Secrets under the roof

His mother had the exact same smell around her. Doubt started to grow in Oswald's head.

'This is ridiculous! She wasn't here when it all started! Was she involved since the beginning? That's right, she was being vague about it because she was lost as well. But I've never noticed those colours on her until now. Is it because of the baby then? What are you hiding from me, mother?' He was afraid to search upstairs, because he feared the truth.

On the porch, sitting in her chair, Meryl precipitated upstairs to put the handmade puppet she crafted to mimic her newborn. A few seconds in the house and tens of ravens exited the room where she had her bed.

Caw! Caw!

Oswald walked into the entrance, death's scent struck every cells of his body. The disgusting putrid odour passed through every wall of the house.

"What the heck is this smell?" He asked.

"She can't control her bowels yet, as every baby." Replied Meryl, not worried about her doings. She was delusional but every person in the house wanted to admit their faults.

Oswald knew how bad the first faeces could smell, and he knew his sense of smell had improved, as he couldn't relate the smell with something he knew, his mother made sense to him.

The nauseous particles shone dimly, their colour was very dark, he wasn't able to tell which colour it was, as any strong scent, he had to focus to ignore it as much as possible to not faint.

He glared at his mother from time to time, the golden glow around her was mystical, fantastic to observe, when he had the opportunity to, he filled his lungs with a creepy sniffle. Every particle that entered his nose had a peculiar flower-field-like scent.

"Where were you all day?" His mother asked.

"With the herd."

With a reproachful glare, she replied. "No you weren't."

"Where I was is none of your business, mother. If I want to venture outside, I go. Half of the time I don't know where I am, why are you interested in knowing about the other half?" His tone was cold, the fact she lied too made him upset.

"I just wanted to talk. Time passes more slowly and I feel lonely when you're not around."

"You have company though. You should be busy, why would you come see when I was with the herd?" He asked.

She had no way to rebuke. Her thoughts revolved around her hollow womb and her crystal clear memories about her son all day long. The easiest way to explain why she was still present in the house was that both bodies didn't belong to the same person, Meryl wasn't Meryl anymore.

The mark under her belly button, a black cross, made her think she had a kind of disease, that Stan had contaminated her with it.

Her undeclared pact with the devil had totally affected her along with her son, her egoistical wish made her one of his puppets, and since she willed to sacrifice anything, she lost both her humanity and her son's.

The poor mother never had faith. Once, she heard about deities, entities able to help their believers, so she prayed. To the one that would listen to her plea, she asked him to come. Come and make her life easier, she wished.

In the room upstairs, she kept sleeping in with her fake baby. Lumps of meat laid on the bed, walls and floor, every raven that Oswald worked hard to attract fed on Meryl's remains.

What was left of the corpse was slowly being consumed by the birds.

Her lie was too big for Oswald to chew. He knew how terrible the situation could be, but he couldn't imagine how worse it could go.

She had lost smell and taste, it helped eat most of Oswald's dishes. Her wish had been granted. She had love, and she could stay with her son as much as she wanted to, even though it wasn't the son she wished for, the one she prayed for had been eaten by a giant wolf-like creature nicknamed Ozzy.

'That's not my son.' Meryl couldn't help but think, but she was helpless, she had no strength nor words to fight against Oswald.

As for him, he wouldn't fear winter anymore. His body temperature was stable but around fifty degree Celsius. No fever corroded his mind, only his mind itself. He lost part of his days in exchange of what he wouldn't die of starving.

Seeing how sick his last experimentation subject were, Stan paid a visit earlier than expected and completed his test subjects with the second part of his recipe.

"To make an obedient dog..." Stan noted. "You need two bare fangs, blind faith in nothingness, few dashes of blood and a pinch of sparkles in its eyes. Shroud it all in doubt and abandon it to its fate."

Stan hadn't moved yet. All he wanted was to pass time having fun. He sat on the roof of the old house to spy all day long. He was a mystical creature, father of all of kinds. With his crimson red eyes, he could see everything around him in detail. Meaning that observing a rat's skin cells shedding, at the opposite side of the valley, was a casual data floating in his omnipresent brain.

He often ended his 'hobbies' with the clap of a hand when he got bored. But this time, having two people to look at was interesting, first because the outcome of his experiment was unprecedented, second because he added a new succubus to his collection, he could visit her anytime and have fun.

Back to Oswald, the boy exited the house in the evening, shuffling his feet nervously, he went for a long walk.

Amidst his thoughts, one came up to his mind for the fraction of a second. 'That's not my mother.'

Two hours in, he couldn't feel the heartache that made his consciousness sink for the past month.

'It feels weird to not feel the usual palpitation... Maybe I can trigger it.' He thought.

Focusing on every animal traces he could, he saw the night spectacle animating the forest, yet the little something that made his heart pulse was still missing. So he ran, he ran until he found a big animal.

Zigzagging in between trees and bushes, his panting racked his throat, a low growl haunted the forest.