My Evil Mother: A Short Story

Mother cried quietly to herself; then, after a little while, she picked me up and carried me out of the house to a patch of woods a long way from our neighbourhood where no one ever went. There she tossed me into some dry underbrush among the pine trees, and covered my face with the blanket. She probably meant for me to smother to death, or to free

And so before the summer was over, we gave up. The kids were too busy indulging their new selves and quit playing make-believe out in the woods. And Gretchen and I were lost in our private worlds of self-disgust and conjugal disharmony. By Christmas we’d forgotten about the portal, and the clearing began to fill in. We did what people do: we heaved

He frowned; he shook his head at his mother. Her will, he said, is a terrible force.

Your father wouldn’t give me my freedom, she would say, and so I had to go to court and get it that way.…