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Don’t.
“You’re staring,” she said. But her voice was wrong. Flat. Like someone had recorded their mother’s voice on old tape and was playing it back at half-speed.
Here’s a short piece inspired by the tense, atmospheric horror of Goodnight Mommy (2014): The bandage itched.
She sat across from them, eating soup with small, precise movements. The spoon clicked against her teeth each time—too loud, too regular. A metronome counting down to something. goodnight mommy 1
Lukas studied her hands. The left one trembled slightly when she lifted the bowl. Their mother’s left hand had never trembled. She used to hold a cigarette steady through a two-hour phone call with Aunt Margit, ash never falling.
And the way she said it—like a line from a script she’d found in the attic—made Lukas think of the barn. Of the jars of water in the cellar. Of the way she’d stopped using their names.
Click.
Outside, the cornfields rustled in a wind that wasn’t there. And somewhere in the dark house, a pair of scissors opened. Closed. Opened.
Elias said nothing. He was watching the corner of her jaw, where the bandage met the hairline. A dark sliver of something—not skin, not scab. Suture thread. Black and glistening.
That night, Elias pulled the covers over his brother’s head and whispered: Don’t
Click.
“Sorry,” Lukas whispered.
“That’s not Mom.”
She smiled. It took too long to arrive. And when it did, it didn’t reach the eyes that weren’t quite her eyes.
