by Cameron Walker
“Mother died today”, or maybe yesterday. I can’t be sure. The note which I’ve unfolded drips with rain; scratchy blue ink that fades with each passing word. The author, rushed, or simply short of working pens, must have delivered it late last night or early morning.
My mother’s side of the family are indeed odd people, but even for them, this was a particularly old-fashioned method of delivery. The rain, being as heavy as it had been these past days, should have swayed any reasonable person from taking the wheel; especially when my “silly-old cottage on a hill” (Mother’s phrasing) was only accessible via a dirt, now mud, lane.
I scout the hedge for signs of life but can hardly make out the rolling fields of wheat beyond them; Grey clouds darken the sky in dramatic fashion. To avoid the same wet fate as the mysterious letter, I close the door and bring my shivering body back to the fireplace, praying that the electricity will return soon.
I flip the page, and by flickering light, attempt to read the almost-visible ink on the back… “Sorry, love from M-”; the final letters were victims of bad weather.
‘M’… I didn’t have anybody in my family whose name started with the 13th. I would have assumed the letter once read “Mum”, except that mine was apparently now dead. Secondly, in all her unbearably long life, she never once used the word ‘love’. And thirdly, dead people don’t write their own letters, except for when they’ve taken “the easy way out” (Mother’s phrasing). I often thought she was trying to take the easy way out herself; a pack a day and a dirty martini to celebrate each one. I suppose that’s what finally finished her off. I picture her coffined body, wrapped in one of those garish fur coats, a lit cigarette and half-chewed toothpick poking out each corner of her mouth. That glamorous, ugly woman…
I put her out of my mind; this isn’t about her. Nor is this about me. This is about M; how they found my address, why they hadn’t rang the doorbell, and why they had the nerve to assume that I cared about my mother’s passing. I do not. I care about electricity. This fire isn’t going to last forever, and soon I’ll be sitting in a much darker living room, forced to listen to the sounds of bulleted rain pounding against my silly-old cottage.
Crack! A bolt of lightning split the air, so close it rattled the beams overhead. My hand jerked; the letter fell, curling in the fireplace. Panic surged. I plunged my hand into the coals, dragging it back out, beating down the flames with the sodden sleeve of my rain jacket. The action ought to have hurt, but supposedly my hands are still numb from years of being used as an ashtray.
The blackened edges diffused an acrid smoke, thickening. Growing stronger? Bitter, heavy. Not the fragile scent of scorched paper, but something larger. It comes in dense curls, spilling into the room. I fling open the door. Despite the storm outside, smoke feathers in from the downpour. Thatch work. Fire. I waste no time looking for shoes. Out into the storm.
The ladder groans as I drag it from the shed. My mother always mocked the ladder. “You’ll break your neck before you reach the second rung, silly child,” she’d say, as though she’d climbed higher things herself – balconies after martinis, or the tallest branches of great Oak trees. She may have be right (bitch), the steps are slippery under bare feet.
I climb, expired extinguisher slung over my shoulder, ready to prove her wrong. But when I reach the lip of the thatched roof my stomach clenches. Through the smoke and rain, I can make out what surely cannot be but unmistakably is; A pair of shoes sticking straight up from the straw. Patent leather, cracked at the seams. Kitten heels, feet still in them, pale, charred, splayed apart like string-cheese just above the ankles. Beside them: a hand, fingers petrified, still gripping a long iron pole. A conductor’s baton for the storm. She must have raised it skyward, daring God, daring anyone, until the lightning struck her down. Theatrical to the end.
I kneel in the straw, gagging on wet smoke. The fire pulses from a hollow pocket, and in its centre, cigarette butts smoulder. Of course. Her signature. She had tried to burn me out the old-fashioned way, choking the cottage with her little fires, and when that failed, she demanded a bigger spectacle. She had always escalated. Cigarettes to bottles, bottles to fists, fists to silence that lasted days. I remember the time she set my hair alight at the stove – “an accident” she’d insist, while laughing at the smell of burnt ends. Her cruelty had always worn the mask of glamour.
I could pull the pin on the extinguisher. One hiss and the fire would die. But I don’t. I let it crawl deeper into the roof, into the beams, into the bones of the house. Instead, I slide the shoes from her feet, tucking the heels under my arm along with a few rain-soaked cigarettes, and climb back down.
Inside, I gather what matters: a chair, a bottle of gin, a handful of toothpicks. When I exit, the cottage is already a furnace, the roof caving in like a chest collapsing around its heart. I set the chair before the blaze and strap Mother’s shoes onto my own feet. They fit snugly, too snugly, as though they’d belonged to me.
I shovel the toothpicks into my mouth, and chew, then smooth the ruined letter across my knee. “S r y, lo e fro M-”. Mother. The ink bleeds but the word clings, stubborn as she had been.
I’m not sure why she left a letter. If it is a threat, a warning, or an apology. I take a swig of gin, and decide it is all, and none. She was a multitude of people. Always too many at once.
But as the flames swallow the roof whole, one thing is certain. Mother died today. And I’m terrified that I’ll walk in her shoes.
–
“The world is going to shit, but please, enjoy this silly little story” – @cameron_joseph_walker
This piece was submitted for the 2025 Annual Edition of Glass.
