Cause and Effect

CW & A/N: Mentions of past child abuse, gaslighting/coercion, mentions of past drug/alcohol abuse, OD, cursing, absent parents, religious psychosis???, matricide.) (Also kind of ties into the prompt of: Center your story around someone who finally achieves their biggest goal — only to realize it cost them everything.)

The sky’s the color of someone else’s faded memory, muted to a grey as bleak as the outcome of all life.

It begins and ends the same way: with a bright light, and with a perpetual darkness.

In between we fill it with the nonsense of academic achievements, material success, possessions that only matter in the matrix constructed in the paradigms we’re fed.

I know this.

My sister doesn’t. I let my sister believe whatever she needs to, safe-packaging what sliver of sanity she has left.

A lethargic blip struggles with a thready pulse over the hospital monitor, the only sound between my mother, my sister, and me. Antiseptic scorches my nostrils, reminding me where I am, why I am, aggravating me to reality while I have my vexation fixed on the window. Watching the world turn from someone else’s view in the dying sunlight.

I sit on one side of my mother’s hospital bed. Bo on the other. Two silent sentinels as we wait for death to escort this bitch to her grave. Death’s taking too fucking long and she’s skated by too many times.

“Hey, Preston?” Bo whispers like we’re kids again and she’s got a secret, not a detestable thirty-five year old man and his thirty year old headcase of a sister.

Only my eyes slide to her. “Yeah?”

She’s a replica of me. A smaller, meeker version, protected from the full ferocity of our mom’s concept of love. Same dark brown hair—hers, frizzy and unkempt in the personification of her anxiety. Same green eyes—hers, flighty and haunted from shit kids never should’ve seen. Wiry body more bone than meat. When—if—she smiles, it’s fleeting and god-fearing, mouth trembling what it doesn’t understand making. Bruises track craters under her eyes, which stay wary when it comes to the idea of anything that feels good. She could’ve been a pretty girl. Smart, successful—whatever bullshit equates to societal worth.

The world could break her. Easy.

Our mother did before the world had a chance.

It made me a flesh-suit of gristle and paranoia and righteous fury with clean, gaunt cheeks, a stimulant addiction, and an uncanny ability to look into your eyes and see every goddamn sin and find the weight of worth in your salvation.

The preacher promises redemption.

I promise what is owed.

Bo looks at me now like she did when we were kids. Like she trusts I’m still the man—the boy, the brother—that’ll shield her from mom’s sickness, and she’ll follow anything I say, because what I say is the truth.

“Why do you think the demon picked Mom to possess?” she asks. Same fucking question she’s been asking since she got hooked on this notion.

“Predisposition,” I say with such simplicity she doesn’t question.

Shoulders shrinking in, her hands wedged in her lap, Bo looks at the tile floor. “Why didn’t the exorcisms ever work, Preston? When she’d go away to those month-long retreats with the priests, they never worked.”

“They did work. Just not long enough.”

Exorcism, rehab… one and the same.

“Why not? It seems to work on just about everyone else,” she counters.

“Demon’s got a way of… burrowing,” I cock my head, memorizing the drug-induced frailty of our mother with apathy. Tubes taped down her throat when the booze swelled it shut. “Some people ain’t strong enough to fight ‘em. Some people don’t wanna fight ‘em.”

Some people aren’t good people, plain and simple. But Bo can’t handle that truth.

Bo wipes a hand under her nose, fingers marred in taut burn scars from when she was little. Had an accident. Mom made sure it didn’t happen again.

“This’s our chance, you know.” I stare, unblinking, until Bo feels it and lifts her eyes to meet mine. “She’s under. Weak. The demon’s dormant.”

Her face pinches, drawing in a shaky breath to brace.

“She— It won’t be able to hurt yo—us anymore,” I whisper, coaxing my little sister to the justice we deserve.

Bo gnaws on her thumb of her good hand, eyes flicking to the window to search for possibility.

