What a strange twist of fate.

I often thought about what our reunion would be like when I was young. Before the darkness. I never imagined it to be like this.

Her on my table. Pale. Cold. Unmoving.

Me with a scalpel in hand and the darkness rising in my throat. Hungry.

If I could still feel, I wonder what might be going through me at the sight of her after so many years. What would a normal person feel?

Anger? She left me. Anger seems a reasonable response.

Sadness? She was my mother after all.

Or indifference?

I’ve managed without her for all these years. She was gone before and she’s gone now. Nothing has changed.

But it’s about to.

The demon I carry in the emptiness that is my soul slithers across my tongue, coats my teeth and squirms to free itself from my shut lips.

It’s time. It can’t wait any longer.

My scalpel slides into her neck and slips down her torso in a long red line. I cut. Then peel muscle and skin aside, exposing her ribcage.

My work is methodical, precise. She may have been my mother, but at this moment it makes no difference. A body is a body.

Bones crunch and crack, the rib cutter doing its work, laying bare the organs I seek.

Darkness thickens in my mouth, threatening to spill out or block my airways as it bloats. Hungry. Impatient.

First, I remove the liver. I lift it with both hands and I finally let the demon out.

It coils around her dead flesh like inky tendrils in one moment and a cloud of black smoke in the next. It consumes all there is—meat, fluids, and the mistakes of her past that she had locked away.

We have a deal. It gets to eat, and I get to feel again.

But maybe this time is different. It’s my mother after all.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

The demon doesn’t care.

It undulates in the air, taunting me. It knows I need this as much as it needs me.
Without feelings, what am I?

I reach out and let the darkness return. And with it, it brings my mother’s memories and emotions.

I see my father. At a bar. A drunken night of fun. Something I wouldn’t care to see, but caring is something I no longer do.

Except for now.

Now I feel what my mother felt. Stupidity. A mistake. Something she would have undone if she could have.

The vision ends and the darkness swirls around me like the fresh memories within.

It’s hungry. Waiting for its next meal.

But I’m seething, grinding my teeth.

I’m a mistake.

The truth I always feared has been revealed. She didn’t want me. Didn’t love me. She left and turned me into what I am today. An empty vessel for darkness. Nothing else.

The emotions fade as they always do, and I am left aching for more. As is the darkness.

Next are the kidneys, filled with all the pressures she felt, the things that became too much for her to handle. I already know what’s coming.

I see myself screaming. I’m a baby. A little girl. A loud kid that causes chaos and never rests. Something she could never get a grip on.

A part of me wants to stop. I don’t need these emotions. Anyone but hers.

But the demon needs her insides. And we have a deal, so I keep cutting.

Next are the lungs, black and brown. Cause of death.

They hold her regrets. Her first pack of cigarettes and me, I assume.

The darkness feasts and I prepare myself.

I see our house through a car window. It’s raining. Her hand moves to the door. Stops. She stares at the house and turns on the ignition. She looks back in the rearview mirror as she drives away.

Breath catches in my throat. Her regret is mine in this very moment. I suck in big gulps of air. What have I done? What did she do? Why? Why did she leave me?

My breathing doesn’t steady. I wait for her emotions to leave me, but something is different. There’s a crack inside of me where a wall stands tall and strong.

I always thought I was empty, but maybe there’s more inside of me than I ever knew.

The dark cloud shifts impatiently. It’s waiting for its little morsels of flesh.

Without precision or care, I cut out the bits and pieces that are too insignificant to hold any emotions: gallbladder, spleen, pancreas. They don’t matter.

As the darkness snatches them up, I go for the heart. Carefully, I slice through the aorta and free this big muscle of hers from her now empty chamber.

I hesitate. But only for a moment.

Then I offer her heart to the darkness. It wraps around, devouring all.

My chest tightens and I don’t know what to expect, what to feel. Emotions that had lain dormant for so long tingle inside of me.

I’m uncertain. I’m hopeful. I’m angry. I’m afraid.

The darkness finished its meal; it creeps up my arms and hovers before my eyes.

I see myself in the distance. Across the street. In a cafe. On a bench. Through all ages of my life.

And I feel sorrow. Pain. Regret. Fear.

And love.

My mother loved me.

She left me, but she never stopped loving me.

The darkness floats above me and I open my mouth out of habit. It’s time for it to return. It’s had its fill.

But it doesn’t come.

