"I cannot believe how horribly you've behaved today!! Arguing and quarrelling over a stupid, made-up game. Ridiculous!!!" Mother's voice was to the top of her vernacular now.
She paced back and forth, the three of us sitting quietly at the dining table, watching her.
She peered at us venomously, Cheesy and Sharp bowing their heads in fear like dogs being scowled by their owners.
"I must've mistaken how hard it was for me to carry all three of you with a downtrodden pouch, swollen legs and an upset tummy. Imagine I did all that to watch both of you fight. Over a silly board game nonetheless!" she chastised.
"In one corner we have the two nimwads fighting over Dratsmate. In another corner we have the one staying to himself, not talking to anyone. And sneaking out at all kinds of cats and dogs' hours in the night just to stare up into the sky through the clearing glass like he's lost all sense and rationality in the world..." as she said that, the spit that was supposed to go down my throat escaped into another socket; I began coughing, my eyes peered up at Mother in absolute shock. I began to spiral.
"Mo-mother i-i can-"
"Explain??Oh dear did you really think I didn't know?" she bucked her head back and gave out a sharp laugh, bobbing her head in ridicule.
"Oh my drats!! If I had known the three of you would've given me this much trouble, I would've ingested you all for my sustenance. Sometimes Mother rodents eat her young do you know that? Babies are filled with nutrition. Instead, I chose to raise you three to look out for each other as rodents, and here you are! Separated! Not moving as one." my eyes were glued to the floor now, not daring to look up at her.
How??When??How and when did she find out? And how long has she known??
I mean, something deep inside of me knew she would find out. But not this soon...
I had been so careful. I made sure no one was following me, everyone was always asleep. When i came back in, all three of them were in the same spot where I left them..so how could she have known??
"Look at me when I'm talking!! Heads up all three of you!!" she commanded, our heads bobbing as instructed.
She marched up to us, stationing herself in the middle of everyone.
"Cheesy, stop responding to every little taunt from your brother!! The world isn't a bed of roses. And Sharp stop antagonizing your brother!!! The next time I hear another awful word coming out of your mouth, I'll send you straight into the bathroom to drink toilet water. Filthy mouth!!"She slapped Sharp across the head abruptly and he jerked back, almost falling off of his chair.
She came right up to me, her piercing eyes grabbing me in its focus.
"And as for you..... Burrow" she hissed, bending her head down to my level.
"If I ever, ever, ever. See you up on that ledge staring out into the night like a buffoon again..."she paused, her eyes locked into a gaze with mine.
"Just know that if you dare to venture out there, you stay out there. Don't consider yourself to be my son, cause the minute you step out there without my permission, just know that you'd be nothing but a stranger to me" she hissed.
In that space of time, everything slowed down. She may as well have taken a knife and stabbed me in the chest. Those words stung, like sticks and stones being thrown at me.
Sharp and Cheesy mouths had fallen out of their jaw sockets, both of them just as surprised as I was.
"Bu- but- Mother-" Cheesy concurred.
"And that goes for all of you!!! I don't want to hear it!" We are rodents. Rodents! This is- this-" Mother turned her head from left to right, looking about the room as if she were about to tell a secret.
"This fighting. This quarrelling about food and games. It is R. A. T. like behavior. We are -"
"Rodents. We are an intelligent, God-fearing race that carries ourselves with the utmost pride" Sharp and Cheesy chimed in simultaneously, finishing her sentence. I stared out into space, still shocked at the fact that Mother said that to me. She continued preaching.
"R.A.T.S. Notice how I spelt it out??? R.A.T.S. are what they are expecting us to be. Savage, dirty, nasty little pests that leave droppings everywhere and fight and kill for scrapings. No. Not in my household. We are as proud as the eagles, as smart as the cats, and our minds are bigger than the Giants. We are rodents my sons, not that disillusioned, fake, dirty little word that others use to describe us to tell us who we are."
Mother made it her duty to tell us that we were Rodents over and over again. This had become our motto, so much to the point that we memorized the phrase, word for word. It was admirable that she was inculcating such a positive message into us, but drats it was annoying as hell.
"Hmmm. Good. Well then, we shall continue. Now, bow your heads. It's time for prayer" she ordered, all of us immediately grasping each other's hands and closing our eyes.
"Lord, Father God in Heaven, the one and only owner of this Universe we live in...we come today as your humble and faithful rodents thanking you for providing this meal for us. We are so grateful for your provision day in and day out, and we thank you for giving us the chance to live to see another day. We ask that you continue to guide and protect us in this world that was set out to destroy us. Help us to always have faith in you Lord. Help us to know that no matter how bad circumstances may seem, help us to remember that you can flip any situation into our favor. Amen"
"Amen" the rest of us followed, letting go of each other's hands and beginning to eat. With that said she headed toward the table and gathered the food. Scrappy pieces of shredded honey glazed Ham, with crispy burnt potatoes and some carrots and veg, four servings all beside each other on the table, with a bowl of water to drink in the middle.
The air had become even denser now. Not a single word was uttered, everyone frightened into eating silently. I couldn't help but feel a loss of appetite due to the sinking feeling that rested in the walls of my stomach. Of all the things we had done, all the times we caused trouble, Mother never threatened disowner ship before. She loved us through and through, always telling us to care for one another and be faithful.
