A/n- A short story.

The Tragedy of Nicholas Mead

The last time I saw my mother was fifteen years ago. I had crept up, on my knees, behind the cabin and over the sloping hill whose muddy bank leveled out to the lake.

Upon a log she sat, bathed in an iridescent glow from the fireflies and moonbeams.
I couldn’t see her face; she looked towards the water, away from the noise issuing from our kitchen where my father stoked the stove. I could hear the muted sounds of logs cracking within the hearth.

There were woodchips in my hair from the way I was clinging to the stacks of wood that were lined neatly on the back wall of the building.
My mother never moved from her position. At my angle, however, I could see the way her knees were drawn up under her dress and how her hands were balled into delicate, porcelain fists.

Her skin was as pale as the sweetest cream- alabaster- like a tiny immobile doll whose corn silk hair never moved against the warm night’s wind.

Unnerved, a tingly dread coursed through me; and as I heard my father laughing at something either on the radio or otherwise, I felt the strangest sensation that someone had grabbed hold of the delicate threads of my life and began to pull the weave apart.

Silently I let myself back into the house.

When I woke the next morning, my mother was gone.