I am Mother, She is Me

Mother slows as she climbs the hill. From inside her abdomen, her torso scraping against the rock, I feel all the little undulations as she moves. I knock again Gerald.

“You’re getting too big,” Gerald says. “Too heavy.” His mouth is suffused with amniotic fluid, giving his voice a cloying feel. His words hurt but there’s a grain of concern in there. He has that sharpness that comes from a bullied childhood, the kind that hurts as a reflex. I let him jab, knowing he doesn’t mean it. Before Mother imbibed him, the bullies called him spine-boy. He does, in a fashion, resemble a spine. His cheekbones could be facets of a vertebra, the degree to which they stand out.

I spin away from him through the lining of Mother’s womb and into the gap between her organs. The wall embraces me and lets me pass. When Mother passes through the ruins of a city, she absorbs a lot of old human made things. We strip them for what we can get and let the rest fall through her system, back to the earth. The kept parts, Mother absorbs. Inside, she’s a patchwork quilt of the past. After so long inside, the absorption happens less and less. There’s less and less out there.

Gerald is right, though—I am getting big. It’s too difficult to pass into Mother’s skull now without a degree of force. In the years since absorption, I’ve grown into adulthood. Suffused with rich nutrients from Mother’s sustenance, I have grown stronger that I would’ve in my old life. Not that the old world could sustain me—or itself—much longer. When Mother and her kind emerged from the ground, people were afraid. Not enough for them to alter their actions, but enough to take notice. The military tried to stop the creatures. It was the last thing I ever saw on TV, the flash of bombs and a creature just like Mother. They didn’t do much. Everything that comes near Mother is purified. Everything but Gerald, Macy, and I. 

Macy was the first. She’s much older than me, like an aunt or a big sister. At night, when she screams obscenities in her sleep, I wrap my arms around her till she quietens. We’ve spent so many nights sat behind Mother’s eyeballs, watching the land pass, the cities crumble, and the things we used to love disappear—penny arcades, bowling alleys, garden centers. I thought it would be sad, seeing it all fall apart, but it’s just like stripping all the parts from a bicycle and watching the rest pass through Mother’s system.

Then one night we saw Gerald. He was one of the few not to run away when Mother came lumbering towards him. Most of the people offered sanctuary tried to fight, tried to escape or hurt her. The malleability that lets us float inside of her didn’t work for them. Instead, they passed through her like all the other inanimate objects—stripped and refined before being left behind outside. 

I like to think I had a part in Mother’s decision to bend low, open her maw, and invite Gerald in. First time I saw him I knew he wouldn’t burn up inside of her like the others and I willed her to consider him.

Pretty soon, Gerald, after passing through Mother’s thorax, was part of the family.

When I push through the lungs and then the throat into Mother’s skull, Macy is tethered to the jaw, picking at the viscera between her teeth. Macy doesn’t need to say anything, her little hand wave is enough to encourage me in her direction. 

The land below us rushes past Mother’s open mouth. We have passed the mountain range and are moving quicker on flat land.

Macy points to the ruins of a city in the distance. Some of the structures remain: threadbare shapes that are filled with green. Animals of all shapes and size move through the area. There are even some humans. Though they cower at the sight of Mother, the land they occupy is not like it was before. They only take what can be sustained, what can grow back. Mother leaves them be.

As she moves, the ground lowers into a valley. On the slope, Mother trips then tumbles, a slow sequence of violence due to her size. As she upends, I am reminded of my old life, freefalling and alone. As I collide with Mother’s bones, I feel how brittle she has become.

Mother keens when equilibrium returns—a shrieking noise that hurts far more than the fall. 

Macy leads me to a place where fluid leaks from the orbital bone. Behind, Mother’s spinal column does not flow how it used to, and her thorax is cracked. 

I move towards the damage, and as I pass through her organs, fluid from a wound flows, still warm from the sun. It is a touch from outside. An unwelcome one. I feel the shape of her body in a way I hadn’t understood before. These bones, these broken parts of her are not so different to me. When I look up towards the skull, I see that Macy has plugged the hole around Mother’s eye with her body. The line between Macy and Mother is thin, growing thinner. Macy is quietening Mother, helping her, becoming her—though I still remain nothing more than a dead weight. 

Gerald, too, is close by. He is tampering with Mother’s spine. He spreads himself out and fills the broken vertebrae, straightening and becoming them. He doesn’t look at me, he can’t, I think. Too proud, too shy. Spine-boy.

I am alone then, inside of Mother, though I can feel her, and Gerald and Macy through her. There are still the cracked ribs. I move higher and wrap my arms around the breaks, use my size to hold her together. I can’t move through her any longer, but that’s ok. I am Mother, she is me.

END