A Maltopia Only a Mother Could Love

My mother in this twisted version of the world I knew, Ol’ lady Ebe, sat all by herself under the same wall map. It was a world where North was South and Anarctica was the North Pole. Now the equatorial zones were obscured in part by the cloud of smoke that she had produced from the cigarette in her hand. Air quality over the southern hemisphere, too, was not good. She had polluted the whole planet that hung over her head while polluting the whole scene in the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen. Her face was no mean contender, either.

All this meant that my loyal companion, doom, had goosed me again. I once again had moved down the river of alternate universes. Even sneakier, I might have been pushed. Further down the line!

“Where’s Abby?” I shouted at Mrs. Ebe, who exhaled another plume. In our journey together, Abby and I had separated at some fork in the road, and I knew only moving on would allow me to find her. But where? "Where's Abby?"

“Who?” she feebly cooed, almost teasingly.

“Abby! Abby! Abby! You know who!”

“No son, I really fuckin’ don’t and I really fuckin’ don’t care. So stop boistering at me with heave-threats, you little connipshit,” she said matter-of-factly, putting out her cigarette on the sofa, “or I’ll have to have your goddamn father kill you like he did the others. It would make no difference to me. And I’m not just flintin’ my ass-flare, suckerrhoid.”

“Trouble here?” Mr. Ebe said, strolling in, drink in hand.

“Son?" summoned my mother, "Tell your spermer here how you’ve been up my ass, not that it makes any difference to me.”

“Son, now, I’ve warned you,” he told me. He took a swig and then continued. “Not that it would make any difference, but haven’t we had really I-don’t-care just about enough justifiable homicides in this shit-assive family already?”

“No, Papa,” Mrs. Ebe cried, lighting up another cigarette as she did. “Him,” she went on, “the last fuckin’ one—he wants to fuckin’ go and make us stark-rave so we’ll finish him off so we can be fuckin’ childless finally. And that would be just guttural fine with me. The little asshole—he’s so shitty and hateful sometimes. It’s enough to make you feel prickless, where I persist already, and it just megacreates my pisser even more.” As she sucked on the cigarette, I sucked it up for harmony’s sake. Blessed are...

“Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. I’ll do better.” When in Rome. Or is it Remus?

“You sure will, you ingrate lambastard, not that I really care,” Mr. Ebe said. “Such a fine young man you raised,” he said to his wife sarcastically. Swaying, he walked over to a small table that held just a decanter and some ice. “Now where’s your usual gun, wretch?” he asked me as he freshened up his drink.

“What gun?” I asked.

“Your birthday gun, dick-dock—the one I gave to you when Mom pooped you out—’cause it was the same gun that taught your crema-scrote big brother his big lesson, eh, Mom?”

“—Tellin’ me, spermer,” ol’ lady Ebe responded with nostalgia. “And his sister, right? So justifiable.”

“Heh, heh,” ol’ man Ebe laughed, “we crank ’em in...”

“...an’ we crank ’em out,” his wife finished, and then they shared a family laugh. "Honor killings."

"Yea," the old man whispered for effect, "it was an honor to kill 'em." They both laughed.

Actually, I had almost forgotten about my gun. I say almost because no one can truly ignore a hard piece of iron pressed by a belt against one’s flesh. It had just appeared a few worlds ago, and I figured the multiverse was just trying to tell me something, so I ran with it.

I did, however, come to forget my gun's purpose, its mission: to fire bullets through people. This made me wonder why dear old Dad, my spermer, needed mine.

“Why do you need my gun?” I asked him. “What are you going to do? It does make a difference to me.”

“You see, Papa!” Mrs. Ebe shouted. “You see how insolent the little vomiteer is. Not that I care, because I could care less. But you see?”

“Come on, son, you turd-lot McBreath, you know I need your gun so Mom can cover me while I beat the piss out of you. And it really shouldn’t matter to you a single, stinkin’ secretive.”

“I don’t know where we fuckin’ went wrong with shitsickle here,” the old woman said. “And I really don’t give a glitchcock.”

This foster home just wasn’t working out. I ran, banging through the front door.

I ran and ran. A Bodily Fluids Recovery truck was just pulling off, a strangely colored malodorous stain on the cement below to remember it by. The spot, covered by a layer of dead flies, generated wisps of colored vapor into the summer air.

“If you leave this house,” ol’ man Ebe shouted, “don’t bother dry-humping back! I wouldn’t care if you never fuckin’ came back, you fumping squich-tit!”

I’ll tell you, I had to travel through some pretty nasty territory to hear something like that. Yet, it happens even in the world I'm from--a father disowning a son—and out of anger.

Not to mention being labeled a squich-tit. A fumping one at that! And I got off easy. What about the others? Siblings? Justifiable homicides?

It’s funny how when even the senseless becomes acceptable, it becomes justifiable.

I pressed on.