Throwback Thursday: ‘Techne’ by EL Firestine

Lydia Fox died in her sleep at age fifty-two.  She left behind a thirteen-year-old son, Simon, who became an orphan, his father having died when the boy was nine.

Simon Fox sat quietly in the funeral home, staring at his knees.  They were scabbed. There was a screaming hole somewhere in his stomach, but all he could think about was how he would never get his homework done for tomorrow at this rate.  People kept talking at him, and trying to touch him and squeeze his shoulders.  He wished that they would all go away. He was crying.

The bathroom was quieter, and he could lock the door.  Everything was dim grey and purple, very tastefully decorated, and there was a small, elegant cluster of flowers on top of the toilet, which sat above a fluffy purple rug, forlorn against the stark white tile.

Simon sat on the toilet lid and put his head in his hands.

Mother had never been quite right in the head, not since Father had died.  She had sat for hours in her old rocking chair, knitting from behind thick glasses she didn’t need, hardly eating, never losing a beat.  After a while, she had stopped using her bed entirely. There she sat in Simon’ mind, rocking back and forth, gently and easily, the curtains drawn and an ancient, tasseled, stained-glass lamp glowing out of the dimness from the bedside table behind her.  She was still knitting her last impossibly complex sweater.  It was orange.  It was hideous.

How had she even gotten out of her room?  Where had she even found brandy, much less rat poison?