Ricky's Mommy

Ricky's Mommy
By The Ragpicker - 8 yo relic

Word Count: 2500

-1-
Jonesy almost banged his door open, ready to beat the hell out of whoever had knocked at the door and broken his beauty sleep. He was half wondering who'd knock at a snobby old nigger's door (which is what he believed everyone thought of him; and knew that he, in fact, was) in the dead of the night. The door opened to nobody.

         Well, not exactly.

         He looked down and saw a blond kid staring up at him. The kid's eyes were big like his shabby clothes. Snot ran down his nose.

         Jonesy sat on his knees, leveling his gaze to the kid's.

         "Who're you?" Jonesy asked.

          "Wicky," the kid said.

         "Wicky?"

         "No, Wicky with an 'aw,' like wabbit."

         "Ricky?"

         Ricky nodded.

         "What do you want, Ricky?" Jonesy scratched his bristly cheek.

         "I'm lost, mistuh."

         Jonesy looked Ricky over. "What happened?"

         Ricky seemed unsure. Then, wetting his lips, he said, "Mommy left me saying she was gonna come back and she..." Ricky sniffled. That didn't stop the snot from flowing. "She didn't come back, mistuh, she didn't come back!" He buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

         Jonesy felt like putting an arm around the kid and consoling him. He didn't. Hugging a kid wasn't considered clean anymore.

         "Cuh-can I use the potty, mistuh?" Ricky was wiping his tears off with his pink hands.

         Jonesy nodded. Got up. Ricky walked in. Jonesy closed the door and led Ricky to the toilet.

         He stood outside the toilet, hearing Ricky urinate, wondering about how this was the first time a kid was in his house since Rhea and little Andy died in the crash.

#

-2-
When Ricky got out, Jonesy asked him: "What's your last name, kid?"

         "Awthuton, mistuh. Wicky Chwis Awthuton."

         "That's 'Chris Arthurton'?"

         "Yes, mistuh."

         "And where did your mom go, kid, when she left you?"

         Ricky wet his lips again. "She said she was... meeting someone and he didn't like kids..."

         "Did she say where she was going?"

         Ricky shook his head. "She told me to wait outside the mall and I did. But she didn't come. She didn't. I waited till the mall's lights came on, mistuh, honest, she didn't come."

         "Okay, Ricky, listen. I'm gonna call the police now; they'll come and pick you up, okay? Take you back to your Mommy, okay?"

         Ricky nodded with such stark simplicity that for a moment Jonesy almost did sit down and hug him. Almost. He was a cute kid without the tears and snot, all right.

         "You want something to eat, kid?"

         "Yes, mistuh."

         "Call me Jonesy, okay?"

         "Okay, Jonesy."

         Jonesy smiled.

         Ricky smiled back. That smile transformed his cuteness into outright beauty.

         "Pizza?" Jonesy asked.

         "Sure."

         Jonesy put the pizza-pie in the microwave.

         He gave one slice of the pie to Ricky, and started going to the telephone when the doorbell rang.

#

-3-
He went to the door, opened it.

         Standing at the door was a fat woman wearing a floppy T-shirt that had a lot of question marks on it and a worn pair of jeans. Hung on her shoulder was a thick burgundy bag, which, Jonesy was sure, was full of Lakme and Revlon cosmetics.

         "Where's my boy?" she asked, her face a blur of worry.

#

-4-
After Mommy hugged Ricky in the living room, Jonesy thought of something he should've thought of when he first saw Mommy standing outside his door.

         "Ma'am?" he said.

         Mommy looked up from Ricky's ruffled blond hair and stood up, smiling.

         "How did you know where Ricky was?" Jonesy asked.

         She didn't answer him. The corners of her mouth twitched, and her smile died away.

         Jonesy gazed at her, at Ricky, at her again.

         "What's going on here?" Jonesy asked.

         Silence.

         "Did you..." Jonesy didn't like what he was thinking. "Did you plan this?" He stepped forward. "Did you... you meant to con me, didn't you? You meant to loot me, didn't you?"

         Ricky grinned.

         Then Ricky and his mom shimmered like an image seen through rising smoke. They flickered for a second; then they vanished.

#

-5-
Jonesy's first thought was: I'm going blind.

         But no, he could see the rest of his living room. Even the grandfather clock behind the place where Ricky and his mom stood. Had stood.

         They just... disappeared.

         That's not possible, man.

         But it was. Somehow, it was, and it had happened.

