Lacrimosa, or just Lacri if you were kind enough to listen to her preference not to be reminded of her mother’s over-long goth phase, was in the process of dumping the last few of her boxes into the bare concrete basement so she could forget about them until she needed something from one of them and couldn’t find it. With a sign, she set the last box down, and for the first time actually looked around the interior of the basement.
It had once been a living space, but the interior walls had been torn down at some point, leaving a few load-bearing supports. There was a drain in the middle of the floor, as flooding wasn’t unheard-of in the area, but besides that the basement was bare. It was small, maybe eight feet to a side, which was to be expected given the difficulty of digging out and finishing a basement in the rocky soil. Even still, her boxes barely took up any space on the storage shelf along one of the walls. She didn’t have a tendency towards sentimentality, so anything that’d be cheaper to replace that to ship across the pond had just been left behind or discarded.
Lacri didn’t have any intention to use the basement for anything. In theory she could convert it into a small room for some use or another, but she was content to let it sit empty. She lived a relatively frugal life, and with her…condition there was no chance of children or even a life partner entering the picture. With a sigh, she put the thought out of her mind and wandered upstairs to continue the seemingly never-ending task of unpacking.
It wasn’t easy, not with her health, but she refused assistance. She didn’t want anyone’s pity or concern, so she kept herself mostly isolated. That and…she wasn’t able to build trust, not easily, not after the events leading to her illness and subsequent long-distance relocation.
Already she felt out of breath and light-headed from the exertion, but she pushed through, trying to get at least half of the boxes unpacked before she rested. Half, she’d decided, was how many she would have if she was in good health, so she refused to do less. An empty gesture, but one fueled with determination and spite.
Her wristwatch beeped an alarm, and she set down the box cutter she was using to flatten the empty boxes. Where had she put it? She’d fallen asleep immediately after arriving, and her bed wasn’t set up yet, so probably around the sofa. Looking around, she eventually found where she’d placed the bag and set about taking her first pile of pills for the day.
She gulped the pills down with practiced ease, not even needing water anymore. The bitterness wasn’t even noticeable for her anymore, not after so long. Besides, it couldn’t compare to the bitterness she felt in her heart every time she had to…no, that wasn’t something she should think about. Forget about it, move on, and don’t waste mental energy on the past.
No, she’d finish the unpacking she’d promised herself she’d do, then she could take a nap. Moving was exhausting.
…
Lacri woke up with a dull throbbing in her abdomen, and reached for the bottle she kept close at hand rather than in the bag with her other medication. She took her normal dose of the non-opiate painkiller that she’d fought so hard for. She would not become dependent on anything stronger, she’d seen far too much of that in her years in hospital. She lay back and waited for the pain to ease.
She glanced at the clock, then jerked upright when she realized it was well past six in the evening. How had she slept so long? Hadn’t see…oh, she’d just slept through the three alarms she’d set. She upbraided herself a little, reminding herself of the promise she’d made, but there wasn’t any real passion in it. It was normal to oversleep after moving, normal to be tired. It had nothing to do with…
She pulled her phone out of the desk drawer where she’d put it in an effort to not lose it while getting everything put away. Nineteen texts and fourteen missed calls. Wonderful, yet another number to block. Restraining orders were useless.
“Fuck you, mom, I’m not talking to you,” she typed out in response, but deleted the message. It was cathartic, certainly, but she was not going to let that shit-show start again. Ignore it, block the number, and move on.
She felt the throbbing grow worse, and even knowing it was just her mind playing tricks on her didn’t make it feel any less real. Her hands shook, slightly, but she quelled the motion. Eyes closed, she focused on the breathing exercise her therapist had taught her. Peace and serenity, that’s what she needed. Just forget that that bitch had found her new number.
It really didn’t help. She was too tired for this bullshit right now. She reached once more for the phone, but her impulse to respond was interrupted by a growl from her stomach. She hadn’t even noticed how hungry she was.
Well, she wasn’t going to cook right now, that was for sure. Maybe she’d try some local restaurant, try to get familiar with the area. That might make the distance feel more real, make her stop feeling her mother breathing down her neck. Maybe she could even meet some new people, and maybe this time they wouldn’t fall for the manipulative bullshit.
With a quiet groan she stood up off the sofa and tried to remember where she’d left her keys.
…
A Few Months Prior
…
Lacrimosa stared at the white ceiling of the hospital room, bored but too exhausted to want to do anything. She’d long ago tuned out the soft beeping noises from the machine monitoring her vitals, long ago learned to ignore the constant slight discomfort of the IV in her hand. At this point she didn’t feel much of anything, come to think of it.
She began to doze again. She hardly spent any time awake these days. Once, she’d been as active as any teen her age, but these days she went through life one brief moment of lucidity at a time. How long she’d been here she couldn’t guess. It felt like forever, even if days passed like seconds.
