The taste of love

Helen started to notice that Mummy was doing a lot of staring at nothing. More than once, she’d bite her nails and softly tut at herself before giving Helen hurried, sideways glances. Like she knew something Helen couldn’t. It was Helen’s birthday the following day, and she’d heard Mummy on the phone, saying that it was ‘our last chance.’

For as long as Helen could remember, Mummy had wanted her to awaken, just like she’d dreamed of when she was a little girl. It was important. Helen knew so because Mummy told her. 

That night, she’d snuck out of her bedroom and climbed the tree in the back garden to make a wish on the moon and visit her friends in the tree. It calmed her to be there, so high up. Tomorrow was important, so Mummy was shouting at her and Daddy. Daddy also knew how important it was to make Mummy happy.

It was a clear night, so Helen could see the moon clearly as she whispered through the leaves, watching and feeling as all the insects crawled out from under the tree’s skin to dance along her long, delicate fingers. They would hum and buzz and tickle her with their tiny, hairy legs. And she would protect them from the crows that sat in the branches and cawed at the moveable feast. 

Some insects would bite and sting, leaving some of themselves in her or taking some of her back with them. She wondered if maybe they had their own Mummy who they needed to work hard for, too. 

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“Helen, darling,” Mummy said, adjusting Helen’s collar over her jumper and forcefully rubbing away a remnant of breakfast from her cheek, “you haven’t forgotten to do your exercises have you? Dr Willows will be dreadfully annoyed.”

“No, Mummy,” she replied, “I’ve been working really hard every night before bed, look!” And Helen revealed the callouses that had formed on her hands over the summer break.

“Oh goodness me dear, they’re like sandpaper!” Mummy looked at Helen with a sort of muted desperation in her eyes. A look she’d seen any number of times. One that asked how Helen could possibly stand before her and be pleased with herself. 

“Rub some cream in before we leave. Nobody wants to see a young girl with hands like a labourer.” Helen didn’t quite get it, but listened because Mummy said so.

“Is this the last one?” Helen asked as they were readying to leave. She’d been looking forward to her final appointment for some time now. Dr Willows and Mummy had promised that if she worked her hardest all summer, that they would try something super fun to see if they could awaken her before her birthday. 

When Helen thought about it, electricity tingled in her chest and in the tips of her fingers. Mummy and Dr Willows said it was her present, if she earned it.

She took hold of Mummy’s hand and they made the short walk to Dr Willows’ offices, Helen had been lost in excited thoughts but, when they arrived, she noticed Mummy was holding her hand so tight, it cramped when she let go. She watched as the warm, red refilled her crooked fingers but before she could ask for help straightening them, Mummy was already walking through Dr Willows’ doors. 

It was an enormous and grand old thing, built from washed limestone. In the waiting room, Helen sat as the bespectacled doctor talked intensely with Mummy under their breath in his office. Helen pretended to be reading.

“I worry about how she may react, Mrs Hill,” Dr Willows said, “she has potential, but upon further thought this procedure may be too extreme for her.”

“Too extreme?” hissed Mummy, “Why now all of a sudden?”

“She’s not stable, Mrs Hill. The pressure you put on her… It’s not healthy!”

“How many times have we had this discussion, Arthur? It. Is. Time.” Said Mummy,

“You know as well as I do that the window closes tomorrow.”

Helen looked up to see Mummy gripping one of Dr Willows’ hands in both of hers. She had the same face she made when Daddy didn’t agree with her. Mummy would screech and throw things and threaten to leave them. But she would always apologise after a big fight, saying that she was only angry because something was important. 

It was important for Helen to awaken.

Important for Daddy to do well at work.

Important for Helen to work hard. For Mummy.

Wresting his hand from Mummy’s iron grip, Dr Willows wiped it on his waistcoat and beckoned Helen into his office.

“Come now, dear. It’s your big day.” He extended his arm to usher Mummy out of the room.

“I’d like to stay,” she insisted, and with an abrupt turn Dr Willows complied. He seemed in no mood to fight today. Not when he already looked dismayed.

“Take a seat in the corner, Mrs Hill.” He said. Now very matter of fact. “And I urge you, please, to not speak to Helen after I’ve placed my hand over her eyes. Do you understand?”

