Third Choice (full story)

When her mother was in that mood, Annie knew better than to reason with her.

The best option was to stay silent. Entirely non-reactive. Even a flicker of emotion in Annie’s eyes sufficed to fuel her mother’s vitriol.

One breath in. One breath out.

‘How do you think you’re raising this child of yours? She’s in front of the telly all day! I can’t imagine who she will grow into. What sort of a mother are you?’

Annie tried to stay focused on the computer screen but the letters became squiggles with no meaning. Only one hour left to finish, then Annie had to send the document back to the client.

There was no point mentioning that Annie was at work while her mother watched TV with a book of crosswords in hand. Annie’s three year’s old daughter was not a child who would play on her own. She was ready to spend the day in front of the telly if it meant having company.

But Annie’s mother didn’t want to know that. She just wanted to have a rant. Annie felt her jaw tighten.

One breath in. One breath out.

‘You can see I’m working’, Annie’s voice was perfectly calm. ‘If you could take care of Dee until I’m finished I will be really grateful.’

Her mother’s lips contorted with suppressed anger. She stomped out of the room, eager to demonstrate how offended she felt. Annie heard her contemptuous tone from the other room.

‘Dee, we’re going to repot this plant together.’

Repotting took half an hour and Annie could hear her mother huff every several seconds. Then the elderly woman made a call to one of the aunts. She positioned herself just behind the door to Annie’s study to make sure Annie heard each word.

‘This child is so absorbing, you’ve no idea! I need to keep my eyes on her all the time! So time-consuming!’

Annie stood up, grimacing when pain shot up her lower back and sent numbness down the length of her left leg. The damage her body took while birthing her daughter seemed permanent. The doctors were just spreading their hands. She was unable to sleep more than four hours a day, her thinking routinely muddled and sluggish. Work that took half an hour before now took forever. With a baby to take care of and the divorce that turned ugly, Annie knew she needed help. But moving in with her mother was supposed to be something to endure for just a few months. Then money ran out, debts loomed and here they were, two years under the same roof and counting.

She needed tea. And breakfast, finally.

Her mother appeared as soon as she heard Annie move about the kitchen. Dee silently climbed the chair and sat behind the kitchen table. The older woman sighed ostentatiously.

‘The bins are overflowing again and it’s still two days before the binmen come. So much rubbish since you’ve been living here!’

Annie kept buttering her sandwiches in silence.

‘Another tile on the terrace is coming loose,’ Annie’s mother tried a different bait. ‘It’ll be too expensive but this terrace really needs retiling! And I’m all alone with this of course! What a pity that you don’t feel like helping out your old mother!’

About half a year ago, Annie broke down and told her mother about her financial troubles. All savings gone. Her account in the red for the last two years, the money coming in every month not enough to fill it up to a zero. She listed all debts, one by one, started crying half-way through the list.

As usual, her mother took offence. She always considered tears fake, manipulative. She said that Annie was lying because “nobody would’ve been able to live like that”. According to her, Annie was stashing her wealth away in secret while pretending to be poor. Ever since, the elderly woman made a point of mentioning money as often as she could.

‘And I have no idea how you’ve both been able to run through the toilet rolls so fast!’ Annie’s mother leaned towards the child with a stern expression and raised one finger. ‘Dee, if you need to wipe your bum you use one sheet. One! Not a whole bunch, remember!’

Annie raised the kettle and poured the water. It didn’t quite fill her big mug. Boiling more than one glassful of water wasn’t allowed. Waste of electricity. She willed her mother’s whining voice to the background, willed herself to stop hearing it. She noticed how white her knuckles were on the kettle handle. One breath in…

Her arm jerked so rapidly that Annie barely had the presence of mind to change the kettle’s trajectory before she let go. It crashed against the wall several inches from Dee’s head.

Annie’s mother straightened up and smiled radiantly. Perfectly calm all of a sudden.

‘Oh... I can see you’ll be reminding me of your father. He was also raging all the time,’ she sneered. ‘You're unhinged just like him!’

Annie turned and looked her mother in the face. It was best to stay silent but she no longer cared.

‘Why are you like that? Is being mean fun? Why do you get so much pleasure from making our lives hell?’

Her mother’s face was an image of pure shock.

‘Child! What ARE you talking about?’

The tone of her voice said so much more than words. It said: you are like a child, silly and immature. You are crazy. You are unimportant. A failure. I am the only important one in this house. It is my right to torment you to my heart’s content and never admit that I am doing it. You are nothing more than a worm under my boot and I will never let you forget about it. You are food for the monster inside me.

There were only two choices you could make in this family. You became food or you became a monster.

It took all Annie’s strength to stop talking. There was no point. It would all be used against her anyway. As she was turning away, she saw her mother’s face change. In split second, shocked disbelief became a triumphant smirk. Calm again, the old woman sauntered out of the kitchen humming softly. The monster got the food it craved.

Dee sat very still, her eyes round, her little face gaunt. A patch of chipped paint to the left of her head showed where the empty kettle had hit the wall. Annie couldn’t look her daughter in the eye.

I wanted to kill her, she thought. I don’t know how to get through to my mother so, for a fraction of a second, I felt like killing my child.

Hot rage rose through Annie’s body rapidly like an electric shock. She staggered and had to grab the kitchen top to keep herself from falling. Suddenly lightheaded, she felt the upsurge of energy fill every corner of her flesh. Her hair did not stand on end though. Her skin didn’t glow. The energy slowly coalesced into a single thought, cold like steel.

This ends with me.

In that instant, Annie knew what to do. They both had to leave. She had no idea where money would come from. How they would cope. But she would sit down and make calculations. Come up with a plan. Work her ass off. And then, leave. If she needed superhuman power to make it happen she would find it. And one day, maybe monsters like this one will cower in fear at hearing her name.

Her daughter would not be a victim.

She felt anything but superhuman right now and physically unable to fight anyone. But she knew that her newfound resolve would help her find a way to distance herself. Lick her wounds. Hone her strength.

Starve the monster.

.

(1312 words)

Author's note: Writing this story took a day. Butchering it into a 300-word stump fit to be submitted to the Epic Beginnings challenge took three days and I still cannot believe that it was even possible. If you feel like reading the short version you can find it here: https://todaysurvey.life/fiction/third-choice%3C/em%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cem class="css-ak7tmt-Italic">

I think that this one is better though!