Matricidal
by Joshua Lenz
I hope you can understand—my mother thought there was something wrong with my humors.
She had good reason; I am short, softspoken, brainy, and, until a week ago, virtually asexual. I couldn’t rouse myself to save my life—quite literally, since my mother once locked me in a room with one of the girls and said that she would snap my neck if I didn’t “break the filly” by sundown. Luckily, a visitor stopped by and he and my mother grogged themselves into a blind fever. With help from the girl, who was scared witless like me, I unscrewed the window hinges and we escaped. By dawn, Ma had forgotten all about it, and we all acted like it didn’t happen.
Ma never associated my eccentricities with the fact that she was a suspected murderer, a known thief, and an undeniable vixen who managed one of the worst brothels in the Boston slums. Most bawdy houses in our area cater to the seafaring Englishmen who come through the docks at North End and, because of this, they attempt some pretense of cleanliness and sophistication. My mother, though—good ol’ Ma—catered to everyone who was too poor, too sick, or too dangerous for the other scarlets. In exchange for foodstuffs, liquor, store credit, and the occasional one-dollar coin, she would walk the paupers upstairs and palm them on whatever dredges they could afford. I don’t say dredges to be offensive; I say that because my mother would hire nearly anyone—arthritic old hags, starving stowaways, Irishwomen without husbands or prospects, even girls with the clap (I think my ma would have employed anyone so long as they were the slightest bit female, and even that standard might have caved under exigency).
My ma was tough as a ramrod. If getting orphaned by the Great Famine and emigrating to America as an eleven-year-old scullion didn’t make her a complete reptile, growing up unrooted and unwanted in Boston certainly polished off the metamorphosis. By the time I turned sixteen, nearly every gangster, patrolman, and beggar in North End knew her and owed her something. “Molly Misandrist” most men called her—a natural moniker for someone who has your testicles in her pincers.
Men disliked her the most, and she returned the sentiment a hundredfold. She clearly hated every man who stepped through our brothel door, excoriating them behind their backs or, with the feebler sort, straight to their blanched faces. The only two males who didn’t make her blood curdle were the doorman, McLoughlin—who loved her in a depraved way—and me.
“Princeling,” she would call me. “My little princeling.”
She fawned over me and regularly insisted that I was perfect, though the many times she tried to fix my peculiar dispositions suggested it was a little more complicated than that. She tried medicine at first, but that was expensive and did me no immediate good. She quickly gave up on medicine and just nagged me every day until I cried, or screamed, or promised to change. Sometimes, she made me watch the wenches while they bathed in the room upstairs, studying me closely for any sign of titillation. One night, I was up late reading a book and Ma dragged our oldest worker—a fifty-year-old Scottish lady with two streaks of snow in her hair—into my bedroom, where she beat her with a stoker until the three of us were weeping together like children. That worker died only a few months later, and I think the two events are related.
Knowing this, perhaps you can understand why she treated you so despicably. After all her doting on me, her fondling, her sleepless nights, and her gnashing of teeth, all I had for her was a glowering tumor of spite buried under a thick dermis of terror. You, though, I liked gratis. You were different. You were simple.
Of course, I was terrified of you, too—especially when you kissed me and made me flush for the first time, suddenly, like a John in heat. That is why I hit you and told you to never come back—though I didn’t mean it! I swear on the Virgin Mother I didn’t mean it. I hate myself for it. I hate the hand that hit you, I do, I do, and I almost hacked off its fingers with the cook’s cleaver because I hated it so.
I didn’t cut off my fingers, though. It wasn’t for lack of loathing or for fear of pain; recall the scar on my left wrist? I did that myself. It was an impulse—a strong curiosity about the color of living bone—but that’s beside the point. The point is, I had a kind of utilitarian epiphany… a sudden realization that there was a better, more useful option than cutting off my own fingers.
What I did—I had to do it. There was no other way for me. I drank a full pint for courage, and then I took a boning knife upstairs to the bathing room where my ma sat snoring in her rocking chair, slaughtered by the bottle of Old Overholt cradled in her arms. She stopped her snoring for an instant to ask, “Is that you, my little Princeling? Are you here?”
I came up from behind and jabbed her behind the windpipe, clean through from the right side to the left, and then grabbed her hair and pushed the knife forward until it popped free, and the air came in and out in crackles and sputters. She didn’t scream—she couldn’t—and she died quickly, so no one came into the upper room until I had arranged it how I wanted them to see it.
Anyway, this letter is nothing and everything—please do not despise me. Come see me again soon.
