Tom kept a dark secret about his mother.

All his life he’d kept it—until the day came when, for some unclear reason, he just couldn’t go on carrying it alone any longer. He decided he would confide the truth to his sister.

Tom and his younger sister, Jennie, had shared a privileged childhood. Mom was a physician, and Pops had a good union job. They went on bi-annual vacations and received lots of presents on holidays. Now he and Jennie were both in college and still living at home, rent-free. Overall, there wasn’t much in life to complain about.

Except for his mother’s curse.

Which he still couldn’t complain about because he kept it a secret. But not anymore. It was time for Jennie to share the burden if she could.

Tom hoped she could.

* * *

He knocked on her bedroom door that evening, a half-hour or so after she got home from class. She shouted to come in and he entered, where he found her at her desk, already in pajamas and as relaxed as anyone doing an Advanced Calculus assignment could be. Her hair was down; everyone in Tom’s family was dark-haired and a little taller than average.

“What’s up?” she asked, not looking up from her work. Tom closed the door and sat on the side of her bed, staring at the floor. Best to go in a little dramatic for this, he thought. He waited for her to look at him.

She finally craned her head around. “Dude. What?”

“I need to tell you something, Jennie.” He sighed. “It’s big, it’s a secret, and it’s gonna sound crazy.”

Her eyes narrowed with a playful mistrust. Of course, a lifetime of annoying pranks and obnoxious trolling on Tom’s part gave her every right to be doubtful. Even so, she turned her swivel chair around to face him and asked with genuine concern, “What’s going on?”

“It’s about Mom,” he said softly.

“What?” She straightened up, suddenly much more invested.

“It’s this weird thing she does.” Tom’s voice trembled. “She’s done it my entire life, Jennie—and I don’t know why I’ve never told anyone about it before, but I have to tell you now.”

She blinked, gazing at him now with what seemed like a mixture of suspicion and concern.

“I was four or five the first time it happened,” Tom said. “It’s one of my earliest memories.”

He’d been with his mother in the kitchen. She was fixing him a bowl of vanilla ice cream with sprinkles, gummies, and strawberry syrup. She doted on him, always had.

Tom sat perched on a stool at the island counter, feet kicking and dangling. Mom slid the glorious bowl in front of him. He buried his spoon into the delicious frozen cream.

“Enjoy, sweetie,” she said with a smile. Then she awkwardly crawled up onto the counter and stood up with her head almost touching the ceiling. He watched as his mother contorted herself—bending her legs, waist, arms, fingers, and neck into a sickly disturbing pose, standing over him. Finally, she twisted up all the muscles in her face and screamed at Tom in a high-pitched, vicious screech. It lasted a good few seconds. Tom didn’t react at all; his little mind was too young to process the sight. He just watched her in awe, as frozen as his dessert. When she was finished screaming, she untwisted herself and stood straight again.

She leaned down, hopped off the counter, patted Tom on the head with another loving smile, and walked out of the kitchen.

“I don’t believe you,” Jennie said flatly, bringing Tom out of the icy memory and back into his sister’s bedroom.

“And I don’t blame you,” he said, holding his hands up for sincerity. “But it did happen. And again, that was just the first time. Mom’s done this a couple times a year ever since. She still does it.” Tom explained how he could remember many similar incidents—from childhood through his teenage years and now into adulthood.

He told her of a time when he was seven or eight, and he and Mom were in the backyard swimming pool. From the shallow end, he watched as she catapulted off the diving board and then suddenly malformed her limbs up in the air, screaming down at him with an enraged snarl as her twisted-up body hit the water in a deformed belly flop. When she came up from under the surface and swam toward him, she was laughing, and asked, “Did you see my cannonball, Tom?!”

Another time—the event which had confused him the most—was the year it happened on Christmas morning. He was ten, Jennie eight. Pops slid them the last two presents from under the tree while Mom watched on the couch in her pajamas, sipping coffee, smiling. They opened their new MP3 players—and as Tom looked up to say thank you for what he wanted most that year, he saw that his mother was already fully posed, body bent up and disfigured, standing right over him and Jennie with a look of pure fury. Her jaw was juddering violently.

Then she screamed her head off.

For an instant, Tom was relieved that Jennie and Pops would finally witness it themselves. But when he turned his head, Pops was fumbling with an ornament on the tree while Jennie jumped around in excitement, holding her MP3 player, laughing. When Tom faced his mother again, her shriek had ceased, and she too was hopping up and down, giggling with Jennie and—

“You’re so full of shit,” Jennie interrupted, laughing in her swivel chair. “So you’re saying Mom randomly screams at you in a freaky stance from time to time—with Dad and I magically unable to see or hear it?”

“Yes. Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better.”

“Right. And when was the last time this happened?”

“A couple weeks ago. Mom saw me pulling into the garage one night after work and waved at me from the front door. When I went inside, she was already all misshapen, standing totally still, staring at me. She screeched the usual, then unfurled herself and told me there was ice cream in the freezer.”

“So why does she do it, you think?” Jennie asked sardonically, playing along—though her tone and the look in her eyes made it obvious she wasn’t buying it.

Tom sighed again. “See, I’ve never thought of it as her doing it. It’s like she has no memory of it after each time . . . It’s like it’s something else doing it through her.”

