Congrats, Love Mother Follow story

“No, I can’t go with you,” she screamed.

I dragged the girl into the barn. “We’re going to have a party!”

The ten-year-old asked me. “Are you going to feed me to the zombies?”

I pointed at the streamers and gold balloons. “It’s really a party, and there are empty yurts for you to stay afterward near the creak.”

Her eyes were fixated on tubs of ice. My father buried ginger or butterscotch soda to cool.

She placed her fingers on paper roses that decorated the walls. “Well, I don’t have anywhere else to go. My family are zombies by choice. Mother offers them a home. Will they break inside?” She pulled her brown hair behind her. “I’m Bertha.” The girl’s icy hand shook mine.

“Probably,” I said. “But we are safe for now, and we will repel her zombie horde.”

“It didn’t work at my house.” Bertha hugged me and went to the picnic table. “Why are you hosting a celebration in the barn when she could zombify you?”

I smiled at her and placed a party hat covered in glitter on top of her head. “Today is my birthday, and I always celebrate it.”

“I’ve never been invited to anything fun,” Bertha said.

My mother yelled from outside. “Let me in. I destroyed everyone’s unsanctioned celebrations, and I’ll destroy this one.” Her hands slammed into the barn door, splintering it but not breaking through.

“The brat is a plant I sent her to kill you because you won’t heal me!” She burst through,

I lit a torch, threatening her with it. She stepped back. I pulled down the stronger emergency door. My farm was cheaper than renting out a dance hall and safer.

Cosmetics rubbed off the girl’s skin, and she was growling and turning into a zombie or walker. But she stepped back from me, distracted by her party hat.

“Mom, we have been over this before. I can only heal those who accept it. You can’t take the drugs and be healed. You can’t slowly erode your follower’s free will and consume my magic. If your wounds aren’t healed, that is on you. You are the master, not the zombie, but the decay is destroying you.”

“Control is my power, and I’m not giving that up. Now heal me! I command you,” my mother demanded. “Bertha! Stab the traitors who refuse my orders.”

“Yes, Great Mother.” Bertha lifted a butter knife from the picnic table. She could stab or blind me. “It’s okay if you want to be healed, but if you don’t, you will have to go outside.”

She growled again. Bertha stared at a massive bowl of chocolate mints on the picnic table.

“You can eat food instead. We’re going to have all kinds of treats.”

“Does the food heal me? Do I have to listen to her? I don’t want to hurt people.” She touched a chocolate mint, and it didn’t melt in her icy fingertips. “They say you heal wounds with your cooking. Am I worth your magic?”

“Only if you choose it, too. My power doesn’t remove free will. And she can’t take away yours if you stop listening,” I said.

Bertha drops the knife and shoves a fistful of candy in her mouth. “I want to stay.” She stared up at the ceiling.

Fairy lights twisted around the wood. They flickered on and bathed the room in a mystical glow.

My husband and his brother placed tin cans of baby breath on the surrounding picnic tables.

“I can’t enter through the side door. It’s been covered in salt and silver. I will lose my strength if I can’t consume magic.” Mother paused and screamed at my husband. “Didn’t I tell you to let me in?”

“Sorry, my mother-in-law is already here. I don’t know you.” My husband arranged electric candles and mason jars on each of the picnic tables. “And shadow villains aren’t allowed.”

“Stop calling me that!” My mother kicked the barn door. “I’m a superhero, and I’m just like you,” my mother said. “You might call me a Zombie Queen or a villain, but only because you refuse to give me what I want…” Mother paused. “Okay, maybe I am the greatest villain.”

No, she wasn’t. All the guests were her victims. And mother was her own victim. They were collateral damage caused by her and the heroes’ epic battles. Cured zombies she once controlled.

No one thinks about the bystanders. I do. The world is made up of the people in it.

The wounded and broken guests came in through the side door, including my mother’s two ex-husbands.

My grandmother sits next to Bertha.

Our family and the reporters didn’t turn around, and they pretended they couldn’t hear her.

Volunteer waitstaff set fake lobster soup, cheese bites, and tomato salad before our guests. Every magical bite was prepared by my hands.

My stepmother brought out a celebration cake that we baked together from the fridge. Her wings fluttered. We set two on each table.

“But I am the real mother. I deserve this honor. Everyone is there because of me.” Her hands slammed into the metal safety door.

Technically, she was a mother, but my stepmother taught me to cook. My stepmother raised and adored me. All honor was hers. Well, once my mother used to bake me birthday cakes before she started taking the drugs. The mother I loved so much, I want back.

“Was your mother always like this?” Bertha asked. “She took me in when my family left me behind.”

“No, she started taking her friend’s pain meds because she heard they could make her lose weight. The pills poisoned her. It’s not your fault.”

“She said you made her sick.” Bertha hugged me again.

