Matricide (510 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 22 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Madame Destrukt (View user info) at 2006-11-02 01:41:49 EST
I figured it out when I was 8.
My parents and some friends went four wheeling one Friday night. What was supposed to be a short adventure turned into the weekend from hell. I started the fun by eating and drinking everything they brought for me. A box of chocolate stuffed keebler elves and a few sunkists combine to make some rather nasty vomit. It's been 20 years and I can remember exactly the taste, texture, and smell of it.
The first few times you chain your bumpers together to drag a friend out of a rut are funny. After 2 days and 3 nights of dragging frozen chains through the snow, digging filthy muddy sludge out from under tires, and shoving soggy weak boards under anything you think might get traction, tensions can get a little high. The screaming arguments about who can't drive for shit and whose truck was a bigger hunk of crap echoed off the mountain walls, only interrupted when it looked like there was a helicopter in the sky that might tune into the CB emergency channel.
The beer had run out a day ago and the only food brought in the first place was the cookies and soda I'd upchucked two nights before. There was no way to get both trucks home and even abandoning one, it couldn't be decided which truck to take and who should drive it. That's when my mom threw her fit.
She told everyone to go fuck themselves, that she was done, she was walking home if she had to. I laid in the back of our truck and watched her storm off into the darkness. When the shadows of the night enveloped her and she disappeared from my sight, I simply didn't care. My mom had stormed off a hundred times before. Watching from the backseat when my dad yelled out the passenger window of the car as she stomped down the sidewalk with her arms crossed was a monthly occurance. I knew this was different though, it wasn't a main street with lights and payphones, she went down a black snowy road in a shitty jacket and a pair of Reeboks. I knew left to her own devices she could very well end up dead. And that was, just that.
There were other things over the years, of course. Every day when I got home from school I had to call her at work and check in. I had about a five minute window, if I was outside of that, there would be hell to pay. Soon as she heard my voice I'd get my list of chores, which had better be done before she got home. Folding clothes was a priority over homework.
For years I was awoken by her flipping my light switch and yelling at me to "wake up". At which I would instinctively turn to the noise only to see her rotund frame bulging over her bra and pantyhose, but thankfully her gluttonous gut overhung her pubic mound and I didn't have to see that, unlike her wide cottage cheesed ass as she turned and walked away. I had to suffer through the sight of her grotesque body while I ironed her clothes for work that day. She'd stand in the room spewing a litany of my failures ranging from dish spots to how I must not be working hard enough at school since I was bringing home straight a's.
Once she started a physical fight with my girl scout troop leader. Simply because she thought I must be doing something wrong she picked me up unexpectedly from a friends house and almost rolled the car gunning it out the neighborhood while throwing accusations at me. I was a druggie and a prostitute before I knew the smell of pot or had kissed a boy. For an indiscretion I don't even remember she once showed up at my high school in our newly acquired motorhome and beat me with a high heeled shoe parked right in the bus turnaround.
But much before all that, I knew. I figured it out when I was 8.
I went home after the lowering. I didn't want to go to the goddamn reception. I'd had enough of strangers wandering up and telling me how sorry they were for me, how proud she was of me. We'd be estranged for 4 years, not that she ever knew me to begin with, what did she even know to be proud about? They all looked at me with their big fish eyes, sure I was so quiet and tearless because I was still in shock or maybe just cried out. I'd gone through the motions as well as I could. My dad was non functional so I called and told everyone. I picked out the casket, the headstone, the shitty poem in the register, even mailed out thank you cards afterwards to anyone who'd contacted in any way.
No one spoke at the funeral. No one. She was buried a week to the day after she died and no one had anything to say. I guess they weren't to impressed with her either. How does a daughter lose her mother and stand by like an automaton? I'd never found anything to love in her. I figured that out when I was 8.
The day after the funeral was my 21st birthday. Like most people I'd been shitfaced many times before, but it's different when you're legal. You can get it anytime you like, almost anywhere you like, without mark up or having to share or any of that shit. I drank as much as I could that night. And have done the same every night since.
I'd never found anything to love in her. I figured that out when I was 8. Now I never will.
User Reviews
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2006-11-03 11:02:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Sad.
Submitted by morontian (user info) at 2006-11-03 10:48:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
For you.
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2006-11-02 23:59:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked you before I read this.
I still do.
:( don't drink yourself to death.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-11-02 17:27:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
good.
I got a little confused at times, I had to re-read a couple of times to understand it, but good.
Submitted by MyTeeOne (user info) at 2006-11-02 14:37:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really well written. It flowed nicely and was just vulnerable enough to let your audience in without being emo.
