Catching Up With Mother

The pink gently curls and peels away, stretching and separating until what remains is a nebulous husk on the plasmic floor. The acids dissolve its gelatin state into glistening roseate fluids. The valves dilate and digest, frothing as they carry the former human skin away.

The acid bath feels good on Selectir’s shell. He relaxes the webbing between his spines and relaxes his limbs, all six of them, including the wings.

The broodpriest helps wipe the remaining pseudodermis from Selectir’s back, and then proceeds to guide him through the trachea. Selectir can’t help but lift the soiled fabrics of his former self and give them a brief inspection. Clothes. Identities on top of identities. It was all so trivial.

***

You ride the ramshackle dirt bike, still running on siphoned gas. There were thunder clouds in the distance. It wasn’t supposed to rain. Something didn’t feel right. Something was off. The colour of the sky. What was it? A feeling that hangs in the air, just a notion— It wasn’t supposed to rain today.

***

Selectir ascends the living grey corridor, the tremendous force of passing breath demands that he tightly grasps the cartilage. The broodpriest senses the apprehension and chortles a mandibular giggle, “She exhales deeply for you. It has been too long since you’ve been back home. Back inside your Mother.”

The hulking priest leads Selectir intracranially, his large telescopic eye ushers movement, staring back, now and again.

The many wall celia to do their work. By the vigor of their prodding, Selectir can sense that Mother is very interested to see him. There is a static-charged wetness in the air. Anticipation.

“Remember all that you can,” The priest’s myopic eye seems to shine, welling up from moisture. “Spare no detail.”

Selectir is then coated in the most viscous of mucus, allowing Mother’s dura mater to swallow him upwards in rhythmic dilations. He must completely surrender to the contractions or risk being snapped into pieces.

His body is spat out into a humiliating heap in her magnificent cavity. There is a pop in Selectir’s left leg upon landing, and a numbness soon after. His arms shield the brightness piercing from all directions.

“Selectir...”

His left knee aches as he finds balance. Rubbing vision clear, Selectir bears witness to the interior of Mother’s uterocranium. It is a vast and grey space with light glowing through her patagium scalp. As he staggers, the optic nerves at the back of Mother’s eyes follow like reverse corneas, shaking the many cords linked to her hanging brain.

Selectir folds his head down and lays prone. “Lifegiver, O’ mother, I return to mine birthplace once more.”

A massive tongue arises from the floor and prods up at Selectir’s chin, bringing his gaze to her mouth. As she speaks, blinding extracranial light filters between her mandibles.

“...I have been watching you. Scenting you.” Her celia curls around her child’s legs, holding him in place.

“Did they ever discover you?”

“Never.”

“Goooood,” she moans, “I am pleased how well you can imitate a commoner. You are well-prepared to soon mimic their leader, and truly tear their societal fabric from the very top.”

Mother sprays celebratory vomitus, jiggling the dozens of eggs hanging above like undulating uvulas. Each child of Mother sways connected to a neural tube leading directly into her cerebellum. Their only source of nourishment is her every thought.

***

All the roads seemed empty. No scavengers. No scrapers. There weren’t any lights on in any of the shacks you drove past up to your mother’s ranch. All of her lights were off. Her vehicle was gone. You decided to wait in her driveway. You turned off the ignition.

***

“Please... tell me…” Mother begs, “everything.” She jettisons the old clothes, up through her deepest canals, and in front of Selectir. He lifts them up and begins to conjure the life he once lived.

“She called herself Renice. Her bike broke down a mile outside of the village where she lived. She was a hermit. She was tired. Hungry. Preoccupied. She ended quickly.”

Selectir remembers what it felt like when he first became her. He remembers sponging her tissue, assembling himself. His first subsumption felt scary. He hungrily siphoned her memories to drain the tension away, to distract himself.

“She had a son. His name was Renault.” Selectir lifts the heart-shaped locket among the clothes, inside there’s a picture of a baby and Renice as a young mother. “It was through her son that I understood the rest of them.”

Mother’s optic nerves twitch, her brain lowers. There is a change in the light from outside her skin, a movement of clouds perhaps.

***

You had been waiting for over an hour before mother finally arrived back at the ranch. She said she had engine trouble on the highway and a friendly stranger helped her out. You told her she could have been killed. Could have been kidnapped by a slaver gang, or a scraper. But you knew it was pointless to try and interfere with her individualism. Her pride.

You followed mother inside. She was behaving stranger than usual. She didn’t know which room she slept in, or where the upstairs led to. Her eyes wouldn’t focus and it took a couple too many seconds for her to respond when you called her name. You thought the stress of her lifestyle was finally taking its toll.

***

Selectir looks up at Mother’s brain, and gently rests an arm on one of her hanging nerves. “Mother, the reason humans survived our atomics, and why they still linger in the wastelands, is because of their care. Their communal affection.”

“Affection?” mother’s voice turns high. “No my dear child. You are mistaken. This is a weakness. Do not be confused.”

The light outside started to dim, the grey walls inside Mother became more and more opaque.

“It's true though,” you say, resolute in your tone. “The reason their weak survive, is because their strong help. They are cooperative, empathic. It's why they’ve been so hard to eradicate. They always find another way, another escape. Unless we learn this, and understand it—”

The tongue shoots out and wraps around Selectir’s wounded leg.

***

You were very glad you came to check on her. She really didn’t look well at all. You decided to stay for a bit longer. As long as it took. You made her tea and sat her in her favourite chair. Was her skin always this loose?

***

Selectir cries out in pain. Mother says something else, something about misunderstanding purpose. Showing weakness. But all he could hear is the crunch on his waist, and the splitting of his head.

***

“I love you”, you told her, just as it began to rain. She looked up at you and smiled— a teary, sorrowful little smile.

“I do too,” she said. “And I’m truly sorry I have to do this. I don’t want to.”

“Do what?” You asked.

The back of her head opened up like a flower. You screamed, turned to run, but it was too late.