“Jamie, is that you?”

I had to take a double take, because the shrunken creature that lay in the white bed was a stark contrast to the monster that filled my nightmares.

“Mother.”

That was all I had to give. I could barely call her a ‘mother’, but I was born to her evil, so it was the correct title.

A nearly skeletal hand that had a slight shake to it reached towards me, its apparently frailty belying strength that it held. Honestly, if I hadn’t been told that she’d thrown a full bedpan at some poor, under-paid orderly, I would get sucked into this image that she portrayed and let my defenses down a little.

She let her arm drop beside her in the bed with a thud once she realized that I was refusing to take her bait. Her eye narrowed with unconcealed hate as she glared upon her only child.

This. This was the mother I’d known and come to loathe in my life. The monster hidden behind the façade, threatening to pounce and tear all that was good about the world away from me. However, she’d already successfully removed all of that from my life years ago, so she could do no further damage despite her best efforts.

“I see that you finally deemed me worthy of your time, son of mine.”

I let out a sharp bark of laughter.

“Son? You haven’t referred to me as much more than ‘devil spawn’ for decades, mother. Why all the emotional sentiment all of a sudden? I’d assume you were on your deathbed, but I’m pretty sure that Satan would prefer to remain a bachelor for as long as inhumanly possible.”

“You are the most ungrateful piece of shit I’ve ever had the misfortune to know. I wish that I’d aborted you when I had the chance.”

I rolled my eyes and plopped down in the chair across the room from her bed. The loving sentiment that she spewed forth like venom was not new to me. As a matter of fact, I think I’d heard this exact song sung since I was at least five years old.

“Well, you know, hindsight is twenty twenty and all that crap. Why’d you summon me to your bedside if I am such an apparent damper on your pathetic excuse of a life?”

Anyone listening in would probably want to slit my throat for talking to my mother this way, but they didn’t have a goddamn clue about this woman.

“I wanted to talk to you about your sperm donor.”

“My dad died. Years ago. Shootout with the police, or car crash or drug overdose. Not really sure which cause of death is the real one, it changed with the type of alcohol you were mainlining at the time. But the only consistency was that he was dead. So, what’s there to talk about?”

“He’s not dead.”

The fuck.

“Excuse me? Apparently, I’ve been smoking some serious shit, because I am pretty sure you just told me that the man who donated fifty percent of my fucked-up DNA has been alive and kicking my entire existence, despite your multiple versions of his demise.”

She shrugged, or at least, that was what I interpreted the awkward movement of her bony shoulder.

“I lied. He walked, I was pissed at him, at you for being a part of him, and at the world for the miserable cards I’d been dealt. So, I told you he died. You turned out fine.”

I stood up from the chair, pacing the nursing home room like a caged lion, the tension rippling below my skin, ready to pounce on my prey.

“Fine, mother? Fine? I had an evil, cloven hooved beast raising me to believe that I was worthless, less than the spores of the mold that grew unbidden on the food in our refrigerator. And why did we have mold? Because you were too busy spreading your legs for a dollar to worry about feeding your child. Every kid needs a father, and you made sure I never had that. I mourned his death every time I saw you passed out from one of your benders, every time your hand found its way across my face, exploding behind my eyes. I knew if he’d lived, he would have never let you do the horrible things you did.”

“You’re so overly dramatic. You must not have suffered too horribly bad. You own a business and live in one of the best parts of town. Meanwhile, I was shipped off to a home where they are on the cusp of losing their accreditation. So, you turned out fine, you won, you’ve punished me appropriately. Congratulations.”

Her voice was droll, angry, still seething over the life that she had created for herself yet blamed the universe for. The word ‘congratulations’ was spat out from her lips like a curse, one more powerful than just saying ‘fuck you’.

“Who is he, mother?”

“His name is Gideon Jeffries. He is still alive. He knows you exist because I sent him a note letting him know. So, I’m sure about now he’s expecting a call or text or whatever it is you do. He lives in Everett.”

