Day 33.

Hey, I think I'm caught up to February now! Shiats, that feels good.
This is for Michael's focus class, we had to bring a collection of inanimate objects to life.
...it's a little disturbing..... and i'm not sure it's coherent.


Later, when things had gotten out of hand, the fourth floor boys tried to pin down who it was that had created Mom.
Freddy swore that he had only found the floor lamp, lipstick and the Maidenform bra in the dumpster, that, first of all, it was Hal that found the apron and second of all, it was Nick who put them all together.
The matron of the Holy Spirit Orphanage For Young Boys did not care; she merely wanted the strange events to stop, and the unfavorable rumors surrounding the place to stop with them.
But she could not stop the boys' discussion. They decided, whether it was truth or fiction, that there was no one creator. Each boy had added something; one had hung the bra and apron on the lamp; another that tied the frayed "Kiss the Cook" apron tight around the lamp's middle; still another had added his pillow to fill out the fragile frame and slept on his jacket for weeks until the matron got him a secondhand pillow and a scolding. They all remembered that the lips had been last, a smear of raw crimson on the cream lampshade that completed the figure: Mom, they called her.
She stood in the middle of their bare room, only hauled under their beds when the matron came in to check that things were sanitary. They imagined that she made the strips of wood glow where she went, and so they took turns having her by their bed.
Like a Buddha statue's belly, in their times of need they rubbed her edges soft and worn, appearing to tan over the years with dirt. A touchstone.
They gave her what they needed, what they found.
A flower might be tied to the lampshade's tassels, just so the boys could touch her face; or a cracked wooden spoon stuck in the pillow's rip, Mom whipping up the most delicious cookies any of them had never tasted. They were proud of her and they let her be proud of them.
New boys came, but they built a different ward. Visitors stopped coming to pinch their cheeks and muss their hair; no one wanted to adopt a teenager, although some came by hoping to drop theirs off. Some of the fourth floor boys ran away, sending messages and hellos whenever they could. But most stayed, and so did Mom.
She grew with them, playing with their toy trucks at first and then reading their comic books over their shoulder, and by the time they were between 14 and 17, she had become necessary to them in a different way. The Maidenform was worn down to nothing, barely hanging on Mom's form anymore.None of them knew who had done it, but the part of the faded message on the apron was marked over one day: it now read Kiss the Cunt.
The matron saw in her limited way what was happening, but followed her ramrod rule that the less she knew, the happier she'd be. Until the baby showed up, squalling and clutching fearfully at the hem of Mom's apron, and the boys fell silent. They stared, shocked, stock-still, until the matron came in.
She looked around suspiciously, waiting for an explanation, becoming frustrated and then resigned. She took the baby to join the others in the infant ward. And when, as was the custom, she picked one of the older boys, the fourth floor boys, to choose the new baby's name, he answered with the others: Ed. Short for Oedipus.