When I was pregnant I had dreams for Jake. I wanted him to be successful and handsome. I wanted him to be my best friend and the one guy I could count on. But I couldn’t count on Jake. I was afraid of him and afraid for him. If his talents became known, he’d be tested more and possibly taken away from me. I had no idea how to relate to my son, but I loved him. More than anything, I loved him, and I wanted to protect him. So, for me, Jake stopped making shapes and colors, but there were occasions when he’d unintentionally slip.
For his tenth birthday party, Jake played limbo with his friends from school. The other parents and I were in the kitchen, discussing articles we had read about autism and its cause. Even among other parents with autistic children, I felt like an outsider. At this point, I looked beyond a parent’s head into the living room where the kids were. The stick was lowered four inches from the ground and Jake flattened himself like a pancake and glided beneath. Most of the kids were impressed and gasped with awe. However, one child threw a fit and had to be restrained by his mother and removed from the party. Thankfully, most of the parents assumed the outrage was due to poor sportsmanship, but one child asked me how Jake was capable of making himself flat. “He’s just very flexible,” I explained to the little girl and hoped that the incident would be forgotten.
At my friend’s engagement party, I met Cesar: a fuzzy bearded, older gentleman with a drooping nose and thinning hair. Physically, Cesar was not my type, but he bought me a drink and displayed a friendly, kind disposition. Anyway, I was thrilled to be drinking, and even more thrilled that I was at an event that didn’t require dragging my kid along. Jake was with my parents. He was usually with my parents when I wanted to get fucked up, but there were days when I couldn’t help but be fucked up in front of him. Booze was the one luxury I allowed myself. I didn’t style my hair anymore or shave, or go out dancing with the girls. I didn’t date because most men would have nothing to do with a single mom, let alone one whose son was autistic. I couldn’t remember the last time I had sex, or even had the energy and desire to masturbate, so when Cesar approached me, I put no faith into the possibility that he might be braver than his predecessors.
“You don’t want me,” I slurred over my cocktail, “I’m a basket-case. My life is a mess, my son is a mess. You wouldn’t just be dating me. You’d be dating my baggage. You’d be dating my fears, my insecurities, and my sadness.”
“Why are you so sad?” Cesar asked unexpectedly and I considered the question long before answering.
“I’m sad because my son doesn’t love me like I love him.” I don’t think I had ever said it out loud before then, but it was the truth. Jake did not like to be touched. He reacted nervously when I tried to hold him, and he would pull away when I kissed him. Over the years, Jake learned to mimic gestures of love, but nothing ever seemed organic or from his heart. He didn’t want to be with me. He wanted to be elsewhere. I’m not sure how I knew this. I just did.
Jake didn’t like Cesar coming over all the time. He would blend into the walls, just so I wouldn’t be able to find him for supper. But I needed Cesar to be around. I needed to feel adored again and I needed the financial help—and I needed the emotional help. So I asked Cesar to move in after a month. Living with us, it didn’t take Cesar long to realize that Jake was a strange anomaly. Jake would come into our room while we were making love and silently watch us until we’d notice him. The first time it happened, Cesar yelled for him to get out and Jake ran into his bedroom and pulled himself up to the top shelf in his closet, using his stretchy, elastic arms and legs. Then he squeezed himself into the small, enclosed space and hid from us for an hour. Sometimes, Jake would mimic Cesar’s affection, and would pat my bottom and sensually massage my shoulders. I’d have to explain to him the difference between the love of a son and the love of a boyfriend.
I figured it was only a matter of time before Cesar would pack and leave, but he wasn’t giving up so quickly and was determined to somehow connect with Jake. I thought the man to be crazy. I’d been trying to connect with my son for eleven years.
