Buzz buzz. Buzz buzz. Buzz buzz.
My phone vibrated on the hotel nightstand next to me, pulling me from the light slumber I had fallen into. Whoever it was could wait until later in the morning. It was nearly four, and I had just gotten to sleep.
Buzz buzz. Buzz buzz. Buzz buzz.
It rang again.
Cussing under my breath, I reached for the phone and was met with Mom’s face across the screen. We hadn’t talked since I’d left her house in a fight over two months ago. Figuring she was probably just drunk dialing me, I hit ignore and set my phone back on the nightstand. She didn’t leave a voicemail, and it didn’t take long for me to fall back asleep, not waking again until my alarm started singing.
On my way into work, I took a detour to drive past her house. I wasn’t even sure how I ended up there. My body just drove, bypassing all the turns and curves that led to the shop to get to my old home. Before I knew it, I was pulling my car in her long driveway.
Nothing seemed to be out of place. Her car was pulled into the back yard and the porch light was still on from the night before, just as it always was. Aside from the overflowing mailbox, Mom had been keeping the place up since I left. But I still couldn’t pull away. I felt some kind of strange pull toward the broken-down home—something calling me from inside.
I decided to take a look around, just to make sure she was okay. Her phone calls last night left me with an uneasy feeling. Why would she randomly bother to contact me after so much silence?
Dread tugged at me as soon as I entered the back door of the eerily quiet house. The meaningless sounds I usually ignored were deafening now. The humming of the fridge vibrated through me. The clicking of the heat turning on as I passed the thermostat startled me. My body floated through like a ghost, slowly taking in the smallest details and storing them in my memory to recall later. Something had happened here. I was sure of it.
But what?
I made my way through the trashed kitchen, noting the empty fifth of rum sitting next to an untouched bottle of whiskey. Mom didn’t drink whiskey. She hated the burn of it. Turning the bottle in my hands, I saw a blue note stuck on the side with chewed gum.
Your move. – M
What the hell did that mean?
The rest of the house was just as trashed as the kitchen. The coffee table was overturned, spilling full cans of beer and an overfilled ashtray out onto the carpet. An orange pill bottle sat on its side, empty of its contents.
I had come home to the scene in front of me before, after Mom had a hard night and got caught up in her high. She usually stumbled around the house, knocking things off the shelves and tripping over the nick-knacks that fell to the floor. But this felt different. The shelves remained on the walls, their contents still neatly in place where I’d left them the last time I cleaned up.
A horrible, rancid smell filled my nose when I stood at the opening of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. I should have known what it was. I should have recognized the familiar burn in the back of my throat and called 9-1-1 or rushed to find her and help.
But I wasn’t in my right mind. Something had me moving in slow motion, examining every detail and experiencing the moment as if I was floating outside of my body, hovering above.
Three steps into the hallway and I had a clear view of her bed. Her slender hand hung off the side. My eyes slowly trailed from her fingers, over her slim forearm, up to her shoulder, and then they met her dull, lifeless eyes. I sucked in a breath, choking on the acidic smell that filled the air before I made my way into the uncharacteristically neat room.
“Something is wrong with Mom,” I cried to Grams, tugging at her arm to lead her to Mom’s room in the back of the house.
For a long time, her room was right next to mine but recently she took all my things and moved them to the smelly, wet basement.
When Grams found out, she just looked at me with her sad eyes while Gramps argued with Mom, insisting she carry my things back into my old room. Mom yelled back, and she said a lot of words that she should get her mouth washed out for.
Gramps finally gave up, and we set up a fort over my bed in the basement to protect me from the things that hid in the dark. When we were alone, Mom said I belonged downstairs with them. During my first week down there, Grams slept next to me to keep me safe. She told me I wouldn’t be sleeping there for long, but that was three months ago.
“What do you mean, honey? Stop pulling on me, you’re going to make me spill,” Grams scolded.
I didn’t care if the whole stove dumped over, she needed to come help Mom.
“Her eyes are open, but she won’t answer me, and she has white stuff coming from her mouth,” I explained, crossing my arms over my chest.
I thought she was sleeping, but no one sleeps with their eyes open, do they?
Grams looked at me with alarm, throwing the spoon she was stirring the soup with onto the counter and rushing past me toward Mom’s bedroom.
“Karla, Karla?” she yelled repeatedly as she made her way through. When we entered the room, she let out a sob.
