the Vacuum
by
Wusai
-:-
Between all her childhood memories, the only thing they all had in common was the vacuum cleaner.
Her father had left when she was three, and her mother was a prideful person, refusing to remarry. To remarry, she told her once, was a mark of defeat, a mark of dependence, and she couldn't have that. Instead, they lived together in their one-bedroom apartment, which her mother kept immaculately tidy to make it seem better than it was.
Every day, she'd come back from preschool to the comforting whirr of the vacuum, to the comforting sight of her mother guiding the vacuum around, into the corners. Sometimes, her mother would vacuum when there was no need to vacuum, and sometimes, there was a spot of dust invisible to her bespectacled eyes, but glaringly obvious to her mother's. She'd sit there, watching, lifting up her feet when the vacuum came her way, and moving a table or chair if her mother wanted to vacuum the space beneath the legs.
One day, on September 9th, she came home from school to an eerily silent apartment. The door squeaked ominously when she pushed it open, and she remembered thinking that she had to remind her mother to oil it. She stepped cautiously into the dining room, calling out softly for her mother. From the dining room she checked the kitchen, her feeling of unease mounting; she walked faster to the bathroom, nothing, and finally, to the bedroom —
Her mother lay face-down on the floor — or, at least, her head did. Her teeth had been pulled out and were arranged in a neat circle around her head. In one corner of the room lay shreds and pieces of her arm. In another, her thigh. Her fingers were scattered all over the room, one perched casually on her pillow, one curled up on her mother's mattress, three, still connected, oozing blood over the carpet, the other five following each other like a trail of mutated ants. Her intestines trailed across the bedposts like some sort of slimy tinsel. Her womb had been ripped out and was tacked to a wall; her feet were placed at the end of the bed, where one would normally place shoes. The rest of her body was similarly chopped up and scattered, and the whole room was covered in blood — blood staining the carpet, smeared onto the walls, splattered onto the smooth ceiling, like an ink-blot test. She looked up at those splatters, and realized that one of them looked like a vacuum cleaner.
She went to the dining room, feeling oddly calm and vacant. She unplugged the vacuum cleaner from there, and carried it over to the bedroom, where she plugged it into a blood-splattered electrical outlet, and turned on the vacuum, comforting herself with the sound, and began vacuuming up her mother. Some of the blood would be sucked away, while the rest lingered, permanently staining the carpet. She vacuumed up the teeth, and they rattled inside the vacuum. Some of the bits were almost too large to be sucked in, but she pushed the vacuum down over the bits, until they at last succumbed to the vacuum, and were pulled in with a squeak, squeezing out more blood onto the carpet.
Finally, all that was left was her mother's head. She picked it up and cradled it, smiling down at her mother's caved in and disfigured face. She could almost imagine a smile spreading across her mother's right now, and she almost heard her saying that she was proud, proud of the way that she'd remained independent, almost heard her saying that she was sure that she'd be able to continue in life without her . . .
She set the head back down and navigated the vacuum cleaner over to it. First to be sucked in was the hair, entering the almost bursting bag. The head was too big to be sucked in as one piece, so she ran to the dining room, took a chair, and, splattering her face in blood during the process, bashed in the head until the skull shattered, and it could be siphoned in as a bloody pulp. Her eyeballs, which had popped out and were dangling on their optic nerves, were finally sucked in with two squelching pops.
She stood and wiped the sweat from her brow with a blood-covered hand, and admired her handiwork. All that was left was the blood in the carpet, and on the walls. She sighed and unplugged the vacuum, winding the cord around the hooks in the back. She'd have to throw this away somewhere. Her first thought was the dump downstairs, but it'd been emptied earlier today already . . . so, thought her eight-year-old mind, why not just take it to the dump herself, so she wouldn't have to wait for the garbage man tomorrow? After all, why should she involve the garbage man? She didn't need him; she could do this on her own.
She dragged the vacuum cleaner down two flights of stairs, and dragged it behind her up the sidewalk, leaving drops and smears of blood here and there. The passerbys gave her a few strange looks, but no one stopped her, and for that, she was grateful.
A few hours later, she reached the dump. There, she hauled the vacuum over to the base of one of the many piles of garbage, swaying precariously in the breeze.
It was a moment later when she saw the small, scruffy sign that said "Meteor City."
-:-
Author's Notes: Must resist urge to stick in quote, "Living in a vacuum sucks." by Adrienne Gusoff . . . it would add some sort of humorous side to this fic.
Constructive criticism and reviews are always appreciated.