Also, you and I have similiar moms except mine is still alive. The storming off, the chores, no one liking her, and so on. Very similiar.
Submitted by MadameDestrukt (user info) at 2006-11-02 12:21:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Once again I insist that my computer needs a fucking breathalizer. I'm that kind of drunk right now that's bordering on hungover and feeling the need to rip this piece apart.
A. Wow I fucking love you guys for this string of +2's. But all the "no comments" and otherwise nonsensical comments make me wonder who actually thought it was good versus who is just Malteses' bitch. (Or the bitch of any other respected uberer that +2'd me)
B. Since I'm using a friends computer who has no fancy word processing software, I had to run this through a few online spell check places. I didn't bother with grammar even though I should have, as I'll point out as this continues.
C. proper use of thru vs through. I don't fucking know, I just did what the spell checker told me.
D. "watched her storm off into the darkness. When the shadows of the night enveloped her" Wow, I might as well have "brooding goth bitch" tattooed on my head after writing that. Might as well have camwhored a black and white pic of me in to much black eyeliner on the end of this.
5. "For years I was awoken by" yeah, I looked it up and it seems right, but I can't convince myself that awoken is actually a word.
F. "to how I must not be working hard enough at school since I was bringing home straight a's.
" I really surprised that no one has questioned the logic behind this line. And believe me, it's not logical at all, but it was a real gripe she had with me and I'm to lazy right now to make it make sense.
7. "girl scout troop leader. Simply because" the flow on this is wrong, it sounds like I'm about to explain what went down with the GS fist fight but I'd completely moved on.
8. "high heeled shoe parked right in" um, the shoe wasn't parked. Punctuation is GOOD, I should use it more. And I wish I'd said "turnabout" rather than "turnaround"
I. "with their big fish eyes, sure" this one is not a critique, here I have to praise myself, I fucking love this line. Although it probably should have been "fisheyes" or "fish-eyes". And that sure should have been assured, or punctuated better. It was bad flow again.
J. "the shitty poem in the register" I really can't remember what all the paperwork shit was called. There was a guest book made like a sign in book at a fancy restaurant, hotel or office. There were also flyers for the funeral, pieces of paper folded twice like a home made birthday card printed off the computer. I don't know what the acutal names for any of that was. Oh, and they cut her obituary out of the paper and made crappy bookmarks. I'm reading Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" right now and so far I think it would be quite funny to use her obit to mark my place.
11. "but it's different when you're legal. You can get it anytime you like, almost anywhere you like, without mark up or having to share or any of that shit." I'm not sure any of this needed to be here.
Thank you hookhand for "It needs more actual matricide", that made me laugh. And BLITZKREIG_BOB, feel free to drop your one liner, yeah I posted something harsh and personal, but if I didn't have a sense of humor I wouldn't have made it the few weeks I have here on uber.
12. proper use of to/too. I've never gotten that shit down. Sue me.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-11-02 11:09:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2006-11-02 10:18:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
whatever
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2006-11-02 10:14:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I really really really want to drop a smartass one-liner here, but I won't.
Submitted by Hookhand (user info) at 2006-11-02 10:12:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Needs more actual matricide.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-11-02 10:07:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2006-11-02 09:56:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-02 08:26:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2006-11-02 08:20:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is incredibly well written.
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-11-02 07:38:29 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No comment.
Submitted by littledan (user info) at 2006-11-02 07:37:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Jeez, I'm sorry to hear that.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2006-11-02 07:01:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Good read.
Submitted by ICO (user info) at 2006-11-02 06:50:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Heavy piece.
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2006-11-02 04:48:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
na na na family guy
Submitted by MadameDestrukt (user info) at 2006-11-02 03:37:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
incase anyone didn't follow it and cares, here's a overly detailed timeline, backwards.
11/1/06 Mme D. decides in a drunken stupor to get emo on uber. Insists the interweb should have breatalizer installed.
5/28/00 Terri's autopsy results are "natural causes". At 40 years of age.
5/25/00 Mme D. embraces her downward spiral
5/24/00 Terri is buried, autopsy results still pending
5/17/00 Terri dies and Mme D. gets disturbing personal call off her global company's 800#
8/?/95 Mme Destrukt gets legally emancipated and cuts ties with parents
winter/87 ill-fated drunken snow four wheeling incident
5/25/79 Madame Destrukt born (I was legit, just not wanted)
summer/78 Terri weds Clement Vierra (yeah I should know this, but I don't)
10/4/59 Terri Lynn Britton Born.
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-11-02 02:42:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This got me deep. Like, in my gut.
Submitted by jfreakman (user info) at 2006-11-02 02:18:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked the last line.