Hell hath no fury
Saturday, Sep 25th, 2010It was morning. I was in New York, in my room, at peace with myself and my surroundings. I had just resolved to spend the day in leisure, reading a book or visiting a friend.
That’s when my cellphone rang.
It was my mother. She wanted me to drive two hours to our lake house in Massachusetts to assist in moving a refrigerator. I respectfully declined.
She was not pleased.
“Okay Chris. You’ll see… You’ll see.”
And that’s how the phone call ended. Just like that.
I didn’t wonder for a second what was meant by my mother’s vague threat. Instead, I unwisely threw myself into a horror novel: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” I hardly progressed one page when the words echoed off a wall in my mind.
“Okay Chris. You’ll see… You’ll see.”
I knew the story well. Shelley – a woman – out of the bowels of her imagination, had conjured a terrible fate for her protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, who had cursed the day of his birth, who had lost his true love, who had become undone – all for refusing to give in to the demands of the monster he had created.
“Okay Chris. You’ll see… You’ll see.”
Continuing my read, the words somehow made their way onto the page, threading themselves into the story. They echoed in my mind again, this time in the chilling bellow of that horrible monster, from a peak in the Alps, pointing towards me at night, through the violence of a storm.
“OKAYYYY CHRIS. YOOOU’LL SEE! YOOOOOOOOOOU’LL SEEEEE!!!”
The words seemed, like Frankenstein’s monster, to come alive.
Looking up from my book, it occurred to me that my mother was a rhetorical genius… or worse: a woman scorned.
I called back.
And lemme guess you went to the country house ! Lmfao