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A question he asks himself sometimes, most often when sitting across from her at the kitchen table:
- Should he kill her?
Other questions he asks himself, more often than the former:
- Is she a threat?
- Will she try to bring her son back?
- Does she realize he’s not the same as the son she used to have?
- Has she noticed anything different about him these past few days?
- (And even if she did, would she say anything?)
Again, he asks himself, sometimes more urgently during those few instances she tries to start a conversation instead of sit in silence and eat like he thought they mutually and wordlessly agreed upon—gripping the knife in his hand that she had foolishly given him to butter the bread roll on his plate—
- Should he kill her?
To be fair, the arguments to keep her alive aren’t few. They are:
- This woman provides nutrition.
- She is the reason they have a roof over their head.
- She is the reason they are no longer in Faraway Town.
- She drives him to necessary appointments.
- She didn’t tell him about ◻◻◻◻◻.
(There had been a moment he thought she would. Coming to his room while he was still unpacking. Sitting on the corner of his bed he already made. Rubbing her palms together. “Honey… um…” And when he looked up: “Do you… by any chance remember your old friend…”
But when the letter B was on her lips, she stopped.
He stared at her. She stared back.
And there was a moment he could see straight through her eyes and into her head. He knew—and he didn’t know how he knew—but he knew that she wouldn’t tell him what she thought she should.
“Never mind.” She smiled and clasped her hands together like nothing bad had happened at all to anyone of any importance and knocked the side of her folded hands against her knees. “What did you bring with you? I didn’t get the chance to ask what you decided to keep before we left…”)
Things he thinks about sometimes, in the middle of the night, just before falling asleep while looking at his new ceiling that doesn’t have a fan anymore:
- Why didn’t she tell him about ◻◻◻◻◻?
There’s a door in the back of his head.
There are many doors, really, but this one—this is a new door. A dark door stark against a shifting blue expanse. He doesn’t open every door in the depths of his own mind—but this one—this door—he has a feeling that once he opens it, he won’t be able to open it again.
So he doesn’t open it.
Not yet.
He’s waiting…
Things he has to remind himself about when doing his homeschool work in the city:
- Don’t leave “Omori” in the name blank at the top of the page once it’s complete.
- Really, don’t forget. Last time you did, she almost saw, and if she sees it…
Well. A few things that could happen if she sees her son call himself “Omori”:
- She might get curious.
- She might ask why.
- (If she does ask, does that mean he has to kill her?)
He doesn’t know.
He pins the thought to the back of his mind. Somewhere beyond the dark door he hasn’t yet opened that sits waiting for him, past the spinning weathervane.
(Sometimes, he sits outside the door at the back of his mind. Not close enough to touch it, but just enough to keep it in his sights. Enough so that the door knows that he knows it’s there. Tapping his fingers on knees, criss-crossed over the black-and-blue checkerboard roadmap floor. Staring.
Waiting…)
A list of things she bought at that “big furniture sale” for their new home in the city:
- a sofa
- an entertainment center
- three barstools
- a kitchen table
- two beds
- three bookshelves
- two wardrobes
- two nightstands
- two desks
- two lamps
- a handful of fake houseplants
- some floating shelves
Some realizations that occur to Omori after they’ve lived in their new home for a week:
- None of the furniture they had from their old home is here.
- There aren’t photos on any of the walls.
- Nor on the floating shelves.
- There aren’t even any photos on the mantle above their new fireplace.
- (The new shelves were apparently purchased only for her ornament collection.)
Two things Omori vows to forget about soon:
- The unopened cardboard box sitting at the back of the coat closet, labeled “PHOTOS.”
- The gigantic frame hidden under an old bedsheet, sitting behind that box and all their dusty winter coats.
“Aw, sweetie! How thoughtful of you.”
Omori’s head snaps around. He hadn’t heard her approach over the clink of dishes and running water as the sink fills and suds. She doesn’t seem to notice the knife he’s grabbed, either. Perhaps the gleaming bubbles hide it from her view. Discreetly, he slips the knife back into the soapy water and turns back to the sink.
“Sorry, did I startle you?” she giggles. “You’re so jumpy lately. Are you getting enough sleep?”
They sit in silence long enough as Omori works for him to begin to wonder if she’s wandered away. He sets a cup in the top rack of the dishwasher. Then a mug.
“Y’know Sunny.” Still here, then. “I don’t think I say it enough… and that’s my fault as your mother. So I’m going to try to make an effort to say it more often: you really are a good boy. You know that?”
It makes his fingers tingle. His grip almost falters on the plate in his hand, and he’s reminded, suddenly, of a broken bowl the other day—back in Faraway—it had slipped from his hand while he was doing the dishes there. But he hadn’t had the excuse of hearing the words You really are a good boy. Then, he only had the excuse of being Sunny and being worthless and being sick and being—
“Thank you for doing the dishes.”
