The Cherry Stone

Vince floated in from the garden and straight to the kitchen like hopping from one fluffy cloud to another, he placed the watering can on the floor and danced to the oven. The sweet scent of apples and buttery pastry lured him close, his nose in the air and mouth drooling. He looked through the clear glass panel and there it was sat, golden and crisp, an apple tart.

Perfectly even colour, the arrangement of apple slices layered with expert precision and finished with artistically hand-crafted pastry crust leaves, it looked almost too good to eat. A wholesome dimpled grin took over his face he looked as though he was made of fresh dough himself.

“Finished.” He slipped his hands into his trusty oven mitts; they looked as though they had many years of experience. The heat roared in his face but he didn’t flinch and then placed the tart on the side to cool.

He opened the cupboard and ran his finger over the stacked plates and paused on a pale green ceramic plate. “Green for apples.” He said to himself out loud. He carefully moved the still molten apple pastry onto the carefully selected plate and glided backwards to admire his masterpiece from afar, his smile still beamed.

He picked the Polaroid camera off the kitchen table and after some deliberation took a snapshot and flapped the photo as quick as a humming bird’s wing to see if it was ‘folder’ worthy, it passed.

As he tucked the newly developed Polaroid into the plastic album sheath the doorbell rang and its melodious chime was as sweet as his baking. He closed the photo album and the weight of it thumped on the table. He made his way down the corridor glowing.

The doorbell rang again impatiently and his stomach started to sting. Through the blurred glass of the door he started to see a silhouette, hunched and skeletal. The doorbell rang once again and the sour stinging in his stomach wrenched with it and the silhouette began to manifest in front of him. His pace slowed as if his slippers were turning to concrete and the air from his lungs had been pressed out with a rolling pin. He placed his hand on the cold doorknob and winched as though an electric charge was pulsing through it. The doorbell echoed through out the house again and its din turned sour in his ears. He sucked up as much air as he physically could and unbolted the door and it opened and there she was.

“Mother?” His Adam’s apple jerked. He looked down at her she was like a crumpled piece of paper just as pale and blank apart from the fake plastic purple flower attached to the corner of her headband. She stared straight at him with her hollow grey eyes and her glare burnt him.

“Is that the kind greeting you give to your sick mother, Vincent?” She said with all the sarcasm of someone way below her years.

Syllables became foreign to his lips he turned facing back into his home and absorbed as much as possible, the light streaming into the kitchen the paintings on the wall, the plants on the side.

“Well are you going to let me in? I’ve been stood here waiting for you, you know how much I hate waiting Vincent.”

He turned back snapping out of daydream state. “Mother what are you doing here? And who’s that?” He squints through his thick glasses there’s an idling van parked outside his perfectly primed bushes a dirty white van looked so out of place in his personal Eden.

“They’re helping me move my stuff.” She said, like it was an apparent fact. “Where?” completely bewildered he starts to scan the area to see if there was any red sold signs on near by houses but there was non.

“Here. I’m sick and I’ve decided I’m moving in.” she turns to the white van man and signals him to start unloading, he flicked his cigarette out the window and it landed in Vince’s pond, he had to avert his eyes from the desecration that had just taken place on his water feature.

“Here? But you cant there’s no room, you cant just move in at a moment notice, what happened to the community housing that you had? Vince’s complexion was as red as strawberry icing and his heartbeat was visible through his powder blue summer shirt.

“Charming, you’re questioning looking after your own mother in her time of need, so selfish just like your father was and I’m not going back there, they’re all vile and petty always have to get the last word in with everything. No. I’ll be better off here with you; I didn’t need to ask I already thought it through. Are you going to move out of the way? Here take my bag and let the men to do the heavy lifting.”

She removed her handbag and hurled it into his chest and he moved out the way like a rag-doll. Her atmosphere turned him to ice as she struggled passed him, he just stared blankly where he was. He knew there was nothing that could be said it would all fall on deaf ears.

The removal men brought box after box and it infested his space, multiplied and spread like a virus and he felt like that sad little kid he was all those years ago.

“Vincent! Bring me my bag!” she squawked from the living room.

“Yes…Mother.”

