18. THE MOTHER
THE MOTHER
Olivia stayed as quiet as possible, counting each soft breath she took, and sweating from the violence in her gut.
Beyond her room, the new door was calling to her.
She walked toward the door and the house went silent.
The knocking stopped. Olivia's chest heaved and her heartbeat thudded inside of her head.
The first temptation started as a singular coral honeysuckle vine, blooming bright and pleasant.
It slithered up the wall and burst into multiple vines.
One of the vines wriggled onto Olivia's head and spiraled itself into a halo, hovering above the crown of her head.
The scent of honeysuckle spread into the house.
The second lure was a wisteria vine emerging through cracks in the wall. More wisteria creeped from jagged fractures in the floor and cascaded out around Olivia's feet, stretching into the hallway and then up the walls.
The wall itself was fuzzy to the touch. Olivia leaned in closer with widened eyes as they crossed behind her glasses.
There was a soft sheen of velvet grass growing from the wall and it smelled like wet earth.
The mossy door, outlined with honeysuckle, wisteria, and blackberries blossomed out.
Olivia softened her shoulders and stuck her hands on the plush moss.
Olivia felt for the long wooden door handle and pulled.
She let go of the handle at the sound of clomping footsteps in the room, then she went against her gut, placed her hand back on the handle and opened the door wide.
The first thing she saw was her "mother" standing in the center of the room.
Startled, Olivia flinched back and covered her mouth with her hands, not wanting to scare her mother away.
Her mother was silent. No motion of breathing.
She gave a long slow wave to Olivia, and smiled big, revealing large pink rose thorns as teeth.
Olivia approached her mother to get a closer look.
Her mom’s hair was made out of blue oat grass and her neck was riddled with tiny cap mushrooms and itty bitty ghost mushrooms. Her breasts were reminiscent of an orb weavers egg sac, they hung loose and wrapped themselves to The Mother’s body with roots and shining silky filaments around her belly and down to her left thigh.
Her legs were fragments of a tree trunk.
Orange fire ants crawled all over the deep brown toenails of her feet.
Her arms were wrapped in ferns and her fingernails curled over as purple Uluhe fern shoots.
The Mother walked toward Olivia and gave her a gentle pat on the head. Olivia held her breath. Her body shook. Chills shot up her neck to the roots of her hair. The Mother continued patting Olivia’s head, almost with a nonchalance. A kindness.
The room was overflowing with neon pink ferns. Thousands of tiny yellow flowers sprouted out of the floor. Thick dark brown vines lined the walls. Birds called each other, but Olivia saw no other creature except for herself and this version of her mom.
The Mother stood next to Olivia, looking down at her, smiling big.
Olivia looked up and smiled back. The Mother blinked slowly.
Her eyes were sunken in. She followed behind Olivia and her movements were awkward and boisterous, her body cracking, crooked, and sloshing.
Olivia wandered through the room and touched the vines and the yellows, and the greens, and the gorgeous reds of the hibiscus flowers blooming and then disappearing from the back wall of the room.
The Mother stopped following Olivia occasionally, to stroke her grassy hair down and fix it with her curled fingertips, and then she smiled again.
She picked at the seedlings sprouting from her belly.
She groomed herself and then followed behind her daughter.
Once Olivia felt fully relaxed, she was mouthfuls of wow, wow, woah.
The room morphed from a cloud forest to a field of wildflowers right before her eyes.
The room shook and then steadied as it completed its transformation.
Olivia noticed The Mother’s eyes were filled with a bioluminescent glow of green.
Olivia smiled at her again, then she rambled out stories.
Fairytales. Ghost stories. Tragedies. Stories she was holding in.
Truths. Lies. Episodes of her favorite telenovelas.
She told The Mother about her spells and her trinkets and her fears.
In response, The Mother opened her arms to Olivia.
Giddy at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Olivia took the chance to feel embraced and hugged The Mother as hard as she could.
Her body was sticky and the webbing of her breasts flattened down as if to make room for Olivia.
With her head against The Mother's chest, Olivia listened for her "heartbeat.
" It sounded like the buzzing of frantic insects.
The Mother smelled like a long sunny day and petrichor. A sun shower.
Olivia said I love you to The Mother and The Mother said nothing back. Olivia didn’t mind, as this was to be expected.