“What, so Mom’s possessed? Right on. It’s a demon screaming at you, then?”

“I don’t know. But something’s screaming at me.”

Her expression was almost as though she were trying not to laugh.

“I really wished you believed me,” he said. “I wanted to know what you think I should do. I’ve lived with this a long time. Literally forever. I’m tired, Jennie. It needs to end. Mom needs help, and I’ve done nothing all these years—”

“Maybe you need help,” she interjected. “You better not start any trouble for Mom with this shit. Your antics go too far sometimes—”

“What if I could prove it?”

“Come again?”

“What if I could prove to you that I’m not lying? Would you believe me? Help me, even?”

“How will you prove it if Dad and I are magically bewitched from witnessing it?”

“You might not be able to see it directly . . . but if I recorded it happening, maybe you could see footage of it on a screen . . .” He trailed off, wondering why the idea hadn’t occurred to him before.

Jennie shrugged, her patience worn out. “Okay. Show me footage of Monster-Mom and I’ll believe you. But until then, I have calculus here, bro. So . . .”

“You mean it?” Tom asked anxiously, taking in a sharp, heavy breath. “Because I don’t think you understand. I’ve always tried to avoid it. I’ve never waited around for it wanting it to happen.” His voice almost broke. “So if I’m gonna do this, I hope you’ll help me after.”

Jennie’s eyes widened, looking at him with genuine surprise—and even a touch of worry, it seemed.

“Sure,” she finally said, without sarcasm.

Tom stood and slowly made his way out. He bit his lip and stared at the floor, his arms crossed as he mumbled to her. “I’ll get it on camera and show it to you . . . I just hope it doesn’t happen at night. It’s so much creepier when she does it at night . . .”

He exited, leaving Jennie frowning at him from her chair.

* * *

Tom was on guard. Anytime he was in Mom’s presence, he casually had his phone in hand with the camera app open.

But it didn’t happen. Weeks passed by. Tom knew that was a possibility. But he maintained persistence, forcing himself into the habit of being prepared at all times.

Weeks became months.

One evening he came home from class starving and found Mom, Pops, and Jennie in the kitchen fixing themselves tacos, the tortillas and ingredients all laid out on the counter. It smelled wonderful, and he was delighted to grab a plate and join in. His parents and sister were already munching down, seated on stools around the island bar. Tom fixed himself three heavy tacos with ground beef, shredded lettuce and cheese, cilantro, chopped onions, sour cream, avocado, and green taco sauce. As he turned to take a seat, looking up from his mouth-watering plate, he saw his mother standing on the island bar over him, all bent up and tangled like some bizarrely crooked statue. She bellowed a deafening roar. His tacos flew in the air as he scrambled his phone out of his pocket. Jennie and Pops were talking, laughing. Mom was screaming. Tom fumbled open the camera app as quickly as possible and began recording.

And that’s when Mom jumped on him.

All his life he’d coped with this strange phenomenon. Never once did Tom fear his mother would lay hands on or harm him during one of her episodes.

And she never had until now.

Tom was screaming in panic. For once, he was screaming as well. He was on the floor crying out in fear, his mother’s face right above his own, screaming back at him nose-to-nose. His mouth was wide open as he howled, and it was as if his mother was hurling her own roar right down into his throat. His scream a defense, hers a weapon.

Then there was nothingness. Darkness. And silence.

He opened his eyes. He was on the kitchen floor in his mother’s arms, Pops and Jennie standing over them.

“You fainted, sweetie,” Mom said. “Are you okay?”

Tom stared back at her, feeling a little fuzzy. Nothing hurt, so he slowly nodded.

“Were you watching a horror movie on your phone or something?” Jennie asked him.

“Huh?” he croaked.

“There was a long, loud scream that played from your phone,” his sister told him. “And then you fainted. Dropped your phone too. It broke, dude. The screen shattered.”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Tom replied. He didn’t remember. “But did I drop my tacos?”

They all laughed. His mother hugged him.

* * *

One night, after a few months had passed, Jennie sarcastically asked Tom if he ever scored that footage of Mom haunting him. He said he didn’t know what she was talking about. That upset her. It just rubbed her the wrong way how low he could go with his pranks. They were pointless and unfunny. Jennie and Tom began to drift apart after that.

* * *

Many years later, eight-year-old Maya was on vacation with her parents and younger brother, visiting a theme park. They had just ridden one of the popular coasters and were having a blast, now walking toward their next attraction. Suddenly, her mother seized in a sharp breath, elated. “Tom! Get a picture of the kids in front of the castle!”

Maya stood beside her five-year-old brother, Charlie, while he leaned against one side of the stone bridge that went over the moat and into the castle.

“Okay,” her father said, holding up the fancy Canon camera strapped around his neck. “Say cheese, on three! One, two, and—”

Tom’s body contorted, each one of his limbs jolting out into differently bent angles, and instead of saying three, he cast them a rancorous snarl and screamed.

Charlie smiled for the camera and said cheese, but Maya saw what was actually happening. Her dad had done it every once in a while, all her life. When he finished, he untwisted himself and stood straight again. “Who wants to go on the log ride?” he asked.

Charlie cheered, and the four of them carried on having a day of great fun.

Maya told no one about what Dad sometimes did—she didn’t know why. But she kept it a secret for many more years, nonetheless.

END