needed to. And she did just that. Down the upstairs hallway, then down the steps into the first-floor hallway between the living and dining rooms near the front door. As she proceeded down the second hallway, she could hear Dad talking to someone about an “experiment” and that “the current trial subject” was showing “remarkable results.” Paige just wanted to make it to the basement and be done with the whole fiasco. She quietly slipped through the basement door and did her best to keep the creaking of the descending wooden steps to a minimum. Somehow, she made it without arousing any suspicion.
Unable to find the light switch, she fumbled through the darkness hoping that she would catch a glimpse of Mr. Unicorn. She was told repeatedly that the basement was no longer safe for them, but she wanted to show her bravery to her sister. She hoped that she would stumble across the stuffy quickly and get back to her room before Dad caught her. Just then, she saw an unsettling glow coming from the far wall. It had the same greenish glow as the mushy dinner machine in the kitchen. She could also hear the echoes of faint hissing and labored breathing from near the same area. She approached it slowly, wondering how close she could get to the tube. But she was blocked by an invisible force that made a “thud” sound as she ran into it before she fell to the ground. She let out a tiny “ow” before standing up. Within moments, the basement light turned on and saw what had denied her curiosity.
The invisible force was actually a tempered glass door. Behind that door was the skeletal husk of a humanoid creature plugged into a series of wires, cables, and plastic tubes. Its skin was dry and cracked, its hair stringy and patchy, and its bones nearly visible to the naked eye. Its toes had curled in on themselves, and the fingers were jagged with knuckles and other parts twisting around themselves. The ribcage and cheekbones were sunken. It was a complete nightmare to her. The creature swiped at the door, nearly making Paige trip over her own feet. She didn’t have time to scream before she heard the raspy sound of her name echoing from behind her.
“What the hell are you doing out of bed?” Dad shouted eyes burned with anger.
Paige shook in fear. “I… I just wanted to get Emily’s stuffy. She’s really scared.”
Dad huffed and stomped over to his daughter and smacked her across her face. “I thought I told you to never come down here. Never!”
Paige began screaming out “I’m sorry” over and over as Dad grabbed her by the arm, preparing to deliver a few more smacks. Just then, the glass door popped open, letting out a rancid odor that hit Dad and Paige harder than any slap. Before either could get their bearings, the creature in the cage popped up on their feet, yanked their body so violently that the connected tubes pulled apart, pushed the door wide open, and jumped on Dad quickly and ferociously. The creature began biting into Dad’s neck and extremities, tearing at his clothing and flesh as he yelled out in agony. In the distance, Paige saw Emily holding a broom handle against a tiny gray button near the light switch. The girls were in horrified shock, but they couldn’t look away. Something felt familiar, almost majestic about what they were seeing. As the monster fed into their father’s flesh, its body began filling out, becoming more human with each bite. The cracks in the monster’s skin and sunken parts around the ribs and face began filling with the same greenish glow that Paige had seen before. Before they knew it, the creature’s figure had turned into a person–their mother, only without many of her teeth, a dull gray skin tone that complimented the green areas that weaved in and out, and the whites of her eyes turned a soft and sad yellow.
Their tormented Mom looked at both of them with looks of betrayal and rage. They both felt like they were next on the menu. But despite this, Mom had simply dug her hands into the fresh corpse of their father and pulled out two large hunks of meat and organs. She then ran upstairs, leaving a trail of guts and blood behind.
Paige ran over to Emily. “How did you know to do that?”
Emily was embarrassed. “I didn’t. I was going to hit Dad with the broom, but it was too heavy and fell over. It was an accident, I swear.”
“No, no, Em. Don’t worry about that. You did great.” She hugged her sister tightly.
They both ran upstairs to see Mom silently cooking the flesh. She had thrown what she could bring into a pan sitting off to the side of the sink, then she turned on the burners and began rooting around for spices in the cupboard, staring into the distance as she did. It was as if she was running on instinct. She grabbed the cannisters of salt, pepper, cayenne, onion powder, and garlic powder, and with a few flicks of her wrist, Dad’s remains were well-seasoned. She tossed in some olive oil, causing pops and sizzles to start nearly a minute into her work. She stood with one hand on her hip, the usual pose she held when she waited for the kids’ meal to finish cooking in the past. She looked over at her daughters, who stood near the hallway in amazement at what they were seeing. They wanted to run over and give Mom a hug and listen to her stories and talk about what they were going to do now that Dad was gone, but Mom was too focused and they were too scared.
Several minutes later and the meal was complete. Mom sliced various portions for both Paige and Emily with her elongated nails. Noticing that the plates were all dirty, she cut the meat on a large cutting board then walked to her children. She knelt down as far as she could and gave them loose but meaningful hugs. She then walked out of the house, a beacon of glowing green streaking against the darkness as she ran barefoot and ashy to the Millers house across the street. The Miller family’s mother had also disappeared not long after Mom had, something that the children of the two families bonded over.
Paige walked over to the cutting board packed with Dad meat. Knowing where it came from, she winced at the thought of consuming it. But then, she took a giant whiff of it. The aroma was entrancing, a dance of salt with the spices trapsing through her nostrils while Emily stood further away, holding her stomach through the pain of hunger. Paige decided that she needed to do what was best for her and her sister.
She found a couple of Styrofoam bowls and plastic forks buried deep inside a low-level drawer in the kitchen, then she scooped up pieces of meat for both of them. They ran outside to the porch as they saw Mom and Ms. Miller appear, both glowing in the same fashion. They ran down the street like little shooting stars, running from house to house, rooting out the sick science experiments until their neighborhood lit up like the night sky. The girls didn’t care about the strange scenario happening in front of them–they were just happy that Dad wasn’t around to bother them anymore.
Paige lifted a chunk into her mouth and bit down while watching her mother liberate the lost parents of the cul-de-sac. She savored the flavors as they swirled around in her mouth as she saw the little green swirls shimmer and shine against the darkness. She let out a gentle moan in satisfaction.
“How is it?” Emily asked, patiently holding her bowl for her sister’s approval.
Paige replied with a smug look on her face. “It’s perfect.”
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