When Cesar took Jake to the aquarium where he worked, something triggered in the young boy. He was clearly enthralled by Cesar’s store. He studied every fish, every seahorse, every bizarre creature that gracefully twirled and danced within their wet, restrictive, habitats. I could tell how badly Jake longed to shapeshift and become one of the animals, but he knew better than to do it in public and he also knew I’d ground him if he tried. Yet, Cesar was instantly motivated to strengthen his relationship with Jake through their common interest. He brought home books on marine-life and Jake would lose himself in the pictures and would run to me and show almost every page with the most enthusiasm I’d ever seen him express. His eyes were wide and his skin would reflect the bright, tropical colors of the fish in the books, and then Jake would turn to me and his chin would drop at the recognition of my disapproval.
When Cesar brought home a reef tank for Jake, my son’s typically serious face faded to reveal the most endearing, gigantic smile, and my heart ached. He could not take his eyes off the fluttering fins and the beautiful, majestic corals that decorated the glass. Although his obsession was a concern of mine, Cesar kept bringing home more books and documentaries on various aquatic species.
Then one day, Cesar and I caught Jake climbing into the tank, feet first, with his legs stretched like his bones were made of rubber. Most boys Jake’s age would not have been able to fit into the shallow glass rectangle, but Jake contorted his body just so. He elongated himself and puffed up his malleable flesh, to fit like soft jelly in a jar.
“I want that fucking tank out of here!” I shouted at Cesar after we had dug Jake out of the freezing, sticky salt water.
“What’s the problem, Maryanne? He likes that tank!”
“That’s the problem, Cesar! He likes it too much! He wants to be a fucking fish! He can barely control his body!”
“I think he’s a special boy with a gift!” Cesar said to me.
“He’s a freak! And you’re encouraging him to be a freak!”
“Why shouldn’t I encourage him to be who he is?”
“I want him to be normal!”
“Well, he’s not normal Maryanne! And all the therapy and all the sped classes in the world aren’t going to make Jake a normal kid! Love him for who he is!”
“Get out!” I screamed and I tossed him one of his shirts from the closet. “Get the fuck out of my house!” I threw another shirt at him, and another, and began to cry as I piled Cesar’s clothes onto the bed. Cesar did not move and I stomped outside the room to find Jake listening from the hallway. His skin was red and he pleaded to me using only his eyes. I didn’t know what to say. I went to hug him, but he recoiled and went back to his room.
Cesar and I managed to make up that night, but I wasn’t ready to fully let my guard down. I was still pissed off. Not so much at Cesar, but at myself for being the shitty mother I was. Cesar’s words hurt deep, as I honestly couldn’t say for sure what it was that I loved about my son. I’d spent eleven years feeling uncomfortable and disengaged from him. I was jealous of Cesar’s ability to appreciate Jake’s abnormalities and even understand them on some level. I watched mothers on the playground getting hugs and kisses from their sons and I felt only self-pity and resentment.
“Let’s take a vacation,” Cesar suggested to me. “You’re overworked and overstressed. What this family needs is a good getaway.” I laughed at the idea of a vacation. I hadn’t taken one since my trip to Santa Cruz when Jake was conceived. But Cesar had some cash stored away, and said he wanted to take me and Jake to the coast for sunshine and a relaxing dip in the ocean.
“You mean you want to show Jake the beach,” I said, mildly irritated by Cesar’s persistence.
“Yes, I do,” Cesar replied confidently, “and I want to see you in a tiny, tight bikini.” He kissed me and rubbed my thighs and I remembered Jake’s father looking me up and down on the beach.
I
was twenty then, and skinny, and my breasts overflowed in a bikini that barely left anything to the imagination. We drank banana daiquiris and briefly conversed. Well, I talked. He nodded. Then we made love under starlight on the dunes. The waves made a haunting melody that echoed through the vast, open space, and the Portuguese man between my legs fucked me into oblivion. His long, smooth penis filled me up and his fingers stimulated me through some kind of suction method I couldn’t quite figure out. I was drunk and things were hazy, so I just laid back and enjoyed orgasm after orgasm.