I looked at her and just started for the door.

“Jamison, for what it’s worth, I did the best I could.”

“Really? Well, your best sucked balls.”

She chuckled, a rattling sound that echoed in her chest, dry and foreign.

“Be that as it may, I had to look in his eyes every day when I looked at you. I had to see the ghost of him every year as you grew older and became more like him. I had to see his smirk when you defied me.”

I waited, wanting to hear words that every child wanted to hear, but those words never came.

“Whatever mother, stop throwing your shit at the staff. Stay out of my life. Don’t try to get my attention again. I’ll be fine if when the next time I see you, your dried-up ashes are ruining a perfectly good vase.”

I walked swiftly out the door, just in time, apparently, based on the crashing sound of something hitting the wall behind me. Hopefully not her bedpan again, although that would be their own damn fault for not putting her wrinkled ass in a diaper after the first time.

I hated her.

Hate so strong that I could feel it turning the blood that flowed through my veins into ice. I clenched and unclenched my fists in an effort to fight the urge to put them through something… or someone.

“You look like you could use a cigarette.”

The voice came from behind me, and I whirled around, shocked to have been caught unaware. When you grew up in certain areas of Boston, you knew to keep aware of your surroundings at all times. I must really be fucked up in the head with my mommy issues to have completely forgotten my own cardinal rule.

The look that greeted me was like a punch to the gut. She was about five foot nothing, her eyes were dark with barely restrained anger so violent that they almost glowed. That anger practically vibrated off of her in waves, a vibe that was sent out as a warning to anyone within a hundred-foot radius.

As pissed off as I was at the universe at the moment, she made it look like a mild annoyance.

“Sorry, kid, I don’t smoke.”

“Today’s as good a day as any to start. You look like someone kicked your cat in the balls.”

Jesus Christ, I must look like shit if I look worse for wear than she did.

I shrugged at her, and walked over, slowly closing the gap as I took in her appearance. She was wearing the mint green scrub bottoms that I’d seen the patient care staff wear, but the scrub top was nowhere to be found. Instead, a very small, very tight shirt thing with tiny straps showed off her waifish physique. Although, calling her a waif was maybe inaccurate.

The closer I got, the more definition I saw in her arms. Holy hell, but this scrawny chick had some guns. She wasn’t flexing or anything, and I could see full muscle definition of her biceps and tris. Tattoos covered her arms, an interwoven pattern filled with thorns, skulls, blood and things that nightmares had been made of for centuries.

She looked amused as I blatantly took in her ink, and raised her arms up in the air in an exaggerated yawn as if she was bored.

I stopped short, my mouth involuntarily hanging open.

There was an intricate design, like an Indian mandala, which was centered in her armpit and radiated outward, taking up all of the inside of her arm to the elbow, and I assumed it went down her side as well, but couldn’t confirm because that stretchy piece of material she wore as a shirt restricted my view.

“Fuck, that must have hurt like hell.”

Her laugh was raw and gravelly, the sound smoky and sexy, causing my dick to pay attention.

“Well, it sure as hell didn’t tickle.”

She started to lower her arm, but I wasn’t done looking. Without thinking my hand shot forward, holding her arm high while I inspected the work.

When I finally released her wrist, I looked at her with nothing but admiration. I liked to think of myself as a tough guy, and I had more than my fair share of tattoos. But there was no way you could pay me to get that tender area of my body branded. I was pretty sure I would piss myself, puke all over myself, pass out cold or all of the above.

“What? I was going through some shit.”

She shrugged, her tone matter of fact.

Damn.

I really didn’t say much, I just observed her. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was making her a little uncomfortable, but I couldn’t help it. There was something about her that was oddly stimulating, and not just physically. I felt like I needed to get to know her, and I couldn’t figure out why. The skin on her face, unmarred by permanent decoration, was completely clean of makeup, and as pale as death. Her eyebrows were light, hinting at her being a natural blonde, but without stripping her bare I wouldn’t be able to confirm that, because her hair was purple.

