Fiction
We’ll Go Where No One Can Find Us
A short story about cults, abuse, and the depth of a mother’s love
The mother dreams of words. Vowels strut in her sleep. Homonyms get jacked up on methamphetamines. Everyone’s punching the letter Q in the face because that smug fucker deserves it. One day she wakes, in terror, and traces on her arm the word “leave.” Say the word backward and it almost sounds like “evil.”
Back then she was floss thin, careless, her face forever the color of day-old shame. Hair like hot fire. Like dark matter she moves, dangerous, unnoticed, but somehow leaving marks and puncturing cell walls. She interrupts without the room’s consent. Office work confuses her. She would stand in front of the photocopier and press the Start button — all to watch light glare back and forth, which took notice of her eyes, sputtering out.
The days repeat themselves with minor variations.
“Quit your job,” the husband orders. The next day, she does. Everyone in the office assumes the mother is leaving due to pursuits related to mothering, though the mother doesn’t technically have a child. On the mother’s last day her co-workers order red velvet cupcakes and give her a card where everyone misspells her name. The mother places the card and the cupcake on the copier…