         Jonesy heard the dull thump of his heart, felt the thin beat of the veins above his eyebrows.

         He reeled back till his buttocks connected with the table's edge. He sat on it.

         Unreal, man, this is unreal. So unreal.

         It was. But was it any more unreal than watching a rusty plane crash into the World Trade Center buildings? Was it?

         No.

         It was just... different.

         Because crashing planes were parts of the natural world around him. They were... acceptable facts.

         But a woman and a kid disappearing in front of your eyes, just like that, flash, that was... he groped for the word. "Supernatural," he said.

         Yes, supernatural. Like all those kiddy fairy-tales he'd never believed as a kid.

         When his Ma had told him about Dumbo, the elephant that could fly, he'd thought elephants could never fly. No sir, that wasn't possible. Because those kind of things don't happen.

         And what do you think about it now, Jonesy? If a woman can disappear in front of your eyes, why can't an elephant fly? Why can't Aladdin really have a magic lamp?

         "Because," he began.

         Because what?

         The answer, if there was one, eluded him.

         His brain popped up another question: the kid and his mother disappeared. Okay. This is all supernatural. Okay. Question is, buddy, what are you gonna do about it?

         The answer was another question: what could he do about it?

         The answer to this one was simple: nothing.

         Oh really?

         Yeah, really. I can't do anything.

         Okay, he couldn't do anything about it. Now what else could he do?

         He could go back to sleep.

         You're out of your mind, buddy; you just witnessed something... incredible, and you want to go to sleep?

         But his mind seemed to have lost its persuasiveness; his curiosity seemed to have lost its charm.

         The more he thought about it, the more the bedroom seemed to invite him in.

         He went to the bedroom and lay on his bed.

         Sleep came easy.

         And fast.

#

-6-
He woke up hearing light tapping sounds.

         From the living room, judging by their volume.

         Till he sat up in his bed and wiggled his feet into his slippers, there was no thought of Ricky and his mother in his brain; but when it came, it surprised the living daylights out of him.

         You're getting old, man; forgetting something like that's pretty senile.

         Was it? Or was it his brain trying to blot the whole experience out? If that's what it was, Jonesy thought he'd let his brain forget. He didn't need those memories.

         Those tapping sounds again, like drumsticks drumming against the rim of a snare.

         What was it? A bird caught in the house? A rat rolling a can of nuts, maybe?

         Or, heck, roaches doing the Macarena; sticks and hats and shady Elvis Presley songs in the background? Why not?

         Why not?

         If Ricky could disappear in front of his eyes, then why--

         Don't think about it.

         --couldn't roaches dance and why couldn't pigs fly--

         Don't think about it! Don't.

         The rimshot sounds stopped.

         They just stopped.

         He got up from his bed, went to his bedroom door (don't go out, man, don't do it, please don't do it), swung it open, and went in the living room.

         Nothing there.

         He released his breath when he realized he was holding it.

         Then Ricky's Mommy rose from behind the table on which Ricky had munched his pizza.

         She held her burgundy purse in her hands.

         He started to do something--scream, run, charge up and grab her, anything--when she saw him and dropped her purse, surprised, looking like a kid caught stealing apples.

         He knew he would faint, in fact, he was looking forward to it, almost wishing for it, when she bent down, picked her purse up again, looked at him with her cold eyes and he just... froze.

         Watching her standing in his room was in some way more unreal than watching her disappear. Exactly like watching a magician cut his pretty assistant into two and patch her back up again.

         She stepped toward him.

         Another step, almost cautiously.

         She was close enough to reach out and touch.

         Then she passed him and started heading to the main door.

         A question sprang up in his mind, and before he had a chance to reflect on the consequences of asking it--he could end up dead, or worse--he asked it: "What are you?" he asked, his voice perfectly (and alarmingly) clear and lucid.

         She looked over her shoulder, the back of her T-shirt nothing but a big question mark with a skull instead of a dot below the symbol.

         "Nobody," she said, "ever asked that before." But her lips didn't move when she said it. No, they didn't. He heard her just the same.

         She turned around, slung her purse on her shoulder.

         "What am I? Let's see." She smiled. Her smile was like Ricky's; it made her beautiful, and Jonesy thought that everyone misinterpreted fear, didn't they? He was shell-shocked, just about ready to flip into insanity, and yet he still had the ability to observe and behold beauty when he saw it.

         She wet her lips and said, "What am I? What do you think?"