“She’d wanna be free,” I offer, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees. Speaking with poise. “She’s suffered all her life. We can help her rest, Bo. I just gotta know you trust me on this. Gotta know you want this for her, too.”

Bo lowers her hand, throat slinking before she pushes the words out. “She is sick…”

I nod, solemn, despite the thrum of my heart. “There’s no cure for an infection of the soul.”

My laced fingers dangle between my knees and twitch for a cigarette.

I’ll get one after retribution.

“There’s no cure for the temptation of evil,” she bows her head.

“Mhm. Right you are.”

Bo found reasoning and explanation in religion at a young age.

I let her have it. Whatever she needed—needs—to make sense of parental filth when we should’ve been given unconditional love. Nothing’s ever guaranteed, even if they should be.

It was Bo’s idea. Mom’s possessed by a demonic entity. The Devil’s in Mom. The Devil acts through Mom. This version keeps Mom the victim, pure and clean in Bo’s head. Displaces the blame to some larger, cosmic excuse to answer the question of why me? Holds water to the withering hope that somewhere, somehow, Mom has an iota of love for us.

I know better.

Bo hopes.

Hope’s a damn dangerous thing.

“Mom’d never wanna hurt us,” I say with conviction that sounds genuine on my liar’s tongue. “Death’s mercy for a woman like her.”

Bo nods like she understands—and agrees.

Silence ensues once again, heavy with contemplation and reflection of our own memories.

The chair creaks as I sit back, feet planted wide. The stance of a man that’s accepted his responsibility to protect. I smooth a hand over my side, ribs aching with phantom kicks. Now Mom’s legs are idle and useless in the bed. The hairline scar on my upper lip twitches, another ghost of a blow when the wooden spoon split my mouth instead of my cheek.

I think of how she chopped Bo’s hair to her ears, getting instant gratification in her mortification as Mom promised no man would ever love her. It’s held true so far, just not ‘cause’a her looks.

I remember the day Dad left. It was a Sunday. Can’t blame the guy. I’d’ve left too. If I could. Mom found catharsis in our welts. She showed Dad with great admiration, a self-appointed Picasso, like we were her exhibit of the consequences of free will in flesh and blood.

Dad packed his things and left without a word.

That’s the day I learned how to be a man. The day I learned to fight.

It’s easy to blame God, Satan, the universal scale of sin to saints. It takes courage to accept the fact we are, as a species, alone. All alone, stuck with the unending consequence of cause and effect.

Bo got the idea in her head when she was six, seeing one of Mom’s many ‘friends’ seizing on the couch, shouting gibberish as he gargled on his own vomit. Her little brain took an overdose and created something digestible.

Bo saw a monster. Saw evil. Saw the work of Satan in the meat of man and ran with it.

She saw me eat a fist from another one’a Mom’s boyfriends. Saw the blood waterfall from my mouth, the teeth I spit, and yelled Satan! Deceiver! Vile snake! with an unshakable creed it sounded like Pentecostal tongues. It was enough to make Tommy, I think his name was, lunge for her.

That’s the day I dug a hole in the ground and learned it really does need to be six feet deep, or rain erodes what you don’t want found.

Food I had to steal ‘cause I couldn’t stand the sound of Bo’s growling stomach in the middle of the night. She’d cry, confused, maybe just to exhaust herself to stop thinking about food, and I couldn’t fucking take it anymore.

That’s the night I understood my purpose.

I’m a patient man. Justice takes time. It’s a systematic process of trial, weighing evidence, innocence, and of course: determining punishment fit for the crime.

After three decades around the sun, almost two of them spent learning how to lie, cheat, steal, fight, win—I see opportunity. To close this chapter for good. To help Bo move on, storing the memories of Mom away in a box labeled evil: do not open.

My sister wants her ‘cured’. I want her dead.

“Bo.”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna do God’s work, don’t you?”

