The perverts, faggots and communists were the first to be taken by the disease if the reports were to be believed, which spelled bad news for Ricky as those types of people comprised the vast majority of his social circle. Reports called it “The Second Coming of AIDS”, except rather than a virus it was a prion, and this new disease had the extra ability to distinguish anarchists from liberals from conservatives and whatnot. If the reports were to be believed.
Ricky’s mother caught it rather early on, mightily surprising them both as nothing about her had anything whatsoever to do with perversion, faggotry or communist sympathising. He might have liked her if that were the case. Instead, Mrs Sherman was much more the type to bandy about the oft-mentioned reports condemning all of society’s undesirables to eternal hellfire at the hands of the god-sent prion.
Still. Ricky wasn’t glad at all to watch her fall ill.
The disease was a malformed protein and it worked by transmitting its deformity to other cells, which was about all that Ricky understood in terms of what happened under a microscope. In the aggregate however– in the cumulation of individual cells that formed the separate thing he recognised as his mother, Ricky observed as the disease efficiently transformed her into a plank of wood. Her hands and feet went first, then her left leg up to her hip, so on and so forth. She got angrier and angrier, right up until the end began to near, at which point she started to get really philosophical.
“They’re going to try and tell you that it’s all random, what’s happening. No such thing. I’m telling you- Son, are you listening? No damned thing as randomness, I’m telling you. It’s ordained, it’s all ordained.”
“By God?”
To his great surprise she snapped at him emphatically and loudly, as far as she could do so with her half wooden mouth; “Did I say that? Did I fucking say that? Are you listening to me? Are you listening?”
“Yes, mum.”
“Right. As I was saying.” She panted a little before continuing. “Randomness, uh– randomness. Do you know how I got asthma? Are you listening? I was a, uh, student protestor back home, back in the day, I used to agitate for things, you know. Stupid things. I think we wanted better accommodations, less corruption in the, uh, the university administration. This was back in the nineties, you understand– Are you listening? They gassed us. Les gendarms. I was not born with asthma, but now I am like this, I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe in the winter. Are you listening? And then that scar on my leg, you saw it, my brother split open my shin with a rock when we were children. Well, when I was a child. He’s dead now, liver failure. Don’t frown, he deserved it and you never knew him in any case, so don’t be false, it disgusts me. Scar still itches to this day, especially in the winter. Are you listening to me? And then– uh, and then. Your father, ooh, your father. Piece of work. Merde. Lost my virginity to him. Then I married him. Well. You know how that went, you were there for most of it. Not that I didn’t do my fair share. I did my fair share, it’s true. I know you judge me. I know you hate him. You don’t understand now, but you’ll understand one day, uh– why it had to be, be like that. You and your type– god knows I love you, of course– Are you listening to me? Never doubt that. Never doubt that I love you. But you and your type, are so obsessed with– with nothingness. Because that’s what it is at the end of the day, you worship nothingness. Listen well. There is nothing for you that way. Me? I’ve had everything. I know you don’t believe me. But when you have faith, it’s everything. Uh. Are you listening? Are you listening? Goodness me. Everything, I’ve had everything. I have everything. I have you. Don’t you know? You were given to me, because, well, of course it was because I did something right. What exactly I did is not for me to know, perhaps, but I know that my reward was you. I know this is true more than anything. I didn’t, goodness, didn’t just, uh, stumble, upon you. It could only have ever been you. You were put in my path. You think you’re so- Are you listening to me? Your eyes, they’re mine, your mouth too. You love, uh, chocolate, like me. And music. You love to dance. That’s me too. You won’t remember, but I do, I remember a time when we had so much in common. We got along so well. Are you listening? You were my best friend. No one else could have been my best friend like you were, and that’s, you understand, that’s real. It’s not, uh, nothing. It’s not-”
It was in the middle of her sentence that the disease completed Mrs Sherman’s transformation into a plank of wood with two rolling eyes near the top. Ricky didn’t mind dressing her and cleaning her and feeding her and doing all those things that she couldn’t do herself because she was a plank of wood. He also didn’t mind occasionally reassuring her out loud that yes, he was still listening. Then her rolling eyes would pause on his for a while, and she’d close them, appearing to meditate. She died on a Thursday.