Not the neon colors that bored housewives had taken to as a last-ditch effort to reclaim the youth that had somehow slipped past them without their knowledge or permission. No, this purple was almost as dark as midnight, but glinted in the sun, teasing me in its contrast between darkness and light.

“So, is this your break? And aren’t you supposed to stand at least five hundred feet from the entrance while smoking or some shit?”

I waved at the sign that was clearly displayed on the front door, proudly proclaiming the dedication to the health and welfare of staff and patients.

“Fuck me, after the day I’ve had, they are lucky I’m not suing them. I could probably get away with smoking pot out here right now and they wouldn’t bat a fucking eye.”

She looked at the cigarette burning between her fingers, scowling at it as if it were the cause of all her current woes.

“I actually don’t smoke.”

I reached for the butt and took a long drag.

“Now we can both ‘not smoke’ together.”

The side of her mouth lifted in a slight grin.

“So, what was so awful today that you would be willing to suck on these nasty things?”

“Ugh, this disgusting excuse for a shriveled up old shrew threw her shit at me like a fucking monkey in a zoo. Seriously. Shit. It got on my face, on my shirt, down my shirt. From what I could tell, the bitch had planned it out for a while. We hadn’t fed the patients corn for at least two days, and there were some kernels sliding down me and the wall. Said something about blaming her son Jamison.”

Fuck.

Me.

“Now I have to go for all these tests and will have to probably get blood drawn and all this shit, just so that they can be sure I didn’t catch some sort of nasty old lady germs.”

“Damn, I’m so sorry.”

“Why are you saying you’re sorry? It’s not your fault.”

“Well…”

She just shook her head at me.

“By the way, my name is Jennifer.”

Well, that was unexpected. For some reason I thought that she’d have an edgier name, something that matched the exterior. Instead, she had a Sunday picnic after church type of name.

“Jesus Christ, please tell me you weren’t expecting something like Jagger, something that sounds like what the princess of darkness would be appropriately named.”

I grinned at her sheepishly, because, yeah… Jagger would totally fit her.

“Ugh, I’m so over being judged based on my appearance.”

She started to walk away from me and I felt the need to stop her. To keep her. I didn’t want to put any real thought into my reasoning, but I needed her to not walk away.

“Wait, please…”

“Why, so you can try to figure out other stuff about me based on my appearance? Like, is she on welfare? Is she a whore on the side? Maybe she slept with the tattoo artist, that’s a lot of work, and that shit ain’t cheap.”

Her eyes raged with fire, and I delighted in it. Her entire body transformed in her attack and it was the damn sexiest sight I’d ever seen.

“Jennifer, please, I’m sorry if I misjudged you…”

“Who the fuck are you, anyway? And why the fuck do you even give a shit?”

“My name is Jamison.”

I didn’t see it coming, but by God I felt when it hit. I doubled over in pain from the right hook she landed in my stomach. That was one of the nastiest punches I’d ever taken, and I’d taken more than my share in my life. I wasn’t proud that a five foot nothing chick just nearly brought me to my knees.

“Fuck you and your shit slinging cunt of a mother. I hope the two of you rot in hell.”

She walked away as my cock throbbed, engorged at the sight of her. Her ass swayed with the speed at which she walked, not willing to run yet obviously needing to get away from me. She was not willing to give me the satisfaction that perhaps I had affected her, and that made the hint of a smile form on my lips. The darkness of her midnight purple hair glinted with the sunlight, making it impossible to stop watching despite the distance she quickly put between us.

I thought of my usual fling, meaningless sex with dark haired beauties. Women who meant nothing to me but a warm place to sink my hardened dick. This one, she didn’t fit my normal mold. She wasn’t sweet, she wasn’t soft. She was all hard edges, anger and acidity.

She wasn’t my normal flavor, but son of a bitch, I needed to taste her darkness.