Chapter Thirty-Seven

Marie Foster looked the same as the last time he had set eyes on her. Her face had been frozen to the moment Steve had snuffed her out. It was then Darwin realized it was not him who was afraid to see his mother, but it was Steve who avoided her.

Steve had a good relationship with Darwin’s mother. To have murdered her for his own purposes left a deep scar. Darwin had killed many nameless people and that’s what made it easy for him. In reality, Darwin had never taken the life of anyone he felt any kind of connection with. Steve had, and that revelation was huge.

Darwin wasted no time lifting his mother up looking for the blood work. He immediately found the three syringes and placed her back down on the slab. For a moment he looked at her as he held the frozen samples thinking he should feel something, but there was nothing there. It was the nothing that he felt that made him feel guilty.

“Mom,” he said. “I’m sorry I let you down. You raised me to be better than I am…at least for the first few years of my life. I know you wouldn’t be proud of me. I’ve done horrible things Mom.” He laughed nervously, hearing his own words. “On top of that, your son is a faggot. How does that make you feel?”

Marie lay in stone silence, absorbing his words but keeping her opinion to herself. Frustrated, Darwin slid her back into her tomb and slammed the door.

He held on to the handle for a long while, more than five minutes, with his eyes closed. He was now convinced more than ever that it wasn’t what his mother thought about him that bothered him, it was what he thought of himself that bothered him. Darwin hated himself. He loathed the person he was and no matter what changes he made to himself, the old and tainted version still existed.

“I hate me. I can’t stand who I am Mom! No matter how many people I hurt the pain just goes on. I kill one, two, three then a hundred, but I keep feeling wrong. It’s no wonder I can’t make a friend. I’m awkward, cold—isolated. I can’t hide behind my past forever and yet I can’t stop! I’m fucking useless!” he cried.

“Not responsible?” he shouted with a slight slip. “You’re goddamn responsible! Not being there makes you responsible! Where the fuck were you when I was getting beaten every day? Where were you when Zack was having his way with me, when Cornell taught me how to kill? Where were you when Steve and I were planning our suicide? Where were you when we siphoned your liquor and drank ourselves unconscious? Where! You weren’t even there for the simple shit!”

Still the steel remained frigid and silent.

“I just want to die, Mom. That’s all I want. I want to call a do-over. This life is done, let me start over,” he implored.

After a few more minutes to mull in the silence, he lifted his head and began the walk back to the upper floor. He turned from his mother’s tomb not saying good bye or promising anything in the way of closure. He was making a break for it holding on tightly to what he had come for.

He began his march away from his past learning nothing more about who he was or what he should do. Like his childhood, he continued to feel neglected and he realized that was unlikely to change.

“So, why did you come at me last time?” he asked, turning around, expecting to see his zombie mother waiting for him. He half-heartedly hoped she would be there to end his suffering. “Last time you…”

Darwin gagged at the memory of what he had experienced in December; his last visit. Had it been real? Was it just imagined? The vaginal fluids on his lips and the taste they left all seemed incredibly real. At that very moment he could still visualize the taste and smell. It was sticky and off-color, like shrimp that had gone bad.

“Mom! Why?” he snapped. “Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. I know I’m not right in the head. I’m so disconnected from my emotions that I can’t function! I’m afraid to let people in! I don’t trust anyone! Even when I’m with Steve there’s a part of me that locks down. Can’t you see what you’ve created?”

He turned to leave but before departing he asked one final thing without looking to the freezer. “Tell me you hate me, tell me you love me—but at least tell me that I existed, please.”

With no answer, he lowered his head and made his way to the exit. For the first time he felt confirmed in his solitude, abandoned by his family. It was hard to feel worth when no one in his family was around to care for him.

His path was now a fork in the road. He could continue on alone shielding his feelings from others. He could terminate his own life and report to the void where he would one day end up, anyway. The less likely option—so it seemed—would be to create a new family of his own.

Death was preferable. Even with Steve back, Darwin was prepared to throw in the towel. Darwin was damaged goods.

Darwin found himself part-way down the hallway when he remembered he had one more thing he had to get off his chest before turning his back on his mother forever.

Running back into the morgue he found the freezer and slab open and his mother was now missing. Without a moment to even turn around to run Darwin felt a strong hand on his shoulder that forcibly pushed him into the stainless steel table in the center of the room. As much as he resisted, the frozen hand pushed down harder until his chest lay flat on the bench.

Darwin heard some fabric tearing but he knew he wasn’t changing; he was too frightened to change. The harder he struggled, the more pressure his body experienced. He wished he could change but his power was completely absent. There was nothing he could do except allow the punishment to carry out.

He couldn’t see his mother, but he knew it was her. Worse than a visit to the doctor, Darwin felt fingers pushing into his rectum through the new tear in his pants and they were ice-cold. He cringed and begged for forgiveness, clenching his ass cheeks and curling his toes at the same time.

A moment of reprieve came when he felt the icy intruders leave his anal cavity. Sobbing, he relaxed for a second and he found himself in prayer, even though he wasn’t praying to any god in particular.

His amnesty ended as quickly as it had begun as Darwin felt a large fleshy object enter him, hard like an icicle but much larger than fingers. In seconds it was clear he was being fucked as he could feel the body slapping against his. Every time he tried to move, the force of the hand pushed a little harder.

He was pinned. He had hoped for death, but instead he was getting the physical example of his life.

“Mom, please,” he whimpered.

The cold, hard object continued to assault him, pounding harder with each thrust. Darwin could feel no pain, only a growing ache and numbness. Finally, Darwin managed to move his head slightly, giving him a view of the mirror over the sink.

He didn’t want to know and yet at the same time he did. How was it possible? Seeing it would only confirm what he was feeling, possible or not, it was happening.

In the mirror, he found exactly the opposite of what he had expected. He found nothing at all. The mirror was empty and the feeling in his backside was now gone even though his insides were bitterly cold. At the realization his rape was over, he raised himself off the table and saw that his mother had once again returned to her home.

Darwin reached around and found the hole in his pants. Pushing in further with his own fingers he could feel the trauma surrounding his anus. A cold, gelatinous fluid covered the area. Not wanting to know more than he did already he ran from the morgue.