english,
Literary: Breakfast
I wake up to the sound of someone cooking. Clack clack clack. I hear the sound of a knife hitting a hard surface. I sit up and look at the clock at the far end of my room. 5:04 AM. My mom is preparing breakfast this early?
That’s weird. It’s Saturday, so I don’t have school today. She shouldn’t be cooking at this hour. Maybe she forgot? I grab my phone on the table beside my bed and head down to the kitchen.
I went down the stairs and see my mother preparing some ingredients on the kitchen counter. I walk towards her and tap her on the shoulder.
“Mom, why are you cooking breakfast?”
My mom stops cutting the vegetables and turns around. She smiles at me.
“Well, I woke up today and decided that maybe I should cook something special for my beloved son.”
“O-oh, okay then. So what are you cooking?”
She looks at me, her smile even wider than before.
“It’s something that you love.”
She turns away from me and goes back to cutting the ingredients.
I stand there for a couple of seconds not knowing what to do before deciding to sit down at the dining table to wait for her to finish cooking. The sound of her knife’s cutting repeats again and again. Clack clack clack. It continues for a couple of minutes until finally, boredom gets the best of me.
“Mom, could you at least give a hint?”
The sound of cutting stops.
“It’s a secret.”
Then she continues cutting.
Ten minutes pass.
Twenty…
Then thirty minutes.
Why is she taking so long? It’s been over half an hour and she’s still cutting.
I am really getting bored, so I decide to take a peek at what she is doing.
I see some vegetables on the table. Cloves of garlic, bell peppers, and carrots. Then the usual kitchen tools -- a frying pan, a spatula, and a bowl where the vegetables will be placed. Everything seems pretty normal, but the meat looks… weird. Or should I say it looks kind of big? What kind of meat is that? Which animal did that come from? I stand up from my chair to get closer to the table.
On it are ribs and a slab of what looks like belly meat. Now that I think about it, why is there so much meat? The meat takes up half of the table. I look at the ribs. Something tells me those are not pig ribs. I lean in to take a closer look at the meat until suddenly--
“Hey, don’t touch that.”
I stop and look at what she has been cutting. It appears to be a long piece of meat that looks like a leg--but it doesn’t look like a pig’s or a cow’s legs.
Then I look at my mother’s face. On her face was a smile that sent a shiver down my spine.
I slowly back away from her and hurry towards the bathroom. I open the door and slam it shut after going in. I turn the faucet on and splash water onto my face. I must be dreaming. There’s no way. I must be hallucinating or something. I wash my face again. That’s when I smell it. A horrible stench. What is that? Did a rat die in here? I look around to search for where the smell is coming from. My eyes land on the bathtub covered by the curtains. The foul smell is coming from there. I walk towards the curtain and pull it open.
There, I see my mother’s sleeping face. She looks so peaceful and relaxed… then I look at her body…
Where’s the body?
I feel bile coming up my throat and I try to force it down. But seeing the decapitated head of my mother is too much for me to bear. I lurch forward and puke, sinking down to my knees. I can feel my hands trembling as I try to contain the stomach fluids coming out of my mouth.
Then I hear her voice from outside the door.
“Son, breakfast is ready.”
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