Freedom

Freedom

         The man looked over his shoulder at the gnarled bent figure of his mother. She lay upon the bed, asleep, unconscious from pain, appearing by all rights dead already. The man turned around and went back to the bed, and pulled the covers over the beloved parent, nervously looking at her closely to check for breathing.

         Ok. She still breathed. He sighed, and turned once more to exit the desolate room. The awful muted interior made for a perfect sick room. It was almost as if it had been decorated by her in premonition of these days to come. Grey wall paper, peeling at the corners with yellow stains showing through, and fifty year old faded yellow tile framed the room, and the accoutrements were no better. The bedspread matched the walls in color, although it was once white, and was stained from many "accidents" of the patient. The furniture was just shoddy old oak pieces, which hardly brought any life to the morbid chamber.

         The man quickly exited to escape the oppression of the sick room, and made his was through the long hallway into the slightly more cheery kitchen. There he thought to make himself a cup of tea, and proceeded to pull the old copper pot out of a cabinet and fill it with water, and then set it to boil on the stove. He watched it for a moment before looking up and running his hand through his now balding, graying hair. He looked down at his hand in dismay, eyeing the strands he had pulled out. His eyes bulged, chin quivered, and his teeth crushed down upon each other at the unruly hair escaping their home.

         "I don't need this too," he muttered to himself. He hurled the hair away in disgust, thought better of it, and picked it up off the floor. No need to make a mess. He walked to the opposite side of the kitchen and opened the closet where the trash can sat. With two fingers he delicately opened the lid, and hastily dropped the hair inside, dropping the lid abruptly. He shut the door and walked back to the other side, and went to open another cabinet. The door handle fell off in his hand. This time he really hurled it, across the room, out the room and into the sick room.

         "Dammit." After checking the water, he went into the sick room once more. He looked around for the handle. No where was it to be seen. He crouched down and looked under the bed - and got a lungful of dust as reward. He shot upwards, scanning the rest of the room. Finally he looked at the bed, which he had been avoiding with his eyes. As used to it as he was, it was a travesty of his mother. What he saw was disturbing. She lay there as before, in bony fetal position; however, now she had a nasty bruise on her temple, and her eyes were open, staring silently in wide eyed shock.

         The man hurried towards his mother, knelt down and grabbed her wrist, while the other hand felt her chest. No breathing this time. He did not think to scream; he did not think to call a doctor. He did not think at all. He simply stared at his dead mother in awe. He rocked back on his heels, looking around the room, then back at his mother. He began gasping, seeming unable to breathe. He stood, still gasping, harder and harder, until it became an audible laugh. It started as a trickle, and got louder, a crescendo of laughter. He laughed maniacally, he laughed loud, he laughed so hard he had to stamp his feet, and the trembling of the floor disturbed the bed, causing the corpse to tilt and fall out. At this he only laughed louder, staring at his mother, tears welling in his eyes and the spit drying on his gums. His hands went up to his head and he grasped onto the hair there, pulling at it in his mad glee, ripping it and tugging himself upwards, until his head fell back and his laughter turned in to howls, which turned into screams. He collapsed on the floor, over the corpse, and the screaming stopped.

         “I’m free Mommy. I’m free.”