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sometimes, when aruru tries to picture her mother, she can only think of her sprawled out helpless on a tile floor.
aruru’s always looming overhead. she has a baseball bat, or a hammer, something to bludgeon and break. but oftentimes, it’s a gun. one of her revolvers, familiar and sleek against sweaty fingers, her palms wet enough to make it feel slippery. she’ll point it lazily at mama, just drifting to the space between her eyes, and watch her blood run cold as the metal. aruru will make a little show of spinning the cylinder, wondering aloud if the chamber is full. maybe it’s cruel. maybe in this daydream, she doesn’t care. with the barrel of the gun staring down the monster who’d ruined her with it’s beady eye.
that monster pleads for her life. for the trigger to not be pulled, for them to be a family. aruru’s already squeezing it. she’s never made heavenmaker live up to its name. it won’t now, either. mama’s not going up with jesus and his daddy.
her mother begs some more and aruru feels the words slither into the space in her throat with a lump, and crawl down into her gut like a stomach bug: slimy, prickly, nauseating. it makes her sneer. mama screams for help and that’s her last straw, she’s sick to death of her shrill voice and her empty promises and desperate apologies. mama’s never loved her and she doesn’t now, aruru knows. all she is is guilty and scared. aruru doesn’t like liars, even though she’s one herself, really.
aruru jabs her foot into where she thinks the solar plexus must be—just beneath mama’s rotten heart—twists her heel, and pulls the trigger.
it explodes. she maybe thought the bullet would the sear her forehead all tiny but instead it’s barged through her skull and out the back of her cranium. aruru thinks the sight akin to an overripe tomato, smashed under her heavy fist. it’s all quiet now, blood pooling thick on the floor and seeping into the spaces between the tile. aruru’s gaze trails over the spread. mama’s face is broken up in puzzle pieces that’ll never go back together.
it oozes smoke and gunpowder and she can smell lightly cooking flesh, making her mouth water involuntarily. mama’s dead and aruru feels the most wonderful relief that finally she’s gone, that she doesn’t have to hate her anymore because mama’s with the devil now. she breathes deep, closes her eyes in sheer bliss, her revolver falling limply to her side while her head falls back and up towards the ceiling. she’s facing heaven and she feels heaven, cradling her face and smoothing back her star speckled hair.
god, there’s nothing more she ever has to worry about. it’s everything, she feels so at peace. and it feels so good to have squeezed and shot and killed.
it’s better than anything. the taste of death is like the sweetest ambrosia.
but somehow, when aruru wakes from that hazy thought?
the only thing she tastes is bile burning up in her throat.