Into the Gloaming

Your Mother Has Passed Away

It all started the day my Mum died, I mean it all started except for my Mum, she pretty much ended that day, unless you believe in reincarnation or something, so if you do I guess everything did start that day.

It was a strange day right from the beginning; I woke up on the couch downstairs with the TV flickering away on mute. For a second I couldn't remember how I got there. One time I woke up completely the wrong way around in my bed, with my feet on my pillow, imagine that, how could you manage it without even noticing? Then I remembered lying in bed the night before, staring at the ceiling, not being able to sleep, so I went downstairs like a ninja for some TV and feasting. I scraped around on the floor and found the remote in an empty chip packet covered in salt, switched the TV off, and then looked at the clock. 7.13. I was going to have to get up for school soon anyway.

I already knew it was going to be a weird day even though it wasn't a Friday the thirteenth or Halloween or anything like that, because my routine was already completely ruined. I padded up the stairs and along the hall to my room in the crisp, clean morning, brushing the crumbs on my stomach all over the floor. I tossed my pyjamas on the floor and sifted around in a drawer for a clean shirt of some kind, I found a pink one with a picture of a kangaroo on it. It had a little orange stain on the front from some baked beans, but no-one would see that so I pulled it on over my head. Just in case it was going to be cold I looked around in my undies drawer for some stockings. I chose some woolly red ones and pulled them on. I wriggled into my denim pinafore dress while bumping down the hall to the bathroom.

I surveyed the girl in the mirror. She looked back, sceptically. My eyes looked a bit red and there was chocolate smeared on my cheek. I scrubbed it off and scraped my black hair into a ponytail, it was lank and greasy. I should have had a shower but I had already changed clothes once that day. I strongly believe that you should only change clothes twice a day, in the morning from pyjamas to clothes, and at night from clothes back into pyjamas. Anything else is just a big waste of time.

I'm probably just imagining that I felt this, but when I stepped out of the bathroom it seemed like everything was big and empty and still.

I imagine things all the time, sometimes I think maybe I've just imagined my entire life and that really I'm in a hospital in a coma somewhere, and when I wake up the sky will be pink and I'll be someone else altogether. Probably a big fat guy, because I love mars bars so much. I'll wake up and I'll say "I had the weirdest dream, the sky was blue and I was a little girl with black hair and blue eyes called Persephone, what a weird name, and I wore the same dress every day, with stockings for when it's cold."
Then my big fat wife will say "It's ok, it's over now, you're back here with me, here, have a mars bar."
I wish I had a mars bar.

Then I slid down the stairs on my bum, thud thud thud, and skated across the wooden floor in my tights, whoosh, and nearly crashed into the kitchen counter.

"Careful Seffy" said Dad, glancing at me from over his newspaper at the table. Then he looked at his watch and said "Your Mum's at work, I'll have to take you to school on my way there." I felt something brush against my leg, my cat Carnivore was slithering around my ankles.

"I didn't hear her leave this morning. I slept on the couch last night" I said, pouring some cat biscuits into Carnivore's bowl, he turned his nose up at them and let out a little wail.

"Did you?" I knew Dad wasn't really listening, he never does, Mum says that me and Dad are the same like that, always lost in thought, or else just being really rude.

"Not on purpose. I just fell asleep." I said, opening the fridge to see if there was any meat. That's why his name is Carnivore; he only eats meat, even though we've tried teaching him to eat cat biscuits. We first noticed it when he was just a teeny tiny kitten, I fell off my bike on the footpath outside, I was trying to do bicycle acrobatics because I'd decided to join the circus, and as soon as I fell he bolted out of the garden, smashed through the hedge and started licking the blood off my grazed knee. I thought it was cute until he tried to bite my whole leg off. He's like a vampire crossed with a shark crossed with a cat. That'd be so cool if he could fly and swim as well.

"Well hurry up and eat your breakfast, I have to get to work."

I snapped out of my daydream, noticing that my nose was cold from staring into the fridge the whole time.

That morning at school was the only normal part of my strange day. I sat and I did my work like usual. Everyone else were idiots like usual and I ignored them like usual. We did some worksheets and then we learnt about triangles and angles and things.

Dad once told me that Pythagoras who was this ancient Greek guy who pretty much invented the triangle and everyone thinks he's this big amazing genius guy, also started his own religion, and his religion was about how no-one was allowed to eat beans because it was a sin. What sort of a genius thinks beans are sinful? A stupid genius, that's who. I know a girl who named her cat Beanz. I wonder what Pythagoras would think of that. I bet he'd think that Carnivore was a way better cat name.

I was sitting at my desk thinking about if Pythagoras had a cat when Mrs. Derrick the registrar walked in. I don't know what a registrar is, all she seems to do is sit in the office and give students suspicious looks if they walk past, guarding the photocopier. She should build a fortress, or at least invest in a bow and some arrows. Maybe she could dig a moat. Except then the school wouldn't need her to guard the photocopier anymore and she wouldn't have a job.
Mrs. Derrick muttered something to my teacher Miss Townsend and then Miss Townsend looked right at me, I quickly looked back at the worksheet I was meant to be doing.

"Persephone, sweetheart could you please go with Mrs. Derrick?"

Oh no, I hoped I wasn't in trouble. The whole class went "ooooohhh" and watched me on that endless walk from my desk to the front of the room. I hated them all at that moment. I should just set Carnivore loose in the school. That'd teach them.

We walked all the way down the veranda in silence. The playground looked small and empty, I really wanted to go and play on it while I had the chance, because it's always covered with kids who get in the way of my games. I usually pretend that I fell through some magic portal into a different world where the sand is lava and the playground is a space ship or something. Then they say things like "Look at her! She's talking to herself again! Weirdo." I don't care though because I'm casting nasty spells on them in my head the whole time.

Then I had to sit in the sick bay for ages, with cat-like poise and alertness because I was so sure some little kid would burst in and throw up all over me. Luckily that didn't happen. I think it was one of those things where if you expect it then it won't happen, like when you're walking along and you think "What if a stampede of circus elephants squashed me right now?" and the more you think about it the more you're pretty sure it will definitely happen, but then it doesn't happen because you were expecting it. Like I bet everyone who was ever hit by lightning wasn't expecting it, and if they were expecting it then they wouldn't have been hit by lightning. Except maybe that guy who was playing golf in a storm but that guy was just an idiot.

Golf is so boring.

Then the school psychologist came in, or maybe he's a psychiatrist, or maybe he's psychic. Anyway, he knelt down sort of awkwardly in front of me, looked me in the eyes and said

"Ya mum's dead."