She was vaguely aware of the doctor in charge of the little rural hospital coming into the room. Against her father’s wishes but at her mother’s insistence, she’d been kept from being transferred to a more well-equipped facility. Her mother insisted that it was for the best that family be able to visit her, and somehow being in a location a mere two hours away would prevent that.
The doctor adjusted her IV, as he did every day. She didn’t respond, it took too much energy to speak unprompted. She just lay there, eyes half-open and unfocused, looking but not seeing. Semi-consciousness, partial lucidity like she spent so much of her time in.
Then she was jerked into full consciousness in a shower of blood.
…
Part of the problem with being part of a wealthy, influential family was that it could be a double-edged sword if anyone in the family with more sway decided to use that wealth and influence against you, Lacri mused as she made her slow way on foot to the closest local pub. The same privilege that’d protected her father from the law when he’d murdered…no, executed the so-called doctor had also meant her mother’s involvement in the entire ordeal was ignored.
Lacri sometimes wondered what her life would be life if she’d never taken ill in the first place, if her mother hadn’t gotten a taste of the attention she could get from Lacri’s sickness. Would she be living a normal life, unaware of the monster that wore her mother’s skin? Possibly. Would she be happier that way? Well, ignorance is bliss.
As is, her naturally-occurring case of Crohn’s disease had been greatly worsened once her mother learned she could feast on the drama of Munchhausen’s-by-proxy, and that she could use her affair partner to make it happen. Artificially-induced liver and kidney failure didn’t help. But things were slowly getting better as her body adapted, learning to cope with the damage from the poisons.
One thing was certain, though: she would not give her mother the satisfaction of being miserable. She would live a normal life, prove that she wasn’t going to let her mother leave scars on her. The pain and sickness was not going to slow her down, not if she had any say in it.
Spite was stronger than despair.
…
Lacri woke, sunlight coming through the window and into her eyes. She groaned, regretting her decision to let hanging the curtains wait. She really didn’t want to get out of bed. She lay there for a while, reasoning that if her alarm hadn’t gone off yet it wasn’t weakness to continue to rest.
Her alarm began to chime, the melody, the lullaby her mother used to sing to her in her sick bed, renewing her determination. Spite was stronger than despair. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be anything left. Lacri quashed that line of thinking.
She was cooking breakfast, in spite of the nausea she felt from the after-effects of her less-than-stellar choices of what to eat last night, when she heard it. A soft knocking on the front door, almost imperceptible. With a sigh, she moved to answer it.
At first she didn’t see anyone when she opened the door, then a sniffling noise drew her gaze downward. She recognized what fluffies were, despite never seeing any in person. Much of her interaction with the outside world had been through the internet, so she’d learned of the little bio-toys and even had a surface-level understanding of how they worked. She’d never been remotely interested, though.
“Pwease, nice wady” the adult, presumably a mare, whined. “Pinky nee’ housies an’ nummies fow miwkies an’ wawm nestie an’ toysies fow babbehs.”
Lacri almost closed the door in the mare’s face, but then she decided to listen. “Why are you out here all alone?” she asked.
“Daddeh nu wub Pinky nu mowe! Nu wet Pinky wib in housies! Wan Pinky an’ babbehs gu fowebah-sweepies!”
“What, did you get pregnant without permission?” Lacri knew how common that was. Hell, it was practically cliche at this point, and fluffies had only been a thing for three…maybe five years? Her sense of time wasn’t the best until recently.
“Nu. Daddeh sae Pinky can hab babbehs. Pinky hab tu pwotec’ babbehs fwom munstah-babbeh, bu’ daddeh wub munstah-babbeh mowe den Pinky an’ gud babbehs. Daddeh sae onwy bad mummahs gib munstah-babbehs fowebah-sweepies.”
Lacri spent a moment to decipher what the little creature had said, then resumed closing the door, drawing a new wave of sobs, peeps and cheeps. Then she noticed something, a little gray foal, far smaller than the other thin foals, clearly even more underfed. Suddenly she felt pity for the little creature.
A plan began to form in her mind, and she grinned a predatory grin. The fluffy, however, interpreted this as a friendly smile and began to chatter. “Pinky wiww be bestest fwuffy ebah! Wiww be bestest mummah!”
“Can you show me your foals?”
“Dis am wingie-babbeh, an’ dis am p-gway babbeh, an’ dis am pointie-babbeh, an’ dis am bes-am pwetty pink babbeh!” the mare burbled, and Lacri took note of the things she’d almost said. So, she knew better, did she?
Suddenly she decided. She really did need something to do once she was done unpacking, and this presented an appealing double opportunity. She could give the unwanted foal the love it’d been denied by its mother, and misdirect some of her anger to a target deserving of it at the same time. Two sources of catharsis for the price of one.
She smiled once again, opening the door wider. “Sure, I’ll be your new mummah.”
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Great job! Love the mommy dearest vibes