“Mummy doesn’t like being told what to d-” Helen began saying, but Mummy interjected,

“Yes, Doctor That’s quite alright. Helen, listen to Dr Willows now. It’s very important that you do everything he says.” Helen looked at Mummy’s face. Deep, winding lines were already beginning to glisten with sweat.

“Yes Mummy.” said Helen, as she turned to face Dr Willows, who was keeping a congenial smile across his broad, bearded face. He would always reassure Helen, even when he hurt her. Even when she came back with bruises and cuts from the exercises he had her do between sessions. 

“You have great potential in you, Helen, I know it” he would say, “all we have to do is find out how to unlock it!” And he would mime a great big lock in her belly button that he couldn’t find the key for. 

It always made Helen giggle when they joked about her stomach being locked, with a grand golden chest of treasure behind it. She would dream of coming home and making Mummy smile and laugh and kiss her on the head. She couldn’t wait.

“Okay Helen,” he began in a lilting, singsong voice, “I think it’s time we unlocked that treasure chest!”

Helen turned to Mummy one last time, she didn’t know why, exactly. Mummy simply stared into her with a fierce hope that crushed Helen’s heart. She felt the weight of what Mummy wanted more acutely than ever in that moment. It had to work. It had to be today. 

Helen took a seat at the table in the middle of the office.

“Okay.” she said to Dr Willows, her delicate green eyes quivering atop her short, uneven breaths. 

He brought three vials out from his cabinet and placed them in front of Helen.

“Drink these, in order, from left to right. Understand?” As he was explaining, he attached sticky pads with long wires to the sides of Helen’s head.

“I understand, said Helen.” She stared into the inky concoctions. The first, a deep burgundy, the second, a mossy green, the third, blacker than crows eyes. Dr Willows attached the last of the sticky pads, two on her chest, one on each hand. Until she looked like a marionette. 

“Okay dear,” began Dr Willows, “Red first.”

Helen drank as she was told. First the earth, then the trees, then the night. 

Dr Willows took a final, sharp inhale and spoke to Mummy while keeping his eyes closed, deep in concentration. It felt, to Helen, like the room started to softly hum.

“Mrs Hill,” he said, “any words of encouragement for your daughter before we begin?”

“You must focus, Helen,” said Mummy, her voice shrill and piercing over the vibrations that started to gently shake the office. Helen thought she could hear Mummy’s voice cracking like it did when she was especially angry with Daddy, “remember how important this is!” 

With that, Dr Willows placed his hand over her eyes. His hand felt coarse, too, almost as rough as hers, and hot. 

“Three, two,” and Helen felt a rush of energy fly through her. Dr Willows placed his other hand behind her head, and she felt herself lift into the air. Levitating and overwhelmed by the sparking of an inferno in her chest. An intense heat that began as a pinpoint but started to spread as she breathed. 

Her external senses seemed to dull. Everything blocked out but the surging fire. As it rushed in all directions and started burning her stomach and collar bones, she screamed, “Mummy!”

With Dr Willows’ hand over her eyes, she was blind, too, and terror took her in its suffocating grip. She kicked and punched and scratched and screamed at the nothingness. No amount of lashing out would stir Dr Willows’ hands. No growing fire inside her would wrest his absolute control. 

It felt like magma was pouring from her eyes and mouth. Overrun by heat, expansion, and scorching viscera, she thought she would explode. She thought of Mummy’s face as she fought. She was terrified that she would die and never know what it felt like to make Mummy happy. 

Just then, she felt a sudden release of pressure in her ears. Dr Willows’ hand left her eyes and she saw a blinding white light. As though the moon were right in front of her. Shining just for Helen. 

As her sight began to return, Helen saw Mummy across the room with her back flat against the far wall of the office, terror twitched across her face. Helen was in the air, stuck, as if by static electricity to the ceiling of the office. When she looked down, she saw what was painting dread on Mummy’s eyes. They were so wide now, more than she’s ever seen. 

A thick, meaty column of blackened flesh protruded, muscular and dripping thick plasma, from her belly button into something formed on the floor beneath her. 

A creature with so many bulbous limbs, slovenly and engorged, their length leaving mucus along the carpets. She watched as tentacles lurched forward. Bubbling up and overflowing themselves to take up more space.

All the while, Helen hung above it, plastered to the ceiling. She was paralyzed by the force from her navel. She felt it rushing both to and from her simultaneously as it tried to tell her something. The creature wanted Helen to pay attention. 

