Disclaimer: The style of writing and characters presented in this short work of fiction are based from David Foster Wallace's "Incarnations of Burned Children" and are not intended to infringe upon copyright in any way. Written for UCF's CRW 3013 course, Fall 2011. I encourage readers to find a copy of Wallace's short story and read it if for no other reason than to enjoy great fiction.
The Daddy returned to the house carrying lump of cloth in one hand and a bottle of freshly purchased scotch in the other, and the inevitable confrontation with the Mommy was waiting for him inside. The Daddy cared very little for scotch, but his taste buds were broken from biting his tongue raw in the waiting room, and his mind was practically numb from the silent screaming which ran like a pack of wild wolves through his head. The Mommy looked blankly at the Daddy when he entered the kitchen, which was still awash with the water that had spilled from the burning pot and onto his son. The Mommy’s face retained the anguished and mangled expression it had displayed prior to the Daddy’s frantic exit from the house, and though she was just as young as she had been when the Daddy left, the Mommy seemed to have aged twenty years in the three hours that the Daddy had been away. The Mommy had not sat down, nor had she attempted to clean the water from the tile floor, which was now deeply soaked into the grout between the white, square foot stones. The Daddy stood facing the Mommy, displaying a look upon his face which matched the contempt and rage in his heart, and as he turned to open the cabinet door to pull down a small glass, the Mommy made a deep guttural sound akin to that made by a boiling pot of water. The Daddy glanced at the Mommy’s thin and transparent face, shook his head which withered on its stem, and strode out of the kitchen with the bottle of scotch and its glass companion in both of his fists.
The Mommy slowly began to turn her head from where it had been positioned for three hours and commenced her wide gaze upon the room where the incident had occurred. Her neck, once strong and supportive, was now like the Daddy’s: fragile and flimsy. The Mommy took in the sights: the water spilled upon the floor, the black pot which had fallen from her incapable hands, and the tiny diaper that had been left behind as a souvenir of their son’s last agonizing moments. The Mommy began to clean. She picked up the prone pot and washed it in the sink, making sure to wash it thoroughly. And again. And again. And again. She mopped up the water and hand dried the floor. Twice, just to be sure. She saved the diaper for last, having mopped and dried around the swollen object to avoid moving it, fearing that she would experience a sudden shock if she so much as brushed its outer cotton lining. The Mommy stood up, ventured toward the drawer where the utensils were kept, and pulled out a pair of salad tongs, and edging ever so carefully along the wall, she finally reached the diaper and gingerly picked it up between the cold metal fingers of the instrument. After this job had been completed, the Mommy sat down at the kitchen table, letting the tongs drop, clattering, to the floor. She stared blankly ahead as she had been doing when the Daddy first entered the room, and began breathing in short, shallow breaths. Her chest, now sunken from sorrow, disbelief, and guilt, was now hollow.
The Mommy thought she saw a small person out of the corner of her eye peek around the corner of the kitchen door. She could have sworn she heard the Daddy come back in from outside and turn the television on. The Mommy smiled to herself and weakly rose from her chair to fetch plates, knives, forks, and spoons from the cabinet. She set the table, and, when she had completed her task, sat down again, but no food appeared on the plate in front of her nor the plates adjacent to hers. Equally, the Daddy thought he heard the Mommy laughing. After finishing his third glass of scotch, he turned his head around to look through the porch door. He thought he saw the Mommy smiling while she sat at the kitchen table, feeding herself and another person, although this other individual was either out of view or too short for the Daddy to see. The Daddy felt quite drowsy, and he also thought he heard the sound of the radio as it played the short, whining, and jittering sounds of jazz through its small speakers. His leg started to bounce along with the music, although a little off tempo from the rhythm.
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