“Oh God, no! Please, Karla, what did you do, honey?” she begged, lifting Mom’s head and peering into her open eyes.
She was on her stomach, but her face was turned toward the door, and just like she had with me, Mom ignored Grams.
“Gus! Gus, get in here!” she yelled for Gramps.
“I told you she wouldn’t talk to me, Grams. I think she’s sleeping with her eyes open. Can people sleep with their eyes open? I thought your eyes had to be closed to sleep,” I rambled as she picked up an orange pill bottle and read the description.
She was ignoring me, too.
Gramps ran into the room, jumping into action as soon as he saw Grams sitting on the bed next to Mom.
“Rose? What the hell happened?” he asked in a rush, laying Mom’s body flat on her back and listening to her chest.
“It looks like she took these,” Grams responded, holding up the bottle.
Gramps put his mouth over Mom’s before pulling away and pumping her chest.
He repeated the action three times before Grams looked over at me and instructed, “Liam, grab the phone and dial 9-1-1. It should be on the receiver. Tell them your mom overdosed and they need to send an ambulance right away.”
I ran into the dining room and grabbed the phone off the receiver, repeating to the nice lady everything Grams told me to say. When I finished, the lady wanted me to stay on the phone with her, but Grams didn’t tell me to do that, so I hung up and ran back to Mom’s room to see if she woke up yet.
What was an overdose?
When the ambulance arrived, they did the same thing Gramps did to Mom before sticking a long tube down her throat. It looked like they were hurting her, but she didn’t cry or make a sound, so I figured it must not be that bad. Mom was really tough.
Me, Grams, and Gramps stood against Mom’s wall as the tall man and his partner pushed the tube further, wiggling it around and eventually pulling it out. As soon as it left Mom’s mouth, a heap of puke came out with it and filled the room with more of the horrible, bitter smell. I plugged my nose with my two fingers and Grams sobbed next to me, eventually pushing me out of the way so they could carry Mom out on a stretcher.
Mom didn’t come home for a few days after that. When she did, she didn’t speak to me for two whole weeks.
“Liam, what happened?” Uncle Joe screamed in my face, shaking my shoulders to get my attention. When did he get here?
“I-I don’t know.”
My eyes left his and landed on Mom’s. She was still lying in bed on her back, arm dangling off as her eyes stared back at me. They looked different—lighter. Her whole face was white. The body that lay there belonged to my mother, but I couldn’t feel the familiar tug toward her I usually felt.
“Have you called an ambulance yet? How long has she been like this? Liam, what the fuck? Answer me,” Joe yelled in my face, begging for my attention.
But I couldn’t pull my eyes from Mom’s. I felt like a piece of me had died off, I just couldn’t pinpoint which one.
Someone pounded on the front door and Joe rushed through the house to answer it, leading the EMTs back into Mom’s room to survey the situation.
“We just got here, so we’re not sure how long she’s been there. I didn’t feel a pulse,” he explained as the medic rounded the bed, touching his fingers to Mom’s neck.
The two men mumbled to each other before attempting CPR. I knew it was too late. Mom was gone, and she had been for a while. After a few tries, they scooped her body up and laid it on the stretcher, zipping her up in a black bag.
Uncle Joe stood next to me, tears streaming down his face as he watched them drive away. I reached my hand into my pocket and touched the blue note left on the whiskey bottle, the pieces falling together like an overly complicated puzzle.
M. It stood for Monti.
He did this and staged it to look like an overdose. The pills she was found with were her usual drug of choice, and the alcohol on the counter was typical for her. It was the empty syringe that he left on the bed next to her that gave him away.
Mom didn’t shoot up. She was too afraid of the needles and the deadly diseases they carried. She stuck to her specific cocktail of prescription pills and cheap alcohol.
“What the fuck was she thinking?” Joe asked from beside me, but I stayed silent.
He mistook my stony expression for sadness and wrapped his arm around my neck in a hug. But I wasn’t sad, not yet. I was pissed, and if Monti thought I would take this lying down, he was wrong. I would kill him, slowly and painfully, just as he killed Mom.
“I got you, Liam,” Joe said into my ear, patting my back and pulling away.
I was going to hunt Monti down like prey and kill him like the violent animal he’d created. I had the devil’s blood running through my body, and I was finally letting it flow freely.