My little sister, Emily, suddenly went quiet, then began clutching at her throat, as her eyes bulged with terror. I knew straight away what was happening…
“Mum, Emily’s having an asthma attack!” I screamed.
Mum ran into the living room, just as Emily collapsed…
“Emily!” Mum rushed over to her, and cradled her in her arms. “Stay with me baby!”
I just stood, wide eyed with shock, as my mother tried to save her. The inhaler wasn’t helping, mum even tried mouth to mouth, desperately trying to get air back into her lungs. But Emily never breathed again.
I could see that she was already dead. Her eyes had no life left in them, they stared blankly with the last look she gave, the look of fear, and panic in her final moments…
Mum was still trying to save her, even after an hour had passed…
“Mum, we need to call an ambulance!” I said, wiping tears and snot from my face, before deciding to do it myself…
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, then began dialing, 9… 9… ?
“Don’t you even think about it!” Mum’s tearful eyes darted straight at me, piercing me with a crazed stare, before reaching out her hand. “Give me the phone!”
I should have called an ambulance then and there. But I didn’t, I was just a child, and that look in my mother’s eyes scared me. I reluctantly handed her the phone, then went up to my room, and cried into my pillow.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up the next morning to rays of sun creeping in through the cracks of the blinds, while music blared from the kitchen downstairs, La Isla Bonita, by Madonna. I could hear my mothers terrible voice singing along happily…
Was it all a dream? I thought, hoped even.
I walked down the stairs, and noticed the sound of something sizzling amongst the backdrop of music. The air permeated with the mouth watering aroma of cooked bacon.
I walked into the kitchen…
Mum was frying up some bacon in a pan, still singing along to Madonna, and failing to notice me looking horrified in the doorway…
Emily’s pale, greying body sat propped up rigidly at the kitchen table in front of a plate of bacon and eggs. Her eyelids were crudely sewn to her forehead, keeping her eyes open in a white, vacant stare…
“Good morning sweetheart!” Mum said, finally noticing me, failing to see the horror painted on my face. “Go sit down with your sister, and I’ll bring you some breakfast.”
I couldn’t believe what was happening, it all felt like some bad dream, something I hoped to wake from. But it wasn’t a nightmare, it was real…
And things were going to get much worse, I could tell.
Over the next few days mum’s mental health deteriorated rapidly. She bolted, and padlocked both the front, and back door. Windows were barred like a prison. And all phones, laptops, and anything that connected to the internet was smashed to pieces with a hammer…
I wasn’t allowed to go out, not even to go to school. Mum decided that she would prefer to homeschool both Emily and I…
In place of actual lessons, we had brother, sister bonding activities instead…
“Mummy knows best!”
Days turned to weeks, and Emily’s decaying body mostly sat in front of the TV in the living room, propped up rigid on the sofa, like a doll made of rotting flesh, watching her favourite show, Paw Patrol, through empty eye sockets that overflowed with maggots…
The maggots piled up inside the sockets, balling into one grotesque, coagulated mass. Some were falling down her face and onto her lap, to join the others in burrowing, and feasting upon her thigh…
The smell was absolutely horrendous.
“Can’t you see that she’s dead?” I plead to my mother, hoping to get through to her somehow.
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Mum replied, as she brushed Emily’s balding flaky maggot infested scalp, before kissing her on the top of the head, reassuringly.“It’s ok baby, mummy knows you’re not dead.”
I lost it in that moment, I couldn’t take the madness anymore…
“This is all crazy! She’s dead mum, please get some help!” I said, trying to fight back the tears.
I soon regretted my slip of the tongue…
“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!” Mum stormed straight at me, and grabbed my throat, pinning me against the wall. “The only person who needs help here is you!”
She had a crazy, murderous look in her eyes that scared me so much that I never argued with her again after that.
But that was three months ago, and the smell of decay now fills the entire house with an offensive stench, a pungent, faintly sweet smell of rot, and exposed bowel contents.
Emily no longer looks like the sister I once loved. Now she is more like a zombie, the flesh turning gloopy and melting away to expose her skull. Every inch of her body wriggles with all kinds of insects…
Just yesterday I saw a centipede crawl out from one of her nostrils, then wriggle up the other.
Day in, day out, I’m forced to sit down next to her rancid corpse, and watch Paw Patrol, all in the name of brother, sister bonding activities…
I don’t think I can take this for much longer. I feel so frightened, and powerless. I haven’t left the house in months. And mum just keeps getting crazier. Just talking to her dead and rotting daughter is not enough, now she speaks for Emily too…
“Who’s my little princess?” Mum says every morning as she props Emily up at the table for breakfast.
“Me!” Came mum’s unnerving imitation of a child’s voice, while she moved Emily’s mouth.
And last night I overheard something that chilled me to the bone, mum was talking in a hushed tone to Emily downstairs…
“Don’t cry baby!” Mum’s voice soothed.
“I’m dead aren’t I mummy?” Came that creepy imitation of a child’s voice.
“Don’t listen to your brother, he is trouble that boy!”
“It’s true though isn’t it?”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I’m rotting and he isn’t!”
“Don’t worry baby, he will be soon enough.”