Some people and their ways are an acquired taste, but after decades under her rule and several escapes I find myself once again taking up shelter under the cursed roof that must for right now be called home. With her. A woman of short stature and stout build who’s strides I liken to that of a stampede of wild boar evading a predator. Quick, angry steps. Always. Her girlish smirk long frozen over by the cruelty of her years and replaced by a scowl that could rot meat the second she laid eyes upon it. Maybe she never had a girlish smirk at all.

The sound of Maude’s voice….no warmth, no pleasant twinkle of femininity. Only the deep, guttural, shrill resounding bark that I’ve always known. The nails on the chalkboards in all my most horrific dreams, only I wake to find that I’m not dreaming it at all. The touch of her hand is heavy as if the weight of her entire body rests in her palms and her long, wrinkled fingers end with unevenly buffed pointy beige nails.

What mortifies me as it always has is not the voice, the harsh touch, the cold dead stare or even the marching of her feet….it’s the monster that lives inside her. The one that I can’t see. The one that holds us hostage. The one that holds our minds hostage. Myself, “the boy” and the “precious one” that I must protect…….