Syrup Stained

Just a lil’ heads-up: This story includes some allusions to scary sexual content. Nothing explicit, but figured I’d flag it for y’all.

Sabrina could feel the enmity in the darkness of her living room that not even the television's glow could hide. Her wide eyes and rosy cheeks hovered inches from the screen.

"Back up from there! You already have glasses!" Michelle yelled. Her mom's uncanny ability to see from other rooms never failed to amaze her.

Sabrina scooted back slightly. Each shift made the curly bun on her head wobble.

Moving away from the television didn’t help the room’s shadows. The shadows in the room only felt heavier. She relied on the screen's light to keep the shadow people at bay. The further she got, the more they grew.

She looked above the end table nearest her to find her glass of water and saw what looked like a face laughing at her while resting on top. It resembled laughter, but made no sound. There was no body attached to it. Just a floating head. Its eyebrows were so bold that they took up the top half of its face. Arches as big as pictures she saw of St. Louis in school. Then there was the matter of its eyes. The eyes never matched. On this one, the left eye looked like an uncut kiwi, the right like a marble drowning in corn syrup, which leaked over lips and chin drawn like a toddler's doodle.

It was always syrup with these invaders.

Sabrina took a sip of water and kept watching. Ignoring them was something she practiced often.

Everything was blurry now. Another thing that always happened when she moved back. First, the shadows, and then the inability to watch her shows.

I should get my glasses. It felt imperative that she finished this episode of The Crocodile Hunter. She loved watching the nice guy get the upper hand on one of the world’s greatest predators.

In search of her glasses, she wandered into the kitchen. Michelle was buried in a magazine with a bright pink headline: "Find Out How This Busy Mom Keeps Her Abs YEAR Round."

Michelle, with her perfect caramel skin and doe-like eyes, was always looking for ways to fix herself. Last week it was cellulite. She'd come home with bags of lemons, claiming they would make it disappear. "Like magic," she insisted.

"Hey, baby. How’s it going? Looking for a snack?" Michelle asked without looking up.

She always stacked two questions in one breath—her way of multitasking mothering. As a mom who never missed a day of work, somehow managing to participate in almost all school events while making sure Sabrina engaged in “enriching” weekend activities like trips to the zoo and museum, doubling up on questions was the only way she allowed herself a break. Physically present, but emotionally at more of a distance.

Sabrina tilted her head to the side, considering her response.

"Well, actually, it's about time for you to get ready for bed," Michelle added before she could reply.

Sabrina glanced at the stove clock. 8:15. Too early. Unless…

"Is Jeremy coming over?" Just saying his name made her mouth dry.

"He is."

Of course. The shadow people always came with him. Like they knew their leader would soon dwell their hallways, they arrived even before him on the nights that he would visit. Feeling silly for not piecing it together before, she gently smacked her palm onto her forehead.

They were the most intense when he was in the house. Once she even saw their shadows pacing beneath her door.

Bitterly obedient, she ran a bath. Baths took longer than showers—thirty minutes compared to ten. More time awake meant less time tossing and turning, wishing she’d gotten her last forty-five minutes of TV time. Plus, she wasn’t the only one that enjoyed the tub. Michelle loved bath time as well. She’d sit on the toilet lid with a cocktail, chatting about their days. It usually felt like being wrapped up in a dryer-warm blanket.

Tonight was different though.

Michelle’s leg was jittery, bouncing up and down off the floor.

The tap sputtered through the weak pipes, filling the tub with a sound that reminded Sabrina of something dripping—slow and sticky.

“Why do you like Jeremy?” she asked suddenly, her voice too sharp.

Michelle's eyes widened. "Jeremy is a friend of mine."

"Yeah, but why do you like him?"

"He’s company, baby. It’s nice to have company."

Sabrina trickled water from her cupped hands into the tub.

"But what—"

"You’ll understand when you’re older."

Her words hit like a bucket of ice on a fire, suffocating whatever Sabrina was hoping to expand on.

She clenched her fists under the water. Michelle didn’t think she noticed a dismissal—but she did. She rose from the bath.

"I wanna go to bed now."

"Okay, baby," Michelle said sweetly.

Just minutes later, when Sabrina was barely into her pajamas, she heard her mom laughing down the hallway. Not her real laugh. It was her witchy, boyfriend cackle.

She laid in her bed, aggressively lifting the covers, and turned away from the door, trying to shut out the sounds. It didn’t help.

Then a gasp sounded from the hallway, like someone being pushed underwater.

