Everyone dreads bringing their girlfriend home to meet their parents. I had better reason than most. The outcomes had been so bad that it had almost spoiled romance for me entirely, putting me off even trying for relationships altogether. Through another bout of despair, I met another girl, Charlotte, and felt my chest once more fill up with those familiar fluttery feelings. She was nice, pretty, and made me laugh. Everything that was wonderful about her gave me an equal measure of ominous foreboding. Eventually, she would have to meet my mother and that would be the end of it. It was inevitable.
I had done this dance too many times, all to the same tragic end. I tried to save her and myself the suffering and trauma of the ordeal, but, bless her, Charlotte was committed and doggedly persistent. We stayed together, doing what happy couples did: holding hands on lazy Sunday afternoons, walking through the local park and idling around quaint independent coffee shops, kissing when it was romantic, and vacationing as budget allowed. The normality was good, just being young and in love, trying not to think about the worry infecting my every happy moment.
As it always would, the text message came through and I read it with resignation. My mother wanted to see her.
I tried to explain without sounding insane. I told her that my mother was not simply difficult, that this would not be a strained family dinner around a table consisting of tolerating an old curmudgeon for a few hours. This was a matter of life or death. I urged her to break up with me, to go on without me and prosper as best she was able. I was emphatic that nothing I said was overblown or embellished, that my warnings were absolutely sincere. Charlotte took a moment to consider, before a look that I knew well fixed on her face, a defiant sort of smile. She wove her fingers together in with mine, called me a dummy, and kissed me.
The sweetness of that kiss, though it might have been poor Charlotte's death warrant, lingered with me until we were on the threshold of doom itself, standing on the porch of my childhood home. Quaint little houses lined quiet suburban streets, bordered by neat lawns and manicured hedges. Once the door opened, however, the anomalous nature of things unfolded readily.
Instead of a carpeted foyer, the door opened on an impossibly large chamber built of stone. A lazy haze of mist drifted through the overgrowth of tropical ferns. Deep drumbeats reverberated a ritualistic rhythm. Charlotte cast a confused glance at me, forewarned but evidently not believing that my every word was true until she experienced it herself.
My mother was far from any ordinary crone. Something like a goddess, worshipped since primordial times by pre-Columbian cults, the sun rose and fell in the sky according to her whim. Bloodthirsty and temperamental, she demanded sacrifices to appease her savage appetite. Though her temple was hemmed in by modernity, this pocket persisted within the façade of the ordinary house, the neighboring families blissfully unware of the primeval terror baying for blood across the street, the stars in the sky going about their merry voyages by her benevolent assent.
Escorted by the tribesmen who attended to my mother's every desire, Charlotte and I began to ascend the immense ziggurat. At its apex, a dissonantly typical dining table was set with lace tablecloth and doilies. Rising from the seat at the head of the table, we beheld the full glory of a towering woman of impossible proportions. Inhumanly beautiful, her oiled, crimson skin shone radiantly. Her bloodstained hair fell freely about her body without regard for the modesty of the bare globes of her enormous breasts. Taloned fingers steepled at our approach, her lips curling into a predatory smile. "Sit," she bade us, her voice a double-layered affair that boomed strongly enough to resonate in your bones and yet gently whispered directly in the ear.
"