The Game

        My mother was downstairs.
        It wasn’t my mother.
	I knew it wasn’t my mother because I heard no door open, no locks click, no windows rattle as they always did when my mother slammed the door a little too hard. But I heard her footsteps on the linoleum floor, on the crevices that were caked with dirt and dust and food; I heard her sing-song voice drifting up the steep carpeted steps into my room, through my thin folding closet door as I hid behind it beneath my clothes. 
        My mother did not talk like that. My mother never sang. 
	I nearly blacked out in fear as my mother – rather, my mother’s imposter – placed one foot – one heavy, monstrous, fraudulent foot – on the bottom step. I heard the muffled footstep on the scraggly carpet that was peeling off the bottom step where it connected to the tile. She called up to me, her voice cheerful, and I heard an unfamiliar smile on her face. 
	“Lily, are you coming down? I picked up a game at the store. I want to play with you.”
	You’re not my mother! I wanted to scream. I don’t love you! Leave me alone! 
	Granted, I didn’t really love my mother either, but this demon in my home I loved less. I loved the way her footsteps reminded me of her evil presence less, I loved her voice humming and giggling to herself like nothing was wrong less. I wish I owned a hammer, or a bat, or something; then I could run down there confidently and destroy that thing. I could kill it and drag it outside and bury it in the woods or call the cops and say I discovered it or feed it to the mountain lions that got a little too close to our back fence during this time of year. I could easily get rid of her – it, I reminded myself – and my real mother would come home and ask me why the kitchen wasn’t clean and the floors weren’t swept and why the crevices in the linoleum still had dirt in them.
	“Lily?” 
	I gathered my breath – to speak or to scream? Would others in the neighborhood hear me if I just shrieked, if I let out everything in my lungs? Then this monster could come upstairs and play its stupid game with me or a neighbor with a gun that was ludicrous to own in our town of only a thousand people would come and kill that thing parading as my mother. Maybe they would assume I was also a monster and go ahead and put me out of my misery. A sick smile came to my face after that thought.  A dream come true. 
	“I’m coming.” I barely heard the words leave my mouth, barely recognized the octave and cadence of my voice. Did I even say words, or was that incoherent babbling me finally cracking? Was I going crazy? Did this monster break me? 
	I stood up and opened my closet. I glanced around my room; nothing was out of place. Walls that had been a pale pink since I was five, the same princess canopy hanging over my bed though it was eaten through by moths and stained by something inexplicable, the books lining shelves and paintings of fairies and castles neatly organized in rows upon the walls. Not a single weapon though, and I started to regret it. I can’t fight off an alien freak with a Barbie and some glitter puff paint. 
	I crossed my room and opened the door. From my door I could see down the steep cheap carpeted stairwell down into the face of the thing that was impersonating my mother; it had a pleasant smile, barely a curve to the lips but it was there, its eyes shining and greedy and wide. I want to kill you. 
	“I have a game,” it said again, its hands clasping over its chest in a pathetic attempt to act like an excited human.
	“Okay.” The sound of my voice was sour in my ears. Okay. Okay, but let’s skip the game and get to the part where I lose and you kill me. Okay, but we don’t need a game; I don’t mind if you steal my face and identity. Okay, but here’s my ultra-deadly weapon and I’m gonna kill you and find out what you did to my mother! 
	I stepped down the stairs, quickly, in a way that my actual mother would typically scold me for. This thing only watched me with its shiny eyes, its mouth growing wider, parting slightly, studying me as I stood expectantly at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s in the kitchen. Come,” it finally said, obviously barely able to contain its excitement to “play with me” as it practically skipped into the kitchen. 
	I followed it into the kitchen. We had a cheap table there, with two mismatched chairs; both the table and the chairs had uneven legs and it was a nightmare to actually sit there, so we never did, but my fake mother led me to sit there anyways. A board game was set up, the colorful unfolded surface and blobby shapeless pieces and stacks of neatly cut cards clashing horribly with the rest of the house; the rest of the room was drab and dirty and everything had holes and cigarette burns on it. My brain felt like ice and my hands shook as I sat in front of that horrible omen that was a board game. 
	As I sat there and watched the monster shuffle cards, I was reminded of my favorite book as a kid: Are You My Mother?, a book about a baby bird desperately trying to find its mother and it eventually runs into a bulldozer that throws him around and he cries. Are you my mother? I thought, looking at the thing in front of me, and a bizarre cackle nearly escaped my mouth. 