#

-7-
"Guh-ghost?" he asked. He could still think clearly. Yes sir, they'd always misinterpreted fear all right.

         She let out a sound that could've been a chuckle or a sigh. "That's the best you can do?"

         "I... don't know." He raised his hands, palms up, and looked at them, suddenly interested in the lines on his palms. As if he was seeing them for the first time. "What else can you... be?" And he was genuinely curious. Still frightened, but curious. Like the teens who always got squashed into ketchup in those Scream movies.

         "Well, I could be anything. Anything at all." She changed into a younger girl, younger and thinner. Jonesy didn't even doubt that he was seeing it all and it was all happening. Her hair changed from black to blond. "See?" He did see. And did know that she suddenly looked very familiar. He'd seen that face, that younger face. He thought about it, and it came to him: she looked like Tara Reid.

         "Now, can ghosts do that, Jonesy?" she asked, and Tara changed, changed into Marilyn Monroe wearing that white dress; into Grace Kelly; into Rita Hayworth; into Catherine Zeta Jones; into Halle Berry; and into Ricky's mom again. He watched it all with terrified fascination. "What am I, Jonesy? What do you think about it now?" Her eyes were flaring a deep orange.

         "I... don't... oh, God, I don't know; I really don't..."

         "God, you said. That's what I am, Jonesy. I'm a Goddess."

         His first, simple response was: I don't believe you! But he knew--knew the way you know when you're a kid that there's a big monster hiding below your bed ready to grab you when the lights go out--that there was nothing unbelievable about this woman... woman, if that's what she was.

         "What am I, Jonesy? I'm a Goddess. That's what I am." She changed again. This time into a blue-skinned woman who was so starkly dark and hypnotizing that for a while Jonesy felt an incredible need to touch her and kiss her and--

         Her teeth grew into sabers; a garland of skeletons grew around her neck.

         "I'm Kali," she said, "Goddess of the black." The word 'black' resonated to a white, insane completeness in the small room.

         Two black lines appeared below her now pale-white eyes.

         Jonesy gulped, the spittle hanging inside his throat for a long time before it went down.

#

-8-
"In India, they call me the Mephistophelean Queen."

         Jonesy gulped again. "What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

         "Yeah, well, my kid, what name did he give you?"

         "Ruh-Ricky," Jonesy stuttered.

         "Ricky, huh? So American. He's a brat, okay? Ran away from home saying he wanted to eat a hamburger. That's why he came here. To America."

         This was absurd!

         "Yeah? Sounds absurd, right. I know. But that's what happened. My kid came to USA to eat a hamburger. He had his burger and decided he wanted a pizza as well. That's why he knocked on your door. I came to take him back home. Happy?"

         Jonesy nodded. "Then... why did you come back?"

         "I forgot my purse, you made me drop it in surprise, okay? I came here to take it. I didn't want to disappear in front of you back then, either, but you surprised me into it."

         Jonesy blinked.

         "Can I leave now?" she asked. "Not that I need your permission, human."

         Jonesy thought of a million things to ask about--everyone has a million questions he thinks he'll ask God when he meets Him--but only one of them seemed important. "Is Rhea in heaven?"

         She laughed. "Heaven? Buddy, do you think Gods care about you? We don't. You were... are a mistake, okay? We never wanted you here on Earth in the first place. Tiresome irritants, each and every one of you. You think we'd go through the pains of creating an afterlife for you?"

         Jonesy felt like someone had punched him hard and thick in the guts.

         "You die," Kali said, "and that's it. One less whining mouth. That's what you all are: whining babies. Nothing else. Can I go now?"

         Jonesy did nothing.

         She started to walk to the door, stopped, turned around, walked up to Jonesy, changed into Rhea, and disappeared.

#

-9-
Jonesy stepped out into the morning sunshine, flopping his cane to the beat of a Louis Armstrong song, wearing his favorite brown cap over his bald head for the first time in God knew how long.

         One thing he didn't understand: if Ricky had wanted a pizza, why didn't he just get one at a pizza shop?

         Didn't matter. Nothing except one thing really did: heaven's existence.

         He had made a decision.

         He was heading toward Bass Town Bank to withdraw his life savings. He'd decided to take a trip around the world.

         First stop: Switzerland.

         Last stop: Egypt.

         After that, he'd jump off a helicopter and end his life and find out if Kali had lied about heaven.

         She could've, like her son had.

         Gods have that right.

End