He dragged his feet one in front of the other it was as though he forgot how to walk at all. Eventually he made it to the living room in his zombie state and set her bag down on the side table. She was sat in his favourite leather armchair and all the light in the room seemed to have dimmed and the sweetness of his surroundings was being sucked and spiralling into the black hole in the centre of the living room; his Mother.

“Well aren’t you going to offer me a drink? I’m gasping here you know how I like my tea, not too hot, not too cold, not too dark, not too white with three sugars and something to nibble on I haven’t eaten all day.” she barked and Vince followed her orders with obedience.

The only food he had was the apple tart and as he sliced the knife through its fresh crisp pastry he did not get any satisfaction, it was as though he was slicing his own heart and giving it to the devil.

“Here you go mother” he cleared her bag from the side table moved the Zimmer frame and placed the tart and tea in front of her then retreated to the safety of the kitchen door way.

“What is this? She pushed the silver spoon around the tart and scooped up the creamy substance.

“Ice cream, mother.” He took shelter behind the doorframe her words were like shrapnel.

“Ice cream? What ever happened to good old plain clotted cream and while I’m staying here stop calling me ‘mother’ you’re making me feel old call me Bet” she was seventy-six years old.

“Okay…Bet.” He made two more trips to the kitchen the tea was not to her exact specifications, would it ever be? But all the while she stuffed the tart in her wrinkled gob but not even a mouth full of sugary goodness could stop her judgemental barbs, she had ice cream running down each side of her mouth which made her look more like a rabid mammal than she already was. She ran her finger through the crumbly debris on the plate, but no comment or thank you arose from her pursed lips. No one had ever eaten one of Vince’s baked goods and not felt compelled to express their delight in eating it. But she wouldn’t know delight if it hit her over the head.

Two months had passed and she was still there at Vince’s and the place lost a little of him every day. She had complained so incessantly that it was easier just to buckle to her orders, the flowers: gone, the curtains: gone even his own bedroom: gone. She had ravaged all good things that he had like his love of baking, she was a terminal illness.

He sat at the edge of his make shift bed in the laundry room with his photo album in his lap, his eyes ate every image he felt a little spark light in his stomach he took out the Polaroid of a chocolate cherry cake and it made his taste buds tingle remembering its deep velvety flavours, it was time to bake again. He went to the food market and rushed back home to the kitchen his once tiny slice of heaven.

He mixed and pounded eggs, sugar, coco powder, butter and the thing that complimented the dark chocolate so well Cherries. Gorgeous deep red cherries so succulent he rubbed one on his lips before biting and the spitting out the stone.

“Where did it go?” he looked but gave up, it was bound to show up somewhere. He poured the batter into the casing and placed it in the oven. He planned on enjoying a slice in the bathtub listening to music; today was a healing day.

When it finished he ran his bath and went downstairs to get cut a big slice for him self it was decorated beautifully with a cherry on top.

“I’m starving!” Bet bellowed from her bedroom so he cut another slice for her and took both up.

He entered what was once his room and she was laying there like living corpse cackling at the Television that she demanded be moved up there.

“What’s this? Cake? Trying to make me fat are you?”

“I’m going to have a bath now and listen to some music so the toilet is out of bounds.” He said.

“Keep the racket down, I don’t want to here it while I’m watching my program.”

He gave no response he left and turned on the portable CD player perched on the sink and the music played quietly it was Mama Cass singing ‘Dream a little dream of me’ which always soothed him until suddenly he heard a ghastly strangling sound come from his old bedroom and he slowly wondered down the corridor and heard it again…she was choking.

“The cherry stone!” he gasped and quickly covered his mouth he was behind the doorframe and he heard her trying to call for help, instinctively he wanted to go in and give her the Heimlich manoeuvre but his feet were glued to the spot it was as though he was frozen on the spot, he had never felt so conflicted in his life.

All the abuse he received in his existence could come to an end a fact far more tempting than any delicious cake he could ever bake. Tears began to well in his eyes, he felt evil, he felt his throat seize as though the stone was lodged in his gullet.

His feet became unstuck and he walked back down the hallway to the bathroom all to the violent sound of his mother’s choking, he stepped into the bath and turned the music up to drown her out and he laid back crying, his tears added volume to the water. He tried to justify his decision.

“It was an accident, it was an accident.”

He loosened and embraced the warm water and picked up his slice of Chocolate cake, he took one bite and it was the sweetest sensation he had felt in a long time.

“Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you.”