The Finger
Mary Layworth sat at her kitchen table warming her hands with a fresh cup of coffee. On the table before her sat a small opened box that came with a red bow atop it. The box had been delivered earlier that morning and in that box lay a small decayed finger, not easily recognzable as such but upon closer analysis it became evident that around the darkened piece of bent flesh their was a slim and simple silver band, her husbands old wedding ring. "Paul." she said over a sip of coffee. Mary had not seen her husband for three weeks exactly to the day, November 12th, her son's birthday.
Mary looked outside, it was raining, but it was a subtle rain, rain that makes you second guess if it is in fact raining but you know that it is and it's a cold rain.
"Hector, Hector." she shuddered.
Hector was the name of their child, their one and only child. Hector was diagnosed autistic at an early age, for he was divinely brilliant, constantly building and tinkering and discovering, but he was socially deranged. So much so that his social abnormalities had, at a certain point, started to blur into the realms of maladaptive violence and obsession. Mary would constantly find assortments of critters, squirrels and mice and such, murdered and mutilated around the farm. And once while emptying Hector's pockets before a batch of overdo laundry she found a crumpled-up peice of paper laying out plans to tie up and kill his father. After which he would tie up and rescue "Momma" from the fake world and bring her to the real, drawer world where they, Mary his queen, would rule and fill the drawers with a bountiful litter of newly made Hector's. Mary, knowing no one would understand and many would come to fear the boy if they discovered his..imaginative "fantasies", destroyed the plan and tried to her great failure to destroy the memory of that day, for no matter how deep her love for her son ran, she writhed with fear and disgust whenever she would look upon her boy from that day on constantly plagued by the horrific, grotesque images that Hector's plan drew upon the canvas of her mind. Spending "eternity filling the drawers with their fit progeny" is how Hector put it, and she woke frequently in the night from out of her sleep whenever this hollowing vision would play out in her nightmares.
Mary tried her best to maintain the love and warmth she felt for her son previously, but ultimately failed and Hector could feel it. The day before Hector's 18th birday he ran away, but Mary knew he wasn't far off. Perhaps somewhere in a rundown, makeshift cabin just over the hill in those misty woods she always told him to stay away from, survivng off small critters and scratching with his fingernails thousands of tiny drawers upon the walls. Walls which housed small cot, yellow with sweat and filth adorned with dead flowers and weeds, awaiting its queen, but only when the time was right. Mary couldn't shake these thoughts and became a nuerotic mess the years following Hector's dissappearance. That coupled with Paul's budgeoning alcoholism all but brought upon total disaster in the Layworth home. But she clung to some small hope that lived amidst infinite black, that maybe Hector was dead and that she could live out the rest of her days cleaning up after Paul. This "fantasy" gave her remote solace and she tightly clung to it for the sake of her own sanity. Another year passed with Paul stumbling about and the remainders of their extended family being offed by cancer and the like. The invention of socail media and rhe promise of increased connectivity it brought with it seemed but a joke, no one called, messaged, or talked to the Layworth's and outside of Mary's sister, Helen, she spoke to no one and was fully alone.
She held strong to her hopes for Hector's death but was ripped awake three weeks ago when Paul never came home from going into town. She sat in her bed shaking and sobbing, gripping the sheets to her mouth begging for Paul to walk through the door. She lazily figured he ran off, unable to cope with the desolation that had become their existences and tried to pick herself back up yet again, now in front of her the dried and shrunk member of her husand sat quietly.
Mary took another sip of coffee and as she did she heard the lumbering steps of a large body come down upon the deck behind her. Only a flimsy screen door gave barrier from the back porch to the kitchen.
"Hector?" she said without turning.
"Momma."