When I was nine, my mother crawled into bed with me. I had been sleeping but when I felt her hot, bitter breath on my back I woke up. I was instinctively tense. Nine was too old for cuddles. Something was wrong.
“I’m going to cut my wrists,” she whispered.
I tried to curl in tighter but she wrapped her arms around me. My eyelids were clenched. I tried to pretend to be asleep.
“I’m going to kill myself and it’ll be all your fault.” Her skin on my body felt like a wet fish. I did my best to hold in my tears.
“Ryan, are you awake? I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to tear my veins apart.”
She lay there, whispering to me about killing herself for hours. Or maybe minutes. But it felt so long. Finally she kissed the back of my neck and unwrapped her arms. “Goodbye baby.”
I didn’t sleep after she left. I just stayed in the fetal position, crying softly into my knees, hoping that she was telling the truth.
.
When I was fifteen I started seeing a therapist. It was my mother’s suggestion, ironically. There was a doctor who specialized in whatever I was supposed to have.
“What brings you to therapy, Ryan?” the doctor asked.
“My mother has been tormenting me for my entire life.” The words tumbled out so easily. I told the doctor about how she used to sleep with me, telling me all the horrible ways she was going to kill herself. In the morning she always denied it. It made me feel insane. Once I was old enough I got a lock for my door. She would scratch at the wood, moaning about killing herself. Drowning. Hanging. Gunshot. She picked a new one every day. I was always tired because I couldn’t sleep.
“And why did you choose to come see me now?”
I closed my eyes. “Because it’s gotten worse.”
“The threats of suicide?”
I felt my muscles tighten. “Now she doesn’t speak. She writes notes and pushes them under the door. Sometimes there is blood on them. Sometimes water. Sometimes urine.” I took a deep breath in. “But it’s not about her killing herself anymore.”
“No?”
“Now it’s about killing me.”
.
When I was twenty-two my girlfriend broke up with me. She said she didn’t want to be with someone who didn’t love his mother. At least that’s what she texted me. I tried to call her but she didn’t answer. So I resorted to texting back.
“Amanda, please. I want to explain why I don’t talk to my mother.”
“There is no reason to ignore your mother, Ryan.”
“She abused me for my entire childhood. She tortured me. She STILL tortures me.”
“You were abused? You never told me. I’m coming over.”
Amanda arrived with tears in her eyes, apologizing and kissing my neck. I recoiled, imagining my mother in my bed. Amanda sat across from me and wiped her eyes. “I am here for you. I’m so sorry. Tell me happened.”
I hesitated. I never wanted to expose another person to my baggage. “You know how we only spend the night at your place? That’s because my mother comes to my apartment every night and taps on the window. She stands there, naked, mouthing words to me. I have tried calling the cops but they always come too late. I can’t believe no one else has seen her. She just stands there. Mouthing it to me. But I can see what she’s saying.”
Amanda lifted a hand to touch me but pulled it back. “What is she saying?”
“She says, ‘I want you dead.’ Just over and over.” I shivered a little.
Amanda tucked her hair behind her ear, confused. “But doesn’t your mom live in Florida?”
“She must have followed me here. I don’t know where she is. I’ve blocked her number.”
“Ryan…have you ever considered that the woman outside your window isn’t your mom?”
“Then who is she?”
.
When I was thirty I lived in an apartment in a big city. I had roommates and dark curtains. No girlfriend, but that was fine. I didn’t want anyone to get close to me. I thought all of these precautions would keep me safe from her. But she found a way in.
I would fall asleep and she’d be there, in my dreams. Her naked body against mine, melting onto me. I would try to call for help but I was trapped in this in-between space.
“I am going to slaughter you,” she said in a sticky, slippery voice. “I will make you wish you never came out of me. We will both be swallowed up in blackness.”
Every night. The same dream. I often thought about killing myself but I knew that’s what she wanted.
I had just woken up from one my night terrors when there was a knock on my bedroom door.
“Dude, your mom is here.”
It was one of my roommates. I cringed. My initial reaction was to find a way out. Maybe out the window. But something finally kicked in and I stood up. I don’t know how she found me, but I wanted to face her. I wanted to confront her about all of those years of agony.
I put on some clothes and walked to the front door. A woman stood in the doorway. She was old and small. She looked tired.
“Ryan, I need to speak to you.”
“YOU need to talk to ME?” I was near screaming out of frustration. “I want you to be out of my life. Stop coming to where I live, stop showing up in my dreams. I don’t know how you-”
“Dreams? You’ve been having them too?” I stopped and stared at her. I realized for the first time that she was scared. She looked on the verge of tears. “Ryan you have to stop tormenting me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ever since you were a child you have been terrorizing me. Telling me you want to kill yourself, threatening to murder me, stalking me anywhere I go! And now I am having dreams…Ryan, why are you doing this?”
“No, you did those things to me. You tortured me.”
We both looked at each other. I was overcome with memories of my hideous life and in them all was my mother. My mother…who never aged in my dreams…who showed up at my window as the same age as when I was a boy…she never got older. She was always my mom from when I was nine. But this woman in front of me had aged. She was older and worn out. Just like me.
I was trying to figure it all out when my mother spoke, “It couldn’t have been you, could it? I am seeing nine year old you, not this man I see today. I never thought about it…then who…what…”
And that was when we noticed the two shadow people step out from behind the door.