No Questions Asked

[victorianflorist]

Warning: Descriptions of Violence and Child Abuse

You begin to tap your thumb and fingers together, starting with your forefinger and ending with your pinkie, an old fidget you never managed to quash. Your eyes are drawn to the stump of your middle finger, you feel it with your thumb, noting how smooth it is after so many years. A memory surfaces unbidden, like a creature of the deep breaking through the ice, slow and laboriously. Reminding you both of an animal unwieldy out of the water and a newborn, mewling and stumbling as it attempts to gain its footing.

You are in the dining room. You gently place the china on the table, setting six places with the fine serving ware, and tracing the spiral pattern in the dishes as you go. You take out the fabric napkins next, folding them each into a slate grey triangle which you place beside each plate. You try not to rattle the ancient table as you do, conscious of your mother in the kitchen next door. As you finish setting each cup, you take a deep breath. In and out. Nose and mouth. In and- You hear an abrupt and decisive chop from the kitchen and raise your eyes to your mother. The woman who's raised you lifts her arm again in a swift motion and swings the cleaver down again, neatly separating a portion of the pork she is butchering into a pork chop. You tread into the kitchen gently making your way to the silverware drawer quickly and decisively. Your heart pounds as the knife comes down again every few heartbeats, neatly severing the next portion and digging a groove into the wooden chopping block.

You reach the silverware drawer, a few feet behind your mother. She begins humming in the back of her throat, the sound of a hymn you remember hearing a few Sundays ago. You collect the silverware, enough for each setting, and begin walking back towards the dining room, your slippers rubber soles not making a sound on the tile.

Your soles don't stop you from slipping in the juice on the floor, some reddish fluid that your suddenly frantic mind figures must have come from the package of the meat. The silverware goes everywhere as it tumbles from your grasp, knives, spoons, and forks alike tumbling both before and behind you. You lie dazed for a moment, looking up into the yellow light above you.

The light is blotted out for a moment as your mother, still humming her hymn, leans down over you. Her hair cascades around you both but you can't make out her face, or her expression. She grabs you firmly by the wrist and yanks you to your feet, still humming her God-forsaken hymn. You try to pull away but her grip is like iron, cast around your wrist in perpetuity. She drags you to the chopping block and unfolds your fingers setting the middle upon the blood-soaked wood, your ears filled with rushing blood and the sound of that fucking hymn.

The cleaver flashes and the memory goes white.

You shake your head slightly, the memory falling away like sand through your fingers. You wipe the sweat from your brow and pat yourself down, taking inventory of what you have on you.

In your pockets are;
3 sticks of Mint Gum
1 ticket for a one-way flight to ████████
1 sharpened pencil
1 unsharpened pencil
1 wallet/change purse
1 set of keys for your station wagon
1 pocket knife

You note that none of these are liquid, which was your first instinct. You take out your wallet and remove a penny from it, placing it within the groove, urging it to roll down. You receive no response from the bowl or the statue.