[Winter Contest Entry 2015] Mother Knows Best

Blood streamed down from his head to his toes. The unsanitary grey concrete floor was dyed red.

The scrawny killer slowly gnawed at his flesh, tearing and devouring the tendons and ligaments of his body.

I could only stand in horror at the sight before me.

“Oh, Judas, you’re up!” The murderer called out to me.

I could not reply at all. The gruesome view made my stomach churn as the gastric acids within me found their way to my throat and back.

She approached me, her teeth still gleaming crimson, and gave me a peck on the cheek.
She probably noticed the expression on my face.

“You see, son, there are times when sacrifices must be made. Only the strong will survive in this world we currently live in. Which is why I made your little brother, the weakest among you siblings thus far, avoid the hardships he would encounter as a weakling in society. He couldn’t scavenge for scraps of food, nor could he forage for sustenance on the fields.”

Silence was my only retort to Mother’s statement.

“Also, honey.” She might have realized my lack of contentment. “Food has grown scarce where we live. If only we had more food, then we wouldn’t have needed to do this. The less we are in the family, the more food there will be for each of us, and to keep you all alive, I had to get rid of the weakest link. Of course,” She then wiped her mouth on a piece of cloth, “we are sources of nutrients ourselves.”

She gave me one last peck on the cheek before she turned her back on me and made her way to her quarters.

“It’s time to get back to bed! Come on now, we have a whole day of rummaging for food tomorrow.”
She disappeared as her figure melded into the darkness.

“If what mother said is true then... If I’m able to get enough food for all of us, I wouldn’t have to lose any more of my family!”

Vigor and determination surged within me as I received a new purpose for life.

“As the eldest, I-I can’t let my siblings down!”

I won’t let them die. I’ll keep them alive.



“I guess it wasn’t a dream after all…”

As I woke up the next day, I scoured my surroundings in search of my little brother but to no avail. The place where the incident occurred still had streaks of blood; its odor poisoned the air.

Why did he have to die?

I then proceeded to the dining area. The midnight’s scavenging made a pile of food which was evenly distributed to the members of the family. Of course, Mother has more food since she’s growing quite old.

As everyone received their share of food, a question was raised by a sibling of mine.

“Mother, where’s John?”

She then put up a face of anguish. With tears streaming down her face, Mother replied to him.

“Your little brother, John, he...”

A deafening silence loomed over the room.

“He was attacked by a predator!”

“What?”

Well it truly was a predator that attacked him in the first place.

What am I thinking!? That’s not what I-

“I found his body this morning with scratches and bite marks all over! I’ve already taken his body far away so that you all wouldn’t have to see his condition...”

The silence continued.

“However...” Mother said, breaking the silence, “Let us not let his death leave us only grief and sorrow. His death has bestowed upon us an important lesson! We currently live in an environment scarce of food. Creatures in our vicinity are growing desperate for nutrition! Your little brother was too scrawny and weak and could not confront the dangers of the wild. We all must grow stronger in order to defend ourselves against them! We must gather as much food as we can! We must do this in the memory of your fallen brother!”

Why did mother have to lie about John?

Why do you think? Isn’t it obvious? She just wants to devour everyone else.

No! Stop it! Mother isn’t like that!

“Yes, Mother!” My siblings howled in tears as they vigorously scarfed through their servings.

***

Despite my firm belief of Mother’s innocence, I still made my way to her chambers that night after the midnight’s scavenging, just so I could silence the voice within me that doubted her.

Ironically, I was the one silenced.

I told you so.

Blood streamed down from his head to his toes. The unsanitary grey concrete floor was dyed red.

Mother slowly gnawed at his flesh, tearing and devouring the tendons and ligaments of his body.

I could only stand in horror at the sight before me.

“Oh, Judas, you’re up!” Mother called out to me. “What can I help you with at this time of night?”

“Mother... why do this again...?”

She paused for a moment, and gazed into my eyes.

“Son.” She said as she turned around and wiped her mouth on a piece of cloth. “You might not understand, but us females, when we give labor, we don’t truly recover from the pain. Every time we give labor, it chips away at our energy and stamina reserves, much like how time ages our bodies and slowly does the same.”

What will you do, Judas?

“As someone who suffers from age and the consequences of labor, I must consume much more food than you young ones.”

In the end, didn’t John just die to satisfy Mother’s greed?

No! Mother did that for a perfectly logical reason! She did it for the good of our family!