“I’m a better villain than you think. Stop covering your homes in repellent,” my mother said. “Some of my followers are already inside and they might kill you.”

“I know Mother.” I don’t speak. If I pulled this off, she could be a shadow villain. If I gave a repellent recipe, she couldn’t harm and control victims. Mother couldn’t level their houses looking for pills.

“You can’t take my power!” She hit the door and walked through.

The volunteer waitstaff stared at her and used their powers all at once.

I remember when we all received them.

“I don’t have powers. When did you receive yours?” Bertha stared at me.

“The meteor crashed outside my mother’s fine house when I was a child.” I didn’t tell Bertha everything.

Three cars were totaled, including the police car my mother was being shoved inside.

Everyone in our small town received magical; gifts and powers. The officer could lift the piece of space rock off of him.

My father could bend steel, my stepmother could repel zombies, and wings grew from her shoulders. Even my dog, Pepper, could fly.

My superpower, if you call it that, dealt with cooking. I could heal with any food I touched, including my wrist and the police officer’s bent leg, by giving him a candy bar. But I could create magic with recipes as well. Magic that could protect homes from her entering until she decided to heal.

There was joy in sharing my power with others, but only if they wished for it.

Bertha interrupted my thoughts. “Why can’t your mom get better?”

I told her. “Mother refused the chips I offered her. Her wounds were her power, and she fed them with drugs. She rejected the food until it was too late. Sometimes when you are not thankful, you keep throwing away gifts.” I stopped speaking. Those treasures can never be received again. She chose decay. I hoped one day she would, but it was a no. Now she wanted to eat, but not my food; always hungry, but never satisfied. Mother became weak from hunger. But she wanted to destroy the gifts I offered to others.

“Will she hurt me because I betrayed her?” Bertha asked.

“Don’t worry. My mother always goes away after a few minutes,” I lied. Hoping for once my mother would understand how much she hurt me.

“She is still dangerous, but you can stay here with the others.” My stepmother’s brown hair framed her aged face. She floated into the room. “Don’t let her in. We spent hours cleaning up the rot and destruction from the last time.”

My husband peered through the wall, and guests could see out the window. Mother was beautiful. The zombies she controlled stood behind her.

Past:

Every day until my eleventh birthday, she would make my cake and sing songs, but it changed. I saw her take a half-handful of pills that day. “I will lose weight for your party. It’s going to be next week. I’m sorry, but I am not pretty enough.

“No, you’re pretty.” I tried to hug her.

Mother pushed me away and forced me to sleep on the maid’s couch, even though the mansion contained an entire wing of guest rooms that she inherited.

Wealthy and privileged. All her life. She robbed people of their free will.

I remember the blue velvet couch and how soft it felt and the impressionist painting that hung above it.

But the next morning my mother shoved me off and threw packaged snacks at me. “Go to sleep in the laundry room. This isn’t your home. You’re ugly.”

“It’s my birthday.” Tears filled my eyes, and she slugged my arm and yanked my hand.

My stepbrother ran into the room. He called the police and my father. Mother shattered my wrist.

The meteor fell when the cops came.

Past:

The judge attempted to give my Mother custody of my siblings, saying children always belong to their mother, but my mom swung at my father’s attorney, striking him in the jaw. She used her zombie master powers, and she turned him into a zombie to control him like she did the judge.

If I wasn’t there with a bag of homemade walnut fudge, they both would have been under her power until death.

Dad took in my step-siblings until my stepfather was released from the army on an honorable discharge.

The Barn:

“You ugly monster, let me in,” Mother said.

“My husband doesn’t find me repulsive. He loves me.” I spied on Mother from the cracks in the barn door. Her zombies stared at me and moaned.

They were no longer human, the ones who refused to eat.

She lost us. Her house fell apart.

Alcoholism and addiction ran in my family, and I tried to heal my mother, but in the end, I couldn’t. I had to protect my children and tell my mother after rehab members she couldn’t live with me, it wasn’t safe for my children. I couldn’t allow my toddlers to find her pills,

or to find a giant hole in the wall from her latest superhero battle. My farm was not her evil lair, and my peace meant something.

Forgiveness isn’t stupidity. I attempted to save her, but I needed to protect my safe spaces, which was why my husband and I bought the farm away from town.

My mother continued blaming me when she was beaten by her bionic drug dealer and his thugs for not giving him the silk dress she promised. She wasn’t fed.

But my mother always headed back. Not wanting forgiveness, but control.

The more she used her power for evil, the more she starved.

She demanded to be invited inside, but she left to decay when allowed.

“I have a surprise for you. Yes, I know you’re an adult, but I’d still like to adopt you.”

“Yes, Mother.” I hugged my new mother, and the connection with my old one was lost in the mist, but I knew she would return and try to regain her power again, bent on revenge. Sadly, the person she destroyed most is herself.

Mother is her own casualty. And yes, I still love her.