Me wanting a life of freedom was the border line to that. That was where she had enough.
I didn't get it. Why did she show so much aversion to the fact that we were growing up? To the fact that someday, we would need to get out of this place and go out? Making lives of our own. Starting families, forming new bonds, dabbling in different experiences...
I flinched at the stinging pain on the left side of my head, shoving a piece of Ham in my mouth and trying to shrug it off.
Finally, Cheesy broke the silence. He opened his mouth to its widest capacity, sinking his teeth into the Ham and gnashing away at the meat.
"Mmmm...scrumptious!!! Mother its soo good" he chewed and talked at the same time. As he did that a crumb sized piece of Ham stumbled out of his mouth and flew in my face, hitting me on the tip of my nose and rolling into my food.
"Oh!!Sorry Burrow. Let me just" Cheesy stretched his arm over to my plate and snatched the piece that fell on my bread, shoving it into his stuffed, yellow, sticky honey-stained mouth.
Now, typically, I would have cussed at Cheesy about his unhygienic practices, but I had grown so used to his obscenity that I no longer wasted anymore energy on fighting them. I shook my head and chuckled to myself, taking a delicate grub of Ham and pecking at it.
"Cheesy!!! Show some sort of decency!!" Mother rose up from the table and brought her hand up in the air, bringing it down and slapping him across the head. A bang sounded out into the air, Mother's hit having connected with such brute force that I swore it would wake the Giant.
"Ow ow owiiee!!!!I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Cheesy rubbed his head from the blow, holding it and rocking back and forth. Right after that Sharp turned his head away from me and spat out his water, bending over in a series of coughing from almost choking. Cheesy's defeated eyes roamed up steadily, his vexed expression prying resentfully at Sharp.
Sharp threw his head back and continued cackling away, bursts of laughter echoing throughout the room.
"You greedy muck!!!" he bellowed, tears coming out of his eyes as he held his stomach, laughing so much that it began to twist his sides. Sharp fell to the ground, rolling over on his back, his arms spread across the floor helplessly.
"Ohhh my gosh I can't. I cannot. Cheesyyyyyy I- "
"Sharp get up off the floor and stop laughing at your brother before I give you something to be mad about!!" Promptly, all the laughing came to a halt.
Sharp forced himself to revert to an expression of nonchalance, but he still couldn't help the traces of laughter that were creeping their way out, so he folded his lips, blinking his eyes rapidly.
He gestured his hand towards me to help him get up off the floor. The pupils in my eyes descended to him reluctantly, and instead of placing my hand out to help, I just stood there, gazing at him. I felt bitter observing him. What was so funny? Here we are stuck in a place with a psychopathic mother, our freeness being at stake, and what was he doing? Laughing it up at the sake of Cheesy's overindulgence. Hesitating, I clutched his hand in mine and grabbed him up in one pull; he got up and dusted himself off, sitting back at the table quietly.
Sharp knew better than to harass Cheesy, but Cheesy got on my nerves to. However, I always tried my best to encourage him whenever I could. He was the youngest of us by a minute, hence Mother emphasized just how much we had to protect him. What she didn't know was that this innocent form of "Protection" was a double-edged sword, blocking Cheesy from needed personal growth, that would enhance his instinct to survive outside of these walls.
It's sad how a mother's love can blind us to the bitter, brutal truths of reality. And the reality was, that for a rodent, Cheesy was too tumultuous, too fat, and waaay too slow (both physically and mentally) It was so bad that whenever we went out of our holdings and went into the Kitchen to scavenge for things to eat, someone would be left with the babysitting duties of watching him. Unfortunately, Mother never failed to choose me.
I would have to have my eyes glued to the back of my head and my ass, to keep Cheesy safe. If he wasn't breathing in my nape with his warm staunch Cheese infested breath about how tired and exhausted he was, he was tripping over something. Falling on something that would disturb the Giant and alert them to our presence, almost dying and going into whatever Godforsaken situation there was.
"Ehhhhhh Broottherr Burrow slow down. My feet hurt so so sooo bad. And I am big boned, I cannot move as quickly please" He would whine insistently. He claimed he was utterly exhausted from walking. But no, I didn't believe that. In fact, it was Impossible. He wasn't exhausted.
I was exhausted.
Me! I was sick of it all. Tired of this cramped space, tired of the games, tired of being told I could never survive in the wild. My patience was weighing thin with him, and in cumulation with everything else, my annoyance became more and more palpable as the days passed.
I shouldn't have to live my life like this, and what she is doing to us as our mother was horrendous. Blocking us off completely from the realities of life, keeping us caged like this.
I was tired living this life. I loved my mother to the very core of my being, she was me, and I was her. But I just had to take the risk. I had to take the risk of being disowned, of being unloved by her.
If I had to stay here for the rest of my life, I may as well have been unloved. I got up from my chair, pushing my plate away to the center of the table, standing up and looking at her straight in her eyes.
"Mother. Why is it that you never, ever have taken us out into the wild to hunt?" I asked.
Mother's hand froze in its position, hanging in the air with a slab of meat that she was about to eat. Sharp grasped his hand around the bread, stopping in his tracks as he heard what I asked. Cheesey's eyes popped open, the constant motion of his rounded cheeks stopping.
The question dispersed into the air like sulfuric acid.
Everyone was watching me now.