Favorite Son

“Cheer up”, Lionel remembered, “Mommy’s favorite son knows that it’s better to try, than to cry.”

It was dark outside and pitch black where ever he was inside the house. His face was sticky, covered in a thing that wasn’t his. He was holding something with a handle in his right hand and something soft in the other. He dropped the soft thing, but the thing with the handle was held in place by some odd muscle memory. He called out “Mom!” while he reached out his left hand to feel for a wall, but got not answer from the darkness. Lionel tried again to remember.

“When I come back, the living room should be tidy, because Mommy’s favorite son knows that when the house isn’t clean, it makes mommy mean!” The silly phrases his mom came up with served mainly to annoy Lionel, rather than encourage him. Lionel already knew that he was her favorite son because he was her only son, her only anything, really, since his father died before Lionel could remember. It was the day before his 8th birthday, and he had waited until she left to get the cake to spring his plan. Lionel knew that the new Iron Man action figure was somewhere in the attic, waiting for him.

The small wooden box was under some old coat hangers and towels. It had an old faded photograph of his mother and a man with a hand over her large belly on top of it, but Lionel quickly brushed it off in search of his prize. The latches were already undone, so Lionel lifted the lid and peered inside.

At first he thought it was a hackysack, but when he took it in his hand he saw that it was a woolen blue baby’s boot, tightly knitted and full of something fine and light. Curious, Lionel undid the knot at the top and poured out a long stream of dust which smelled like a campfire back into the box. After that — a haze,and some horrible dream just past the point of remembering. Except for one phrase.

Mommy’s favorite son knows whose life to take with this knife.

Now, Lionel’s fingers found kitchen light switch and he flicked it up. The hum of the electricity filled the room and the light blinded him, though he could make out dark smudges on the counters, and the outline of a figure slumped on the floor. Then the world came into focus. Lionel froze. The blood on his face was mostly dried now, but every so often a trail of red flecks would reanimate near Lionel’s eyes and travel down his cheek, as if coming back to life. Unlike mommy.

But like something else.

Cheer up, a voice, deep and harsh like some other worldly velcro came from the knitted sock on the kitchen floor, Mommy’s favorite son knows that it’s better to be an orphan, than an abortion.

Then a force lifted Lionel’s right arm and pulled.