The Shaded

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

"Open this door, Timothy."

I was torn away from my tranquil slumber by the discontinuous calls of my mother and the demented rhythm of her wrist smacking the edge of the door.

I lugged my sluggish self from my bed and lugged myself towards the door. I twisted the knob and pulled...

"Hi, dear..."

Whoa! What was wrong with her eye? I gaped at the mortifying sight of her left pupil, which was now dramatically engorged, leaving in place a black smudge over her cornea.

"Something wrong?" she chuckled ineptly.

"Na, I mean, um, no," I responded with even more awkwardness.

She grinned as she licked her teeth.
Her eyes suddenly caught the window behind me, and an expression of intense fear became plastered across her face. She was... afraid.

"I'm leaving..."

She sauntered towards me and spoke gently through her chafed lips.

"Stay here...please..."

Her clammy fingers latched onto the edge of my goose-bump-riddled chin and gave me a deep smirk as if I were still the infant she rocked to sleep under her melodious voice.

"You know I love you..."

She ambled down the stairs hurriedly. I could hear her car peel off and away down the driveway.

I took a microsecond of a gander myself and spotted nothing uncommon, same, seasonal color spread onto every tree and an empty yard, although I heard a few loud scratches uttering from below.
I popped open the window to provide enough space to slide my head out so I could see.

Deer.

About twenty of them, give or take. They seemed distressed, aggressively scratching their antlers against the siding.

There. I saw something. A car. A station wagon. It was pulling into our driveway. It parked about six meters from the front porch. Out from the driver's seat emerged an elderly woman dressed in black. The deer ceased their vigorous attack on the edge of the house siding and surrounded the odd lady. She snickered as one of them began to nibble at her feeble fingers. An aggressive smack on the door downstairs caught my small-minded attention.

Instantly, I rushed down to the main hallway and came to notice that it was entirely open.

There she stood idle, gawking at me as if she were mesmerized by my presence. The deer seemed to form a pathway toward her, aligned on opposite sides stretched from the edge of the outside stairway to the start of her black-silk skirt.

I was dumbfounded to find myself lacking any reluctance, marching towards this eccentric woman as she withdrew a cigarette from her damaged handbag.

Her bony fingers latched onto my goose-bump-riddled chin.

"I remember your eyes..." she whispered elegantly.

She released my chin to light her cigarette. I watched her exhale a hefty waft of tobacco smoke into the soft, brisk air.

"Interesting chats on the phone you've been having...wouldn't you say so?"

I watched her continuously huff and puff on that cancer stick of hers as the deer began to scamper off into the woods.

"I miss seeing your face, Timothy. I miss seeing what could've been."