Found

Kaleidoscript magazine Published by

Found

By Laura Shell

I found my mother's dead body.

She sat in her favorite red leather recliner. Head tilted to the right. Lips parted. Eyes closed. Her swollen feet were dark purple–her favorite color–which told me she'd been sitting there for quite some time.

Upon first look, I thought she was sleeping, so I pressed on her flabby arm and said, "Mom." Her arm was cold and stiff, like a metal rod in the snow.

Rigor Mortis.

That's when the magnitude of the whole situation kicked in. That was when the pacing and the screaming and the denial kicked in.

Eventually, I sat on the sofa across from her and stared at her. Her phone was on the floor, next to the chair. I picked it up. Facebook. So she'd been watching videos on Facebook when she'd suffered something and died.

Technically, not a bad way to go. Quick. Uneventful. Hopefully, it was painless.

But she was gone. My mother was gone. We had just made plans the day before.

Why now, Mom? As if she chose this.

Again, I stared at her overweight, breathless form and thought of all the precautions we'd tried to take to avoid this whole death situation. The medications, the diet, the exercise...

None of that mattered. She still couldn't lose the weight and ate whatever she wanted, when she wanted.

She'd been an alcoholic and had traded one addiction for another–booze for food.

I glanced at my overweight frame. I, too, used to be an alcoholic.

I stared at my mother again, wondering if I was looking at my future.

Laura Shell has been published in NUNUM, Maudlin House, Typishly, Big Whoopie Deal, and many others. Her first anthology of paranormal stories, The Canine Collection, was released in 2024. She's a prolific writer and submitter of flash fiction and the Editor-in-Chief of the Flash Phantoms site. 

You can find more about her work at https://laurashellhorror.wordpress.com.

Categories: : death, family, grief, short stories