By the time Omori turns around, she’s gone. Her shadow stretches across the floor, growing thinner and smaller the further away she goes.
Two more questions he asks himself that night when staring at the ceiling of a much better room without a useless and decorative houseplant in the corner:
- Does she know what happened?
- Is it possible she… doesn’t?
- If she does, why did she say what she said in the kitchen today?
- If she doesn’t, what would she say if she did know?
A tempting thought that he doesn’t realize could be so appealing until he closes his eyes:
- If she doesn’t know, then maybe he doesn’t have to kill her.
Omori doesn’t intend to overhear the voicemail.
He’s helping bring in the last of the groceries when the raspy, familiar-unfamiliar voice from their wireless phone dock says, “I just thought, um—in case Sunny wants to come… I know it might be hard for him, but ◻◻ —” Static. Loud in his head. “—and him were really good friends once. We all were… well.” A shaky inhale. “Anyway, the funeral is tomorr—”
“—Message erased,” the machine chimes. Omori follows the finger pressed against the button up to the sliver of a pained face he can see above it, just over her curved shoulder. He can barely see the corner of her eye. “End of new messages.”
Silence.
He tries to set down the tote bags as gently as possible, but the bagged vegetables and bread loaf inside still rustle. Immediately, as she turns to face him fully, her face brightens.
“Oh! Hi, Sunny! Why, thank you. That’s perfect. Is that the last of what was in the trunk?”
He nods.
She clasps her hands together. “Wow, you’re such a big help, sweetie! Mommy appreciates it so much! Why don’t you go ahead and head on up to your room or, um—go play a bit? I’ll go ahead and put everything away here if you want.”
Well. If she insists.
Two things Omori can hear behind his back as he slowly leaves the kitchen:
- the sound of rustling plastic
- quiet sniffles and sobs
He opens the door that night.
The knob is cool under his hand. It opens easily, into a small room beyond, covered in familiar-unfamiliar wallpaper, patterned in vines. There’s another door on the far wall.
Omori walks through it, too.
An identical room lies beyond. And beyond the next door, another identical room, and another, and another—and they all pass him by—all the same as before. Omori quickly loses track of how many small rooms he’s walked through. The repeating print of dark vines bleed across his vision; they spark luminescent against the back of his eyelids when he closes his eyes.
It’s all the same—and for a moment, disappointment wells up within him—until it isn’t.
At last, he comes across her.
She does not move as he approaches. He can see her smile, her curly hair, her suburban mom combo of a buttoned-up cardigan and skirt. But she’s too stiff; dully gleaming in mottled silver in the middle of the room. A likeness, but not a Headspace replica of the real thing. Which is good. She was never supposed to be in Headspace, anyway.
So why is she here at all?
(Surely it’s too dangerous to have his singular remaining family member somewhere in his head.)
Omori stops in front of her. He stares into her bright face. Slowly, his eyes drop to another door against the opposite wall behind her. Looming. In presence, this one feels different than the others. It feels heavier; the inky black of it looks darker and thicker.
Her back is turned towards it.
Omori takes a deep breath. He looks at her expression again. Facing away from the door and all that lies beyond. Cheery. Staring at her now, he can almost hear her say the words again: “You really are a good boy.” His eyes drop to her hands at her sides. They’re clean. Mostly.
He steps around her.
He hears a shift, and when he turns around, the statue itself hasn’t moved. He can no longer see her face, but maybe that’s the way she wants it to be.
Omori turns to face the door.
As soon as he enters, he knows why he will never come back to this particular hall in the back of his mind again. The giant, ugly Thing that she is standing guard of, that she doesn’t want to face—
He is grateful it is pitch black in the chamber beyond. That he can’t see a thing.
His socked toes bump into the music stand first. Something he could’ve used. Once. Maybe. In another life, another time. If he had been stronger.
Instead, it sits here. In a coat closet in the back of his mind. Accompanied by the lumpy, broken, hideous creature with hair as black as the shadows that swallow it whole. That keep its true horrible visage hidden from sight. Of course it should be here, in the disregarded shadows. Left to do nothing anymore but collect dust and be forgotten. Of course.
Its voice, when it speaks, is thin and reedy, labored: “Brother… I'm so glad you're here… ”
Laughable. That makes one of them. He can barely see it.
After a moment of staring into the inky dark and listening to the quiet and wheezing breath, he finally turns to leave.
Two comforting affirmations that occur to him as he wakes up the next morning, looking at the ceiling of a perfectly fine room with no window looking out over a smooth and treeless backyard:
- There’s no need to kill anyone.
- Perhaps, in fact, Omori and his mother are not so different from each other after all.