This is a short story I wrote in mid-2022. Genre: cosmic horror as a metaphor for living with a high p-doom.

One

The last time I saw my mom, we met in a coffee shop, like strangers on a first date. I was twenty-one, and I hadn’t seen her since I was thirteen.

She was almost fifty. Her face didn’t show it, but the skin on the backs of her hands did.

“I don’t think we have long,” she said. “Maybe a year. Maybe five. Not ten.”

It says something about San Francisco, that you can casually talk about the end of the world and no one will bat an eye.

Maybe twenty, not fifty, was what she’d said eight years ago. Do the math. Mom had never lied to me. Maybe it would have been better for my childhood if she had, but here, now, I was grateful.

I sipped my coffee. “Mom, I know how you feel–”

“It’s not what I feel, it’s what I believe is true.” Her voice was rough. “Are you still holding out hope?” Her face twisted into a silent laugh. “I’d offer a bet, only, if I win then it won’t matter.”

“I don’t want to win a bet, Mom. I want to live my fucking life. Here. In this world. Which, if you haven’t noticed, is the only one I’ve got. I want to have kids.” And I hesitated, but only for a moment. “Like you did.”

She winced. For a fraction of a second, I felt satisfied. It wasn’t worth it.

“You knew, Mom,” I said, fully aware that I had already driven in the knife and now I was just twisting it. “You knew, and you had me.”

My earliest memory is of my fourth birthday. Mom baked me a cake in the shape of a capybara, my favorite animal. I had two friends over, I think; I’ve forgotten their names. Mom swept the floor after. I wanted to hold the dustpan.

“The world has a skin,” she said. “We’re not meant to see its insides.”

I was confused. “But the planet doesn’t have skin,” I said, indignant. “It has a crust and a mantle and an atmosphere.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” Her eyes were dark and far away. It wasn’t the first time I had seen that look, and it frightened me.

“It’s only the surface,” Mom said, softly, distantly. “Like the sea, right? Remember watching the sunset at the beach? It was just a reflection on the skin. You don’t want to know what’s underneath.”

She had stopped. I kicked her leg. “I do know! There’s fish that forgot how to have eyes, and, and worms that eat sulfur from bottom-s...

Dylan

Dylan