But what is she saying now? Isn’t she just talking about herself? Think about it. Wasn’t she the one who said something about getting rid of the weakest link?

That’s not—

Just who is truly the weakest link right now? She consumes more food, yet works the least due to her age.

Shut up!

Are you just going to deny the fact that two of your siblings have fallen to your Mother because of her desperation to live? Are you just going to accept her equivocations? Are you just going to let your siblings’ death be in vain?

“Judas?”

Only the strong will survive in this world we currently live in. That’s why she killed John right? Why not follow what she said and do the same to the weakest link right now? Mother should understand why you would do so. She’s done it before after all.

“I’m sorry, Mother, but... I can’t let my siblings down. I won’t let them die. I’ll keep them alive.”

***

“I guess it wasn’t a dream after all…”

As I woke up the next day, I checked Mother’s chamber. The place where the incident occurred still had streaks of blood; its odor poisoned the air.

Also, yeah, rats can be cannibals given an environment with scarce food and water.

He gave us a refreshing take on humans' natures through the lenses of animals. That's a commendable effort on its own. Though short, he could clearly show the idea he wanted to present here. Like one of my philosophies of writing "Brevity is the soul of wits" - William Shakespeare - this obviously scores points in my book. Though underlying, this story is more thought-provoking the more we think about it.

The characters, they were great. I mean, they are simple creatures, that's for sure, but because they are so simple that they can perfectly convey a one-dimensional perspective about things, so there's no gray area. We don't need their backgrounds or family history, but serves purposes we can clearly appreciate. It's easy to relate to their reasons of actions.

And grammars too. I haven't found any errors in this story. You think you can achieve it that easy? You can say he wrote a short story, so there's less of a margin for errors, but it's your own fault if you write a 2000-word story then mess up in your grammar department.

First off, the settings was just so. . .

Maybe I'll speak softly, heh.

First off, the settings was just so weird, you know? Yeah, it's rats and concrete floor inside filthy condo is where they live, but this is (supposedly, but I can see through it right away, heh heh) a fantasy settings where the location is yet unknown. I can't imagine 'concrete floors' and 'scavenging for scraps of food' on a 'field' being linked together in a believable way. I would buy it much harder if they were in a 'actual' field, with grass and coldness at nights and 'real' dangers of predators.

Secondly, the characters were just so far-fetched that it couldn't be that relatable. I mean, I can clearly see that these characters are not humans, simply because humans don't "gnawed", "devouring" and "howled", bro. It was something out of our world. Hell, rats don't howl. Yeah, they are (again, supposedly) just vessels for the author's ideas, but I'm not convinced by otherworldly creatures with different morals and ways of life. Let's go into more details about our two 'main' characters.

Judas (great name by the way): he's the hero of this story, apparently. Driven by his will of saving his brothers and sisters, he went great lengths doing so. But why is that? Why is this eldest brother feel like he has the duty to protect his siblings? I would have love to know more about that. Heh, I do agree that we don't need much history here, but this is the driving force of this story. His moral is in the question here, so I need to know more about that. See, this part right here “If what mother said is true then... If I’m able to get enough food for all of us, I wouldn’t have to lose any more of my family!” is the gray area right here. He can be thinking "Damn, I nidda get m'groove on yo, or I get snacked." for all we know because he hadn't demonstrated his morality elsewhere. Another thing is that, he doesn't actually have reasons to be split between himself. Why is there a 'light side'? Just because she is his mother? She did not promise him survival or a reason to believe anything she said. She did not seems to have offered any family protection or much else (a family member had just been 'killed by predators'). There is no benefits in being a 'light side'. So I feel like the whole basis of this piece which built upon has just crumbled.

Mother (terrible name): actually she is fine in her job, being creepy evil and all. Though, I would beg her to do her 'things' somewhere far from the family sleeping place, seems like she doesn't like them to know or anything. Or was it her plan to strike fear into one of the children? If that's it, then apparently it backfire on her. Oh wait, but was it her even grander plan all along to make Judas want to kill her? That would make for food for the whole family, making him a dependable person in place of her old body and she even did the killings of two of the weakest members of the family, too, so that Judas won't have to feel bad about having to do it later eventually. That is, like, Itachi Uchiha all over again.