	It glanced at me, barely hesitating in its shuffling of cards. “I’m glad you’re already having fun.”
	I immediately stopped having fun. My mother would never want me to have fun.
	“The rules are simple,” it explained. “Roll the dice, move that exact amount of spaces, and pick the card that the square tells you to.”	
	“How do you know who wins?” I asked.
	“You’ll know.” It placed the final stack of cards it was shuffling onto its allotted spot on the board. “I’ll go first.” 
        It rolled. Four. It moved four spaces. Green card. It picked up a green card, read it with its shiny eyes, and smiled, covering its giggle with one hand. “Hop once on your right foot! How absurd.” It got up. The chair clunked as the uneven leg hit the floor. It hopped. It felt like the whole house shook with the way it landed, gracefully and artificially. I hoped that it would trip and break its neck on the floor or hit its head on the table and then my mother could come home and – I don’t know, find something to yell at me for, and everything would be fine. 
        “Your turn.”
        I picked up the dice, rolled. Six. Blue card. I picked up a blue card, and read it aloud – whose voice was that? It was so strange. “Snap five times with your left hand.” 
        It busted out laughing, not in an attractive or appealing way. Weren’t imposter monsters like this supposed to be intriguing in some way? Isn’t that how they’re supposed to trap you? This thing didn’t trap me with the way it cackled and snorted and leaned back in its seat to slap the table in amusement. “How silly is that!” it managed to force out, laughing and laughing. “How ridiculous!” 
        I waited for it to calm down. When it did, it leaned with its elbows on the table, resting its chin in its hands, gazing expectantly at me. I snapped five times with my left hand. The sound was sharp and piercing in the silence. Fake Mom gave me a polite smile, wiped nonexistent tears from its eyes, and rolled again. Two. Blue card.
        The game went like this for a while; when it pulled a card, it chuckled and did the deed on the card. When I pulled, it fell into a laughing fit worse than the last, getting to a point where I feared it would die from a lack of oxygen or something before I was able to do my task. 
        I started to get sick of it. “Where’s my mom?” I finally demanded.
        “What?” It almost sounded hurt, and I almost felt a pang of guilt for asking it. “Can’t you see I’m your mother, dear? Aren’t we having fun together, mother and daughter?”
        I felt like my throat was closing up, restricting those strange noises that apparently were words from leaving my throat. My mother never called me “dear.” And I have never, ever had fun with my mother. 
        It sighed. “Why don’t you roll just one more time. If you’re not having fun then, you can quit.”
        I tried to hold back a scoff. Surely “you can quit” meant “I’ll kill you in a horrific and demonic way and leave you on the kitchen floor for an unsuspecting elderly neighbor to find in three weeks when they notice your house has been oddly quiet.” I rolled anyway. Three. Yellow card. I picked up a yellow card. 
        “Look outside your back door.” 
        The thing smiled politely. No laughter this time. This was it.
        I stood and walked to the back door. I already knew what I would find, and my movements felt robotic and forced. I opened the back door. It was snowing outside. Strange; it was hardly the end of September.
        My mother, my real mother, lay in the snow. I could tell she was dead just by looking at her white skin and her blue lips and her dark eyelids, all stained with years of cigarette use. I had known it all along. My mother was dead and in my backyard and I was standing on my porch looking at her and she was dead. I had known in my closet my mother was dead. I had known she was dead when I looked that thing in the eyes, I had known when I rolled the first time and that creature had broken out into an ugly fit of laughter. I knew it. 
        Shouldn’t I be happy?
        “Aren’t you happy?” I felt a hand on my shoulder. Oddly warm and soft. I didn’t jump or make any noise at its touch, merely stared at my real dead mother. “Aren’t I helping you?” I heard that smile on her face. I heard a lilting song in her voice. “Wasn’t she such a witch?”
        “She was my mother.” My voice was dead, laying in the snow next to my dead mother in the cold. I turned to look back at this thing that I had to know was a monster. Her eyes were so shiny, so unnatural. What were they shiny with? Tears of remorse? A passion for life, a love for her new daughter? I felt there was a void where my mother lay in the snow. I wanted – needed – something to fill it. 
        “Won’t you let me be your new mother, dear?” Dear. 
        I had always wished my mother would call me dear.

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