“Well… yes, of course.” She shifts with a nervous chuckle. All expression drains from her face when she sees the tenacity in mine. “...Why, Preston?”

“Sometimes God’s work is dirty.“ I raise my brows, gauging her commitment. A challenge. Bait.

“I know.” Instant, quiet, her spine straightening like she’s got something to prove.

“Will you get your hands dirty for God? Get in the mud for divine retribution?”

“Yes.”

“And what if you didn’t have to get dirty at all, hm? Even better, right? Spiritual cleansing of the evil leech, giving freedom to our poor, godforsaken mother and your hands stay clean.”

Her hands fidget with my proposal, eyes darting to Mom like she might have something to say. “...How?” Her lips shape the question by each letter, eyes lingering on Mom to make damn sure she doesn’t rise.

I pull a capped syringe from my pocket. Just like the ones Mom used to poke into her arms, feet, backs of her hands. Not the same substance.

I hold it up between me and Bo, admiring the clear liquid in the plunger. Our solution. “With this.”

“What is that?”

I pause, moving only my eyes to Bo. I drawl the answer out slow, tasting my own dishonesty. “...Holy water.”

“Holy water? Well, wouldn’t that have worked before?”

“We never tried it in the veins, Bo.”

“Yeah, but she’s drank it before. She just puked it up and was fine the next day, remember?”

“I remember.”

That’s the day I learned to be smarter.

“This holy water’s different,” I assure.

It is.

Tap. Tap. Tap. A dull thunk of the capped needle on my knee.

Bo wraps herself in her arms; an futile disappearing act.

“Think of Psalms 34:16,” I say, soft and sincere. “‘The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.’”

The efficacy of scripture is profound. Words—simple, basic language—will bring a man to his knees, or a woman to a decision she sees as virtuous.

“This is what God would want,” I say without desperation or persuasion.

It’s the God honest truth.

After minutes of deliberation, under my eye and in the presence of perceived evil, Bo speaks.

“Okay,” she squeaks out. “Okay. Let’s try the holy water in her veins.”

“Okay?”

“Yes. Okay, Preston. I trust you.”

I rise. Bo shuffles behind me like a shadow, using my back to block her sight. But she’s present. Right here with me, her hand knotted in the back of my nicest dress shirt.

As the needle pushes into the mesh of the IV port, I lean in to share one last word with my mother through gritted teeth. She smells like something already half dead and sulfuric.

“...Told you I’d be the death of you.”

The monitor blips like Mom protests.

And if there is a Hell? I can rest easy knowing she’ll be in it.

I ease down on the plunger.

Lightning opens a jagged wound in the sky. Heaven cries. God bellows through the clouds, making the hospital quake. The wrath is enough to distract me, my hand faltering the needle.

“P-Preston…?” Bo says my name in a shaking breath.

The plunger empties into the port, my stomach cold and hollow with it. For the first time in my life, I wonder if there truly is a rotten thing living in my mother.

I wonder what I’ve done.

“What if… What if we didn’t kill the demon?” Bo whispers, eyes tracking the sudden storm outside.

“Nonsense.” Sharp, but not the same immovable force I usually am. There’s no fucking demon.

“…What if… What if we set it free?”

“There are no demons, Bo… There’s only cause…”

Fluorescents from the hallway burst in a brilliant flash of glass and power, like something’s been unleashed from the bowels of Hell and it’s my turn for judgement.

“…and effect.”

Screams erupt from the hallway. A blackness as dark as Mom’s soul swallows the outside world. Alarm ramrods my spine, face pale, sweat dotting my forehead.

Bo lurches into my back to hide, face between my shoulder blades. Just like when we were kids.

“Jesus Christ…” I murmur.

“It’s coming!” Bo cries, her fingers trying to peel me open to hide in my skin. “It’s coming, Preston, no, please, God no—!”

I don’t believe in God or Satan.

I believe people get what they have coming.

And fuck—here’s mine.