This brings me to my third point. What is it that we take out from the story? What is the pacific lesson we are suppose to learn here? It's a interpretation of a nature of a kind of animal, and what they do, so what am I able learn from this? For me, little else besides a fascinating natural fact. It can be looked at the 'bigger picture', as one might say, that this represent humans' society as a whole and it's about power, who rise to the top will be the top of the food chain. If so, then it is so very conflicted with the events that obviously happened in the story, the son defied his mother to save his siblings. Though he can become his very own evil that he is fighting for, like the usual development to this story if you might imagine so, that is a very forced idea of cliché-ness. And he seems to harbor immense feelings for his siblings too. So this story present two ideas, the brother who has courage and common sense to do the right thing, and the story of power rising and stepping on others to survive, and it's a messy grey area. It's not they grey area is unacceptable, I can't find a place to trust here, and it just seems confused as a story when there is no central idea. Or is the grey area is the central idea, it seems like all the rage these days. I don't like it.

And here's even some things to improve upon for the author, in no particular order of related subjects I have touched upon:

• The unsanitary grey concrete floor was dyed red.
  
  
  It would have more impact for a setting if it was a clean concrete floor. I mean, I don't care if there a new stain on a already dirty floor, that is the garage. I would if it's in my living room.

• made her way to her quarters.
  
  
  It just sounds way too regal for this kind of environments.

• A deafening silence
  
  
  I haven't read this kind of expression anywhere, but not judging (I kinda am).

• as I received a new purpose for life.
  
  
  I'm curious to know about his old purpose though. Was he inspired to be an artist?

• "We must do this in the memory of your fallen brother!”
  
  
  Again, they didn't seem to be speaking the Queen's English and this was a dinner, not a motivation speech before a battle. Maybe 'unlucky' or even 'dead' would have sufficed.

• made my way to her chambers that night
  
  
  I'm feeling more and more likely that they live in a castle right now, but then why is their floor dirty in the first place?

• I checked Mother’s chamber. The place where the incident occurred still had streaks of blood; its odor poisoned the air.
  
  
  Yup, their servants are not doing their jobs properly, but it's most likely that they were 'killed by predators' also.

I had problems with both of these things, like I said above.



I'm sure that he was one of the judges for last year's winter event? Or because I read about his comments about everybody's works in a separate circumstances? Either way, he has been here for a long time now.

I based the description of the setting on what I see in my country. Where I'm from, even if a house is situated on a field (my bad, I didn't clarify this as a farming field), more often than not the houses still have concrete floors. Though I do admit that it would have been better if I dropped the idea of having them live in some random house and made the setting just in the fields themselves lol.

Guess I wasn't able to convince you through the usage of symbolism then. I understand that it's my responsibility though since I chose to have non-humans as main characters. It's my responsibility to somehow get humans to connect with non-humans through my style of writing (which I unfortunately was unable to do here with you).

As with what I told d, this was an error of mine. Although Judas is the eldest sibling, I failed to clarify that he's still young and thus, gullible. This gullibility then was supposedly the source of his way of thinking of "As the eldest brother, I have to do what I can for my siblings", and also this gullibility is the reason for Judas's falling for Mother's equivocation. The light side symbolized Judas's young, gullible self who loved his Mother and siblings without reserve. The reason why there's conflict between his "light side" and his "dark side" (which was supposedly like his animal instinct taking over him), was because he's conflicted between the trust he has for his Mother, leading him to blindly following whatever she says, and the animal instinct within him that tells him to kill his Mother before it comes to the point that more of his siblings would be eaten. As for "Damn, I nidda get m'groove on yo, or I get snacked." It's not really about "getting more food = I don't get eaten", but more of "getting more food = The other siblings don't have to worry about the share of food that was lost due to John's death once they see how much food I can get". "She did not promise him survival or a reason to believe anything she said." She didn't have to. Mother was appealing to the side of Judas that did whatever he can and believed whatever he heard that would be for the sake of his family.

"Though, I would beg her to do her 'things' somewhere far from the family sleeping place, seems like she doesn't like them to know or anything" This is most likely an effect of my lack of inclusion of more characterization. Supposedly, she's doing this since she thinks she can equivocate her way through the minds of her children. "That is, like, Itachi Uchiha all over again." Hate to admit it but I guess this situation is somewhat reminiscent of him lol.

As with most of my works, I usually don't keep a "what lesson can the reader take from the story" thing in mind while I write. So, if you found a lesson that conflicted with another lesson that can be possibly found in the story, then that would be my bad for failing to cover up that loophole.

Actually, yeah, "fallen" is a bit too much hahaha

From what I recall, yes, they do give birth to around 10-12 babies at a time, however there is a period of weakness of around a month after giving birth. (Or so I recall)