Jesus lay back. A warm stream of tears couled out the far corner of each eye and ran over his cheek bone and behind his ear and somewhere through the back of his hair. His lips were dry and his mouth trembled ever so slightly. A fever of melancholy rippled through him. He was naked and spread out, trying to allow his muscles to completely relax so as they didn't ache. But no matter how supple or flopped out he was it felt as though he was resting on hard board and the hardness had worn right into the crux of every muscle. He moved slightly again. It helped for seconds at a time and then the wearing pain would return. He no longer bothered to turn on his stomach. It only upset his insides and in that position the slightest dust from the mattress or covers sent him into compulsive fits of sneezing which almost killed him each time. He concentrated on his tears. He imagined they were acidic and were burning valleys into his face. He imagined they were tattoo ink. Then the tears turned cold and he imagined they were ice. He saw an icy metal railing and a young child's hand grab and clutch ahold, the skin welded to the metal by the frost. He saw his mother. And now the tears flowed stronger. They had shared the very same mattress he was lying on during nights where they had only just managed to get a score. They would lie in silent tranquillity, watching late night TV and drifting off with cigarettes a-burn.
His mother was young. She had always been young. She became even younger when they began using together, not like a mother figure at all. He imagined her 15 year old body giving birth to him. FIFTEEN. The youth of such an age had never really registered to him before but it registered now. She was a child. They were almost of the same generation. He couldn't ever put that feeling into words. That small separation of years between them and how it affected their relationship and how he saw her was inexpressible. Who is she? He'd often wonder as a young adult. Sometimes he'd sit secretly watching her saying the word "MUM" over and over in his mind, trying desperately to connect the word to her physical reality. She seemed younger than him. Where she had missed her adolescent years through raising him she lived them in her thirties. As a consequence she never matured along normal parental lines and he was always aware that his maturity was in many ways greater than hers. He didn't want to think it, but she more akin to a sex interest than a mother, and at times, then, he had to stop himself from spying something sexually attractive in her. But that was before the heroin and before the hepatitis which destroyed her liver and bloated and then shrivelled her away. By the time they drained her stomach of bile in that final week of her life she didn't look young any more and was devoid of any sex appeal but to men who maybe had a fetish for fucking women suffering from severe radiation poisoning. But God how he wanted his mother now. Just like she looked before dying. Older, matured and brought to her intellectual senses by her oncoming death. She had even began to sound like a poet in those last 8 months of her life, as if she had suddenly been overcome by a great wisdom and had reunited with nature. And so Jesus wept and his illness progressed and on whatever plane he was then on his mother was there.
"It pains me to see you like this, son," she said. She stood in the doorway behind him, pale from the daylight coming in through the window opposite. Jesus didn't move. He didn't turn and face her. He lay with his eyes closed and listened to her words. Then he said:
"Mum, you gotta help me... Please, I'm dying. You must have something... fifteen pounds?"
"If I had it I'd have already given it you," she said. "I'm ill too. I need help too. I'm older and frailer than you. God, it hurts."
She was in her pink pyjama bottoms and top, barefeet, her dyed blonde hair matted from almost two days in bed, three inches of dark roots from almost two months of barely scraping by with enough junk to allow her to do anything other than rise, get well, eat cereal and then climb back into bed. It had turned into tough times for the two of
WORD COUNT: 779
unfinished
His mother was young. She had always been young. She became even younger when they began using together, not like a mother figure at all. He imagined her 15 year old body giving birth to him. FIFTEEN. The youth of such an age had never really registered to him before but it registered now. She was a child. They were almost of the same generation. He couldn't ever put that feeling into words. That small separation of years between them and how it affected their relationship and how he saw her was inexpressible. Who is she? He'd often wonder as a young adult. Sometimes he'd sit secretly watching her saying the word "MUM" over and over in his mind, trying desperately to connect the word to her physical reality. She seemed younger than him. Where she had missed her adolescent years through raising him she lived them in her thirties. As a consequence she never matured along normal parental lines and he was always aware that his maturity was in many ways greater than hers. He didn't want to think it, but she more akin to a sex interest than a mother, and at times, then, he had to stop himself from spying something sexually attractive in her. But that was before the heroin and before the hepatitis which destroyed her liver and bloated and then shrivelled her away. By the time they drained her stomach of bile in that final week of her life she didn't look young any more and was devoid of any sex appeal but to men who maybe had a fetish for fucking women suffering from severe radiation poisoning. But God how he wanted his mother now. Just like she looked before dying. Older, matured and brought to her intellectual senses by her oncoming death. She had even began to sound like a poet in those last 8 months of her life, as if she had suddenly been overcome by a great wisdom and had reunited with nature. And so Jesus wept and his illness progressed and on whatever plane he was then on his mother was there.
"It pains me to see you like this, son," she said. She stood in the doorway behind him, pale from the daylight coming in through the window opposite. Jesus didn't move. He didn't turn and face her. He lay with his eyes closed and listened to her words. Then he said:
"Mum, you gotta help me... Please, I'm dying. You must have something... fifteen pounds?"
"If I had it I'd have already given it you," she said. "I'm ill too. I need help too. I'm older and frailer than you. God, it hurts."
She was in her pink pyjama bottoms and top, barefeet, her dyed blonde hair matted from almost two days in bed, three inches of dark roots from almost two months of barely scraping by with enough junk to allow her to do anything other than rise, get well, eat cereal and then climb back into bed. It had turned into tough times for the two of
WORD COUNT: 779
unfinished
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