Take Care

Carol's mother had always been mentally unstable and needed someone to take care of her. "You're like the mother, and I'm like the daughter," her mother said when Carol was only a child. The pressure made her into a pearl.

"You okay?" the elderly woman said, grabbing Carol's arm with cold, trembling fingers, pulling her out of her thoughts and back into the moment. "Yes, just thinking about my mother. I'm sorry, it's time to change your colostomy bag. Sit here."

The pearl she had become trained her to care for others, and she did it with passion, carefully wiping up the leftover fecal residue around the woman's ostomy site.

Carol headed to the supplies drawer where she kept the bags. Opening it, she noticed a prepared bag with the perfect measurement of the woman’s size. It had been cut with precision. Almost as if a machine did it. The edges were too perfect, too deliberate. Not remembering doing this, Carol assumed she was just tired and had forgotten doing it earlier. Rubbing her eyes gently, she decided she needed some coffee to keep her going through the rest of the morning.

In the kitchen sat a steaming cup of coffee, wisps of vapor curling upward like beckoning fingers. "Now I know I didn't do this, but this is nice. Looks like I have a guardian finally looking after me," she chuckled, her laugh hollow in the empty kitchen as she took a few sips, again passing it off as just being too tired. The house seemed to settle around her, walls creaking in response.

The elderly woman waited for her to finish; her eyes following Carol's every movement. "Thank you, child. Because of you, once I'm healed from this surgery, I'll be able to do this all by myself and be out of your hair."

"I'm so sorry, ma'am. I'm suddenly so tired, I must be crashing hard," she said, easing the woman back down into the bed. The floor underneath Carol creaked, letting out a moan that sounded to her almost like the words 'Take care.' The sound lingered in the air, almost breathing. "Guess that's my sign," Carol said, sighing. She knew she was worn out.

She drifted off into a deep sleep, and the windows held her reflection a moment too long.

She did not rest. She did not question. She only gave. The house listened. The house learned. It absorbed the perfect mothering nature she radiated.

Stirring in her bed, she reached up to brush the hair from her face. Her hands felt sticky, warm, and wet. She screamed as she dragged something warm and foul down a strand of her hair, thick and clinging, like the residue from work she could never fully wash off.

"What the…?"

Sitting straight up, she gasped for air as the stench hit her, thick and suffocating. She ran her hands through her hair again, finding nothing there. Just a little greasy from being in desperate need of a shower. The smell lingered.

She shook off the bad dream and began her morning by checking on the elderly woman.

"Good morning. How's my favorite patient?" Carol said, gently pulling the covers back. The woman's skin looked grayer than it did the day before.

"I think I'm okay now. Discharge is today, Carol?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm going to miss you."

After packing up all her items and some extra supplies, Carol walked her to the front door. As they got close, the large latch moaned, unmistakably this time, "Take care."

Startled, Carol reached for the latch; it felt melded to the door now, warm and pulsing. It would not move. "Oh no." She looked at the elderly woman, whose hands were folded across her chest and her face frozen in a peaceful expression.

"Ma'am? Ma'am?" Carol called, but there was no answer. The lady wasn't breathing after being startled. Her eyes stared ahead, unblinking.

Carol ran to the phone on the wall, her footsteps echoing through the suddenly cavernous house. Above the phone, written in feces in childish scrawl, were the words: "Mothers don't leave daughters." She spun around to find the elderly woman had vanished from the front door, leaving only an indentation in the carpet where she'd stood. Terrified, Carol crept through the house searching for her, the walls seeming to shift and breathe around her.

Back in the bedroom, the woman sat upright, mouth hanging open. "I need care, but take care of yourself, dear." Her voice came out as a whisper, though her lips didn't move.

Carol realized these things were really happening, that she couldn't fight this spirit or entity that seemed to believe it was helping her. Upstairs, the bath water began roaring like something ready to hold her. The elderly woman was flat on her back again.

Deciding it was best to accept what this place wanted for her, Carol walked up the stairs. She peeled off her scrubs, shirt first, then pants at the top, tossing them aside as if this were the first time she'd felt free. Her lips mouthed "take care" as if she was finally accepting the command.

Days passed. At first, soap appeared, then her favorite perfume materialized, though it never quite masked the stench wafting from the woman’s body downstairs.

Carol found herself obsessively tending to her own body, scrubbing and primping as if possessed. Not trapped physically, the door stood open, but still the care kept pulling her back to the tub. The warm water felt like a nurturing womb, something she craved desperately.

So she stayed, soothed but in agony at the same time.

The paper and pen appeared beside the tub.

When they were found, the body of the woman had spoiled in the bed below, and Carol was upstairs in the drained bathtub, knees to her chest, skin wrinkled pale as something shelled and harvested.

On the tile beside her was the note.

Mothers don’t leave daughters. Pearls don’t leave oysters. Take care.