Yours,
XX
She had good reason; I am short, softspoken, brainy, and, until a week ago, virtually asexual. I couldn’t rouse myself to save my life—quite literally, since my mother once locked me in a room with one of the girls and said that she would snap my neck if I didn’t “break the filly” by sundown. Luckily, a visitor stopped by and he and my mother grogged themselves into a blind fever. With help from the girl, who was scared witless like me, I unscrewed the window hinges and we escaped. By dawn, Ma had forgotten all about it, and we all acted like it didn’t happen.
Ma never associated my eccentricities with the fact that she was a suspected murderer, a known thief, and an undeniable vixen who managed one of the worst brothels in the Boston slums. Most bawdy houses in our area cater to the seafaring Englishmen who come through the docks at North End and, because of this, they attempt some pretense of cleanliness and sophistication. My mother, though—good ol’ Ma—catered to everyone who was too poor, too sick, or too dangerous for the other scarlets. In exchange for foodstuffs, liquor, store credit, and the occasional one-dollar coin, she would walk the paupers upstairs and palm them on whatever dredges they could afford. I don’t say dredges to be offensive; I say that because my mother would hire nearly anyone—arthritic old hags, starving stowaways, Irishwomen without husbands or prospects, even girls with the clap (I think my ma would have employed anyone so long as they were the slightest bit female, and even that standard might have caved under exigency).
My ma was tough as a ramrod. If getting orphaned by the Great Famine and emigrating to America as an eleven-year-old scullion didn’t make her a complete reptile, growing up unrooted and unwanted in Boston certainly polished off the metamorphosis. By the time I turned sixteen, nearly every gangster, patrolman, and beggar in North End knew her and owed her something. “Molly Misandrist” most men called her—a natural moniker for someone who has your testicles in her pincers.
Men disliked her the most, and she returned the sentiment a hundredfold. She clearly hated every man who stepped through our brothel door, excoriating them behind their backs or, with the feebler sort, straight to their blanched faces. The only two males who didn’t make her blood curdle were the doorman, McLoughlin—who loved her in a depraved way—and me.
“Princeling,” she would call me. “My little princeling.”
She fawned over me and regularly insisted that I was perfect, though the many times she tried to fix my peculiar dispositions suggested it was a little more complicated than that. She tried medicine at first, but that was expensive and did me no immediate good. She quickly gave up on medicine and just nagged me every day until I cried, or screamed, or promised to change. Sometimes, she made me watch the wenches while they bathed in the room upstairs, studying me closely for any sign of titillation. One night, I was up late reading a book and Ma dragged our oldest worker—a fifty-year-old Scottish lady with two streaks of snow in her hair—into my bedroom, where she beat her with a stoker until the three of us were weeping together like children. That worker died only a few months later, and I think the two events are related.
Knowing this, perhaps you can understand why she treated you so despicably. After all her doting on me, her fondling, her sleepless nights, and her gnashing of teeth, all I had for her was a glowering tumor of spite buried under a thick dermis of terror. You, though, I liked gratis. You were different. You were simple.
Of course, I was terrified of you, too—especially when you kissed me and made me flush for the first time, suddenly, like a John in heat. That is why I hit you and told you to never come back—though I didn’t mean it! I swear on the Virgin Mother I didn’t mean it. I hate myself for it. I hate the hand that hit you, I do, I do, and I almost hacked off its fingers with the cook’s cleaver because I hated it so.
I didn’t cut off my fingers, though. It wasn’t for lack of loathing or for fear of pain; recall the scar on my left wrist? I did that myself. It was an impulse—a strong curiosity about the color of living bone—but that’s beside the point. The point is, I had a kind of utilitarian epiphany… a sudden realization that there was a better, more useful option than cutting off my own fingers.
What I did—I had to do it. There was no other way for me. I drank a full pint for courage, and then I took a boning knife upstairs to the bathing room where my ma sat snoring in her rocking chair, slaughtered by the bottle of Old Overholt cradled in her arms. She stopped her snoring for an instant to ask, “Is that you, my little Princeling? Are you here?”
I came up from behind and jabbed her behind the windpipe, clean through from the right side to the left, and then grabbed her hair and pushed the knife forward until it popped free, and the air came in and out in crackles and sputters. She didn’t scream—she couldn’t—and she died quickly, so no one came into the upper room until I had arranged it how I wanted them to see it.
Anyway, this letter is nothing and everything—please do not despise me. Come see me again soon.
Yours,
XX
Joshua Lenz is an aspiring historical fiction author who grew up in South America and currently lives in Houston, TX. He holds a B.S. in English and writing from Liberty University, and he enjoys creating folk music, taking long road trips, and drinking good coffee.