October Short Story of the Month

FRANCIS EATS HIS MOTHER

It was almost nine, and given his interior monologue, Francis was certainly awake, but he did not want to wake up. He wanted to sleep. So he would sleep. But he couldn’t sleep.
“Francis, are you awake?”
Damn it. “No, mother,” he called, wondering if she’d even hear him from downstairs, “not yet.”
“Well, you need to get off to school.”
Silence. He should be silent, because sleeping people don’t talk. “The school can wait an hour.”
She mumbled something he couldn’t quite hear, and he placed his head under the pillow, to drown out what was sure to become a rant. No use, she was coming up the stairs.
There came an argument, one that blew in and out before he had time to really register what had actually been said. Those were the arguments that he liked best.
Francis woke up hungry the day he ate the mother, and his hunger grew and grew with every second that passed. At first, it confused him. He could not explain it, and hard as he tried at breakfast time, he could not sate it.
“Awfully hungry today, aren’t we?” mother observed.
Francis gave her a smile, no time between mouthfuls to fit in a word. He began eating heavier, more and more, until he could not stand it. Mother left him to his food and he barely registered her absence. Not his stomach, as that was just as empty as it had been when he’d awoken, but the act of it had tired him out.
When again he could move, he began to eat more.

No one at school bothered to notice his absence that day. It wasn’t that he was invisible to them, certainly not. They noticed him when he was there, just not when he wasn’t. His feelings were not hurt about it, as he wasn’t there. And thus no one complained. Not yet.
Even the principal, who had never noticed Francis in general, had not a thing to complain about.
Not yet.