She could see Mummy screaming on the ground below, but her hearing was muffled, as though she was behind a veil of water. Helen saw no sign of Dr Willows, nor was she looking, in truth, both she and the creature had eyes for Mummy and Mummy alone.

Blood rushed from Helen’s ears and hands, with deep fissures between her fingers, all bursting with light as she painted the thick carpeting red.

The creature that erupted from her was a mass of shifting, swelling darkness moving in all directions. A wall of black, featureless eyes, a constellation that reflected the light and shone with intense desire. 

Mummy was rooted, as though Helen’s tentacles had reached into the floor to suction her soles in place. Suddenly, Helen’s invitation became an impulse to inhabit this conjured extension of herself. She looked at Mummy again. Usually so imposing, she twitched under the strain of her fear, jerking like a faulty lighter that sparked but never ignited. 

It felt as though sharp flits of heat left Mummy’s frantically extending fingers. And Helen could feel them on the creature’s advancing tentacles as if they were her own.

Contrary to Mummy’s frozen demeanour, Helen could feel herself now able to move. She was pliable. Her and the creature were malleable. Mummy faltered in the corner of the room below her, when her eyes rolled back into her head and she heard the creature speak. 

At first, a gurgle. Then a splutter and a murmur.

“Important…” its tongue far too big for its mouth, floundering for purchase and dripping putrid saliva into Dr Willows’ already ruined carpet. 

Helen could feel herself inside the creature. Her tentacles extended forward, each limb an army of tiny suctioning surfaces. Sensitive and searching like the tip of a tongue.

Helen wanted to show Mummy it had worked, just like she wanted.

“Important,” She said. She couldn’t bear to see Mummy disappointed again. But as she began to see from the eyes of the creature, she saw Mummy still stunned to impotence.

Helen reached out for Mummy and stilled the hot angst dribbling from her fingers. She was awakened now, she thought. And she would show Mummy. She knew how much Mummy had wanted this.

“Important…” she said again, as Mummy’s mouth opened even wider and croaked in terror as a tentacle wrapped itself around her hand and began engulfing her arm, burning her skin with acrid syrup that leaked from the constellation of tiny, tasting suckers.

“Helen!” She begged with a gurgle as blood flooded her throat. “Helen, are you in there!?” She looked up at Helen’s body still stuck to the ceiling, now limp, with eyes white as a winter morning. 

Helen heard the muted sound of Mummy calling, but couldn’t make out the words. Why was Mummy crying when she had found the key, just like Mummy and Dr Willows wanted?

She pulled Mummy into the thick, hot, muck of her. She heard Mummy’s indistinct wailing. Her face sizzled against Helen’s chest and stomach in an embrace that, to Helen, felt like a lifetime of anguish being lifted.

“Important…” She kissed Mummy on the cheek. Her tongue, untethered now from the ill-formed and unfitting mouth, wound its way up Mummy’s back and up to the back of her neck. It was finally time for Mummy to love her. she wanted to smell her and hold her close, to feel safe with Mummy inside her. 

She tasted sweat as her tongue slithered along, under Mummy's left ear, up to her temple, across her forehead. All the way around Mummy’s head. Each sucker with a new sensation.

Mummy’s perfume, her hairspray, her lipstick. Mummy tasted just like Helen thought she would. Her perfectly moulded locks melted apart under her tongue, too. Like candy floss.

She held Mummy up in the air by her head and neck. She was flying. Helen didn’t know her tongue could be so strong, but Mummy always said that to be awakened was to be powerful. And it was important to control it. Helen lifted Mummy into the air and twirled her around to celebrate. 

With a joyous squeeze, Helen felt the seams that ran to and fro across Mummy’s head split as she popped like the sweetest cherry tomato. All the warmth of her came pouring out, running down into Helen’s mouth.

Mummy was all around her, warming her arms and neck and back and belly. Helen finally felt Mummy’s love, and that all the shame was gone. They could embrace each other, forever. Helen and Mummy were one thing, the same. 

Helen turned to the door suddenly, as if remembering where she was. Where was Dr Willows, she wondered? 

With Mummy dangling, her neck skin stretching, snapping away in strands as she dissolved under the wrapping of Helen’s tongue, Helen saw Dr Willows in the doorway. Blood and shock strewn across his face. 

He must be so proud.