The smell of rotting crab. That's what he remembers about Celia. They visited his mother's sister too often for everyone's tastes. Even for his mother. Even for Celia. His father flatly refused to put up with it, and every month he waited grim and angry in the van with the icy air blasting through the vents.
Holding his mother's hand tightly he would wrinkle his nose as a wall of sweat, mildew, and rotting crab meat sweltered over them; settling in the folds of their clothes and in their hair. Aunt Celia had a way of scaring the hair on his arm straight up. Sometimes it seemed she enjoyed seeing him squirm and look away. On other days she didn't even cast a glance at him, only yelling and screaming at his mother, throwing a frightening tantrum until her hands were white and shaking from clenching and twisting the sheets she languished upon. He told Reese beneath the monkey bars that his aunt was an alien from outer space. Reese's large nosed scrunched up and he looked scared as he had scurried off to join a game on the field. Aunt Celia certainly looked like an alien. Her skin looked plastic and shiny, and her hair clung to her scalp in limp strands. Her face was ugly and had weird purple splotches across it. Later in class Reese leaned over and asked softly if his parents were alien, or if he was part alien too, because he was related to one. He hadn't known what to answer. The next night his mother got a call from Reese's house. He heard his mother and father talking about it behind their bedroom door.
"Well of course he's going to say that," his father said hotly, "he's got eyes hasn't he? And you expose him to that lunatic every blasted month. Probably warping his brain."
His mother replied softly what she said every month and every visit,
"She's my sister, Jeffrey." her voice got even quieter,
"she's been feeling down lately, and ignoring her won't help anyone."
His father only got louder.
"Oh, she's been down for sure, she lays on that bed like she thinks the Earth has pinned her there. She wants the attention, and you sure dish it out, babying her like a mother hen."
What his parent's said interested him and he payed closer attention on the next trip down to his aunt's. He watched the way her eyes flickered around the room, and then focused waveringly on the corner of the room where the walls met the ceiling. She met his eyes and he immedialtey blinked down to look at his shoes. He curled his toes inside his sneakers and stared