His Nepenthe | complete

9. Flashing

F L A S H I N G L I G H T S

*

Clarisse ran a perfectly manicured hand through her hair, practicing her smile in the compact mirror as the interviewer prepared their questions.

She tucked the compact away as the interviewer asked for the camera to begin rolling, a friendly grin on my mother's lips. Though a curious side eye was reserved for paying notice to my figure in the corner of our downstairs dining room, which was never used by her unless she catered a party.

The other woman straightened her palm cards, taking a deep breath and a watchful glance at my presence, before she began her introduction - both of herself and to the 'guest', my mother.

They started on a tangent of work, before leading to what was my favourite question for my mother to answer.

"So how do you manage it? Work and family?" The other woman asked in mock curiosity - a classic interviewer trait. They cared very little for the people they spoke to majority of the time, only concerned with the rating they may gain if they asked the right questions that viewers wanted to know the answers to.

The question was my favourite for one key reason; my mother didn't have a family with Marco or I, and she was barely holding on to a fragment of a relationship with her parents.

Clarisse didn't like people, and she certainly had very little care for her children now, even though we all lived under the same roof.

All she liked was cash and alcohol, which she could get both of from pretending to be a proper mother to a camera screen.

In a tactful act of sabotage to a careless driven bitch, I scoffed at the statement, loudly enough that it could be heard throughout the room, and would definitely be picked up by the recording equipment.

I noticed the hesitation in her voice as she thought of the best way to handle the interview with my rude interruption. A soft laugh left her lips as she glanced to me, the hidden look of poison asking to be released into her gaze so she could attack me, "My youngest, senior year. He's a little stressed."

I laughed at the words, beginning my walk up the stairs as I called down to the liar, "Good one, mum!"

She winced at the words, composing herself to the interviewer, a gentle sigh leaving her lips, "I'm sorry about him. Teenage boys. My eldest, Marco, was just the same."

"Was fucking not," I mumbled, stopping in my tracks. I sat down at the stairs to listen in to her fluent bullshit, my back rested against the wall. She feigned so perfectly, a façade of a mother and the lies of a fake bitch.

She was much 'like cocaine', my mother. That was the phrase her ex-producer told me when I was seven years old. I never quite caught his name, but I remembered his words. He told me that she was addictive in a dangerous way, and far too expensive for what she was. Acidic and lackluster.