Mimi's Demons

Chapter 12: Mother's Demons

Mimi saw demons on her mother.

Honrye had looked at her funny when she'd run to him, crying the news.

"They've always been there," he said. She was almost ten now and Honrye had gotten better at speaking like a human.

"What?!" she hadn't believed him at first.

"You're eyes are getting stronger. Humans are blinded by prejudice. You thought your mother untouched, so she looked so. But now you see better."

Mimi had a moment to be stunned as she realized the fit of anger she'd had at her mother the other day for rejecting her request to stay with her grandpa for Christmas. Christmas only stressed her mother out and she hadn't even bothered putting up a tree this year. How could it hurt to let Mimi go spend the holiday with someone who actually wanted to celebrate it with her? But again her mother had insisted she'd be too much of a burden, and grandpa hadn't been feeling well of late, but Mimi thought that if grandpa hadn't been up to it he would have been an adult enough to not invite Mimi in the first place.

Then there was her mother that morning, wearily eating a bowl of cereal with spider-like demons hanging off her shoulders and head. Shadows she hadn't seen before rimmed her mother's eyes like sleepy bags.

Honrye gave her time to sit there, but his tail whipped back in forth in lazy apathy.

"You don't have a good mother," he said.

"Shut up."

"I can't lie to you."

"Then it's your opinion. My mom does the best she can."

"She spends her free time going to bars. She met a man there, you know. He'll be here soon."

"I said SHUT UP!"

Her scream made him flash back under the bed. As soon as it came out, she felt guilty, but she couldn't stand how her hands shook and her eyes teared up.

Her mother burst into the room, scowling.

"What the hell is going on?"

Mimi could only stare at the mutated, winged spiders swinging from her elbows or nestled in her hair.

Even though she knew better, she found herself saying, "You found a boyfriend?"

Her mother frowned. "What?"

"When do you have time to go to bars?"

A strange stillness came over her mother. "How do you know that?"

When Mimi just continued to look at her, her mother's stillness gave way to a frown.

"This is another reason why I don't like you going to your grandpa's house. Your uncle is a gossip."

"All uncle does is play videogames in the basement, he doesn't—" Mimi closed her mouth tight. Because no, it was better that her mother think she got the information from her uncle. Nothing good came out of mentioning the demons, and Honrye had schooled Mimi in the art of omitting the truth rather than attracting demons by lying.

Her mother leaned against the door, running a hand down her face in a quick swipe and sigh.

"I was going to introduce you sometime," she said, all weariness. A spider-demon on her elbow scrambled up its gossamer thread to avoid Mimi's gaze. "I think I'm going to marry him."

Mimi clenched her hands in her shirt.

She didn't want her mother to get married. Dealing with her now very annoying, needy half-brother and her ex-step father was bad enough.