Mommy's Good Brave Boy
by alex song
I get home from school with Toby one day and Mom is there, making snacks and telling us not to be out past sundown, on account of all the murders. My mom’s so fucking stupid. I’m not scared of some dumb murderer, Mom, I tell her. She tells me she loves me and I’m her good brave boy and she just wants me to be safe. Suck a dick, Mom. She reminds me Dad left four months ago, so she can’t. I miss Dad.
Toby says it’s crazy I talk to my mom like that, so I tell Toby to suck a dick too. He gets awfully quiet. Would that be so bad? he says. Toby’s been trying to come out to me for months now, but I’m not having it. I don’t need a gay best friend, that’s for girls. What if during one of our sleepovers I wake up and Toby just has my dick in his mouth? That’d be fucked up. I’m not about to have my first blowjob be from a dude.
Anyways, we go up to my room and close the door to watch porn together. The website says you have to be 18 but I figured out we can just put 1999 as the year we were born, instead of 2004. We spend a few hours doing that. By the time we tire ourselves out, it’s dark outside.
Well, guess it’s time for you to go home, I tell Toby. But it’s past sundown, he says quietly. Not my fucking problem, you’re not sleeping over, I yell. And then I call him a couple slurs. I gallop down the stairs, thinking Toby is right behind me. But when I turn to look, he’s still standing at the top, holding onto the guardrail, his face all weird and fucked up.
What’s the matter, shithead? Suddenly my mom is running up the stairs, and then she’s hugging Toby, and he’s crying like a goddamn baby. I know, honey, I know, I know. She says it to him over and over again. What the fuck, why are they being so gay? And why am I not a part of it? My mom walks Toby down the stairs and to the kitchen and starts heating him up a plate of leftover lasagna. She only heats up one.
Hey I’m hungry too, I scream. But she just turns her back to me. Toby doesn’t look at me either. Hey fuckers, what do you want me to say? I’m sorry? I’m getting desperate. I really want some lasagna. Give me some fucking lasagna!!! I scream. They don’t even flinch.
I watch my mom as she watches Toby eat. Finally, she says something. I forgive you, she tells him. I forgive you for killing Brayden.
But…I didn’t do it, Mrs. Pollock. I didn’t kill your son.
You did, my mom says calmly. You all did. And for that you’ll have to pay.
Before I know what’s happening, Toby’s body starts seizing up. He clenches his throat, gasping for air, like something out of the fucking movies. He sticks his finger down his throat to try to make himself vomit, but it’s too late. He slumps over face down in the marinara.
You could’ve warned me, asshole, Toby says, standing next to me.
I guess I could’ve, I say. But then I wouldn't be Mommy's good brave boy.