I look down at my mother’s corpse as tears sting my eyes. The wall I had built to protect myself is crumbling to pieces.

I blink up at the demon I carried within me for so long and watch it dissipate. There’s no room for it inside of me anymore.

I’m no longer empty.

There’s a box in the ground. It’s about five and a half feet long, three feet wide, and one foot deep. I’m in it.

You walk overhead. I can feel the slight tremors through the mud. You can’t hear my screams and the pounding of my fists against the wood. Or at least, I assume you can’t.

Maybe you can hear something; a muffled beat, a tiny shudder. But whatever you hear, it doesn’t make you want to hang around. So you go on. Your pace quickens. It’s ok, I understand. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Still, I give another cry for help as your tremors become more and more faint and then nothing.

My voice is almost deafening. The noise gets bounced around the space and sucked back into me. I’ve become extra sensitive to sound since being in here; every vibration from up there, every creature scurrying around the dirt, every drip that makes it through, I hear and feel it all.

My touch is more sensitive too. I’ve mapped out every rough contour of this wooden prison as best as its restrictive shape will allow.

I’ve fainted three times at least. I did surprisingly well before the first time. But the minutes between faintings are fast decreasing. The air is heavy and hot like an earthy sauna.
I muster up the strength to hit my ceiling a few times more. But the dull thuds give no sign that I’m getting anywhere. Someone needs to get me out. I heard that in times of crisis, some people are capable of physical feats that are otherwise impossible. Some survival instinct gives us momentary superpowers. Well, I didn’t have that when I woke up and I certainly don’t now. I need help. Morse code crosses my mind, but if no-one can hear the thumps, then how would they notice the rhythm?

Then I hear the tiniest of scrapes to the left of my head. I swivel my neck a little. Another scrape. Slightly louder. The flick of a leg? There’s definitely something there. If there’s a gap for a bug then there’s a place to aim for. I can’t quite roll onto my front, my shoulder hits the roof at a 45 degree angle, but I turn to search in the darkness better.

There is a pinprick of a hole. And something tickles my fingertip. A tiny leg or bug’s antenna. A pang of hope. This is the place to aim for with the metal zip on my jeans. This will be how I exert my last remaining energy before I pass out again.

I pull my trousers down to my knees and then use my feet to shimmy them down the rest of the way. The movement is making my breaths deeper and the thick air feels like liquid seeping into my lungs. Sweat trickles down my forehead. I desperately start jamming the small metal point of the zipper into the corner, praying to a God I’ve never believed in to let the wood give way. I shove and stab and scrape with wild desperation, more sweat pouring from me.

I think I’m getting somewhere; the hole has widened to about a centimetre. Whatever was wiggling there has gone. Whatever saviour that was.

I stick the zip into the gap and saw back and forth, stopping every few seconds to clean the mud away. It widens to an inch, and I fervently continue until the zip wears down to the denim. I scratch and pull as best I can with my fingers. I barely feel the blood but I can smell it.

The gap in the box is now a gash and I suck in air through my nose, scared to open my mouth to the mud. I get my palms through but now I’m drowning in mud and my eyes are closing against my will and I know I’m about to faint, possibly for the last time. A last reserve of adrenaline rushes through me and I think that I’m getting that moment of superhuman power. There’s a loud crunch as some of the wood snaps, but the mud is the new wall I’m fighting against, a crushing wave that’s all around me. It makes me think that the God I never believed doesn’t want me to get out of here. I shove my face through the hole and embrace the mud piling against me.

Some new strange movement within the compacting dirt gives me cause for renewed fear as I continue pushing against the boards to get my shoulders out. Trying to breathe lightly through my nose so as not to eat any dirt, I swivel slightly and get an arm free of the wood; I push a hand up to my face to find the source of the movement that is getting closer and closer. I touch something that moves, a thick bulbous body half the size of my palm and eight flailing legs.

I scream a silent scream and the relentlessly compacting dirt shifts like concrete and forces the spider into my mouth and its legs fight desperately to climb over my sodden tongue and luckily I start to pass out for the final time before I taste it too much and I know that the God I never believed in sent me here for one reason and there’s no time left for redemption. 

Daniel Paton has had short fiction published in multiple anthologies and online literary journals and also writes screenplays and stage plays. Having completed his Creative Writing MA, he looks to work on new projects including a debut novel. 
 
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B09QQMH3Z
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