During the car ride from our home in Arizona, Jake read his marine-biology books and kept looking out the window in anticipation of the sea. When, finally, the Pacific Ocean emerged from the distance, Jake bounced and rocked in his seat. “Jake, calm down!” I demanded as his excitement intensified the closer we got. Cesar pulled into a parking lot by the shore and Jake banged on the car door to get out. “Christ, Jake, settle down!” I yelled, assuming he was having an anxiety attack from the road.
“Let him out of the car,” Cesar told me.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. He needs to calm down.”
“Maryanne, listen to me. Let him out of the car now!” I opened the car door and Jake undid his seatbelt. Then he bolted past me and toward the great, blue ocean.
“Jake!” I called out, chasing after him through the hot, gritty sand. “Jake, stop this!” But he would not listen. He kept running as fast as he could and I ran after him, breathless and panicked. Finally, I caught up with him and grabbed what I thought was his hand, but a slimy, smooth tentacle slipped from my grip.
“Let him go!” Cesar shouted, holding me back.
“Jake!” I cried, reaching out, and I watched as eight slimy, limp tentacles appeared from beneath Jake’s shirt and his body collapsed as he reached the water. An enormous wave then flushed over my son and he was gone. I was in hysterics now and kept calling Jake’s name, even though I knew he couldn’t hear. I ran into the water, fully dressed, and Cesar had to drag me back to shore and keep me suppressed under his weight.
“He’s okay!” Cesar assured me. “He’s going to be okay. He’s home.” There was a comfort in Cesar’s words, but I still wouldn’t accept them. Home was not the cold, lonely sea. Home was his bed in his room, in our little house, where he was loved and missed. I never saw Cesar again after that. He believed he had done the right thing, but he took my son from me, and now all I could do was wait, wait for the day when Jake would return. I quit my job and moved to the shores of California just to wait for that day. And every night I’d visit the beach and gaze out at its brilliant, sparkling mystery and hope that wherever Jake was, he was happy.
GAS MASK BABY
By Santiago Eximeno
Translated to English by Alicia L. Alonso
Child
Do not ask me
To decide
Cause it’s me
Who can tell you
How hard it is to live
Embryodead: Wumpscut:
The children pile up over each other. The bodies form a mountain of trembling flesh. Those at the lower positions can hardly breathe. The ones on the top move and shake, but they can’t detach from the group because the rest of them hold them down. They hold them down firmly with their hands, imprisoning them. No one can break the mountain of children. And they’re alive. And they breathe.
Maria knows this. She knows her son is there in the mountain, among the bodies of thousands, hundreds of thousands of other children, some teenagers, some newborns. Since she arrived, they haven’t stopped crying.
There are other women by the mountain, a whole handful of them. Trembling and crying. Pulling the arms of children that aren’t theirs. Climbing the mountain, stabbing the faces of sobbing babies with their stiletto heels. The women don’t speak to one another. Mothers, thinks Maria. Mothers just like her who came to retrieve the child they lost. Because, in one way or another, they have all lost their child and come here to get their child back.
Here.
In Hell.
Maria covers her face with one hand. She can’t stand the stink emanating from the mountain of flesh. Somewhere, someone has lit a fire, and the smell of burnt flesh is unbearable. The mountain is actually a wall, a palpitating wall over twenty meters high, a wall that surrounds her and reminds her of the old university lecture rooms where she used to teach before the guilt, the goddamned guilt condemned her. She turns around and looks behind her, at the place from where she entered. It no longer exists. The entrance is closed, blocked by the piled-up bodies of teenagers. Of babies. Of children.
The stench lingers, as do the murmuring and the lamentations. The litany of tortured children. Why aren’t they dead? Why do they persist on living here, on the other side? Maria was always told that, no matter what politicians proclaim, mothers decide. But it seems that it’s not so. It seems that the decision whether to live or die always belonged to the children.
Maria holds in her hands a map she was given at the entrance. The map is written with the blood of unborn children on the skin of elderly pedophiles. Typewriters were banned a long time ago in Hell. Maria holds up the map and peruses it, comparing it to the mass of howling flesh that festers, moans, and screams in front of her. She asks herself if the red circle dissolving into tears of blood shows the spot where her son lay, or whether it’s some kind of ruse, another pantomime designed to increase her suffering. She folds the map to one small square of palpitating skin and puts it back in her mouth. She holds it with her teeth, fearing the possibility of swallowing it. She would put it away somewhere else, but she’s completely naked. That was the deal when she came here; that’s what the demon that was black as night said to her.
“Take off your clothes. Get on your knees. Do it.”
And she did, did she ever. Anything to see her son again. To expel from her mind all the guilt, all the memories crystallized into an empty university classroom, a sad look, words spoken without conscience:
“I’m not taking care of it. If I were you, I’d have an abortion.”
With their faces covered by muzzles, the pregnant women wait on the other side of the mountain. She can see them through the smashed-up bodies if she looks closely between the thighs and butt cheeks, between the open spaces that the bodies cannot completely fill. The pregnant women pose like shop mannequins, and some of them have barcodes tattooed on their arms in black ink. Here, they are nothing more than part of the décor. Like the carbonized trees or the rivers of blood covered by barbed wired. Hell’s scenographer is a son of a bitch.
Maria puts her hands on one of the bodies—a girl with curly hair who smiles while she howls like a she-wolf in heat—and starts climbing. If the map is right, she will find her son up there among fifty other expectant lactating infants, next to a small group of primary school pupils. As she sinks her feet into the flesh, feeling inquisitive hands and tongues exploring her belly and grazing her vulva, Maria asks herself how she will recognize him. Deep down in her soul she knows she will do so instantly, and the knowledge terrifies her.
Climbing is everything. Wrapped up in the howling, screaming, and gurgling, Maria climbs the wall of unborn flesh without looking back, oblivious to the other mothers, the pregnant women, the masked demons using their red-hot spears on the naked bodies of women and children. On everyone. And when she unknowingly introduces her fingers inside a mouth and the bite rips off the first phalanx of her pinkie, she screams. She screams like a fiend, but doesn’t stop. She keeps climbing up, always up.
She doesn’t want to reach the top of the wall of flesh. She doesn’t want to see what’s hiding on the other side, the bits that she could glimpse through the bodies. She doesn’t want to see the men that look like mutilated blow-up dolls chatting by the river. She doesn’t want to hear the cries of the blind teenage girls sitting in a circle around old women with their lips tied together. Hell is everything, and she wants no part of it.
I’m just passing by,
she tells herself.
She knows it’s not true. She knows that, even if today she manages to escape, sooner or later she’ll be back.
Another step up the wall and, suddenly, she’s facing a smiling child. She knows it’s her son as soon as she sees him. His eyes, the curves of his lips. She doesn’t ask him how old he is because she knows the exact answer: one year, six months, and four days. That’s how long it took her to muster up enough courage to come to Hell for him. Because Hell is not losing your child. Hell is getting your child back.
“Mommy,” says the boy.
Maria loses her balance and nearly falls. But she doesn’t. She holds onto her son’s body as she screams and cries. She pulls him towards her, trying to extract his smashed flesh from the wall of bodies waiting for the mothers who aborted them to return for them. Some of them have faces covered in wrinkles; they know for certain that their mother will never come. Maria pulls with all her might, fearlessly. And the boy’s body slips out little by little, centimeter by centimeter, while the other unborn children open their hands to set him free.
“Mommy,” repeats the boy.
“I’m here,” whispers Maria. “I’m here.”
Going down is a feverish madness. The hands of a hundred failures hold her up, encourage her. They don’t retain her, they just help her descend back down to the barbed wire floor. The hands treat her gently because they already know she’s a mother, a real mother, the kind of mother who will give up her own life to get her lost child back.
Down below, women smile at her and try to touch her. Maria cradles her son in her arms and moves away from them, terrified. She doesn’t want to think about how long their children have been trapped in there, waiting. Like so many other children who live there for eternity, in the wall of flesh while, oblivious to their reality, their mothers go on with their lives and forget. Forget.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology Page 14