She turned. A shadow figure stood by the door. Except this time, it had a body.

Her neck muscles tensed. She had never seen a body on one of these things before. A body had to mean something worse, something bad.

Six limbs, thin as tree branches, jutted from a lumpy, glistening torso. Syrup oozed down its slick, cylindrical body, snaking toward each spindly leg like it was searching for the floor.

"If I don’t get up, it’ll touch the floor," she whispered. If it touches the floor, I’ll never be able to get rid of it. The thought felt as innate as suckling. She didn’t know where it was coming from, but she knew it was true.

Sabrina leapt from the bed and flung the door open. Light filled the room. The figure vanished, but a penny-sized dot of syrup remained.

She crouched, about to touch it… A thud sounded from the other end of their apartment.

She tiptoed down the hall, leaned against the wall. She forced a peek around the wall into the living room. There, she saw two feet. An ankle bracelet. Michelle, face-down on the carpet, hair flung over her forehead. She looked asleep.

Jeremy knelt over her. His dreads dangled over his face. Back rose and fell like a predator's breath. His shirt was ripped at the shoulder, the aftermath of whatever had happened moments before in that room.

Then he stopped moving. His head twisted unnaturally, hair shifting aside.

He looked at her.

The sight of his face made her fall backward, landing beneath the family photos. Photos that felt like distant memories from where they were now.

That face. She knew it. Eyebrows, eyes, syrup drip. It had been in the shadows. Never in light. Never on a human.

"Go back to bed, little flower!" he roared.

She couldn’t breathe. Syrup was everywhere. On Michelle’s back. The carpet. The walls.

Her breath was ragged, quick bursts in and out of her mouth. She looked down the hall, back toward her room, up at the photos, and back at him. She needed to do something, anything. Simply sitting there was not an option.

Her body screamed at her to move, but she couldn’t look away. Her mind raced, flipping through everything she’d ever seen: Steve Irwin calmly wrestling a gator’s jaws shut, her mom telling her to run if anything ever went wrong. But there was no time. No time.

Something inside her clicked. She ran, placed one leg on the chair her mom and Jeremy were positioned in front of, and swiftly kicked herself up and onto his back.

One foot on a chair, she jumped, wrapped her arm around his neck, tangled his dreads, pulled. She tangled his hair against him while simultaneously slamming her inner elbow around his neck. Pull, pull, pull. She could feel his neck fighting against her arm as he gasped her air.

"Get away from us!"

He stood with her on his back, grabbed her nightgown, and flung her down next to Michelle.

Pain shot through her back.

"Mom! Mom!”

Jeremy raised a fist.

Michelle’s eyes snapped open. She launched at his knees, pinning him.

"Go, baby! Run!"

But she couldn’t. Not without her mom.

Running wasn’t an option. What would happen to her mom if she did? Sabrina searched around the room and scanned everything, hoping to find anything. There was a mason jar of alcohol on the coffee table, the same table that carried the head earlier this evening. She grabbed the jar and stared at it.

By now, Michelle had positioned herself on top of Jeremy, but Sabrina could see the strength leaving her body. Michelle couldn’t fight much longer. Sabrina lifted the glass into the air and sent it directly into Jeremy’s head. Sooner than she anticipated, he was out cold. Both collapsed onto the ground. Sabrina and Michelle reached for one another while creating distance between them and him laying on the floor with glass pieces around his head, making his hair shimmer.

“I’m so sorry, baby. Thank you.” Her tears were cold on Sabrina’s skin as they fell down her cheeks. They sat like that for hours. Through the officers stomping around their home and Jeremy eventually being carried off, they held each other, Michelle occasionally whispering her apologies.

When she eventually made her way back to her bedroom, the syrup was still on the carpet. No matter what happened next, she knew some stains didn’t go away.

Why I Wrote This

First and foremost, your girl loves a good monster metaphor. I’ll take any and every opportunity to present deeply emotional, complicated shit and wrap it up in a monster, human or otherwise. But more than anything, I wanted to write something about trauma. Because, as I say at the end of this, it never really goes away.

That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

It’s just something we carry, like a bag slung over a shoulder.

This story ends with proof that the syrup isn’t going anywhere, but in real life, our stories don’t have to stop there. Sometimes, you can set that bag down. Or hand it off to someone you trust, just long enough to catch your breath. We are not our trauma. And we don’t have to be stuck in it.

This thought gives me peace as wild things unfold around us or happen directly to us.

One day, I’ll share something more overtly uplifting about trauma. Promise.

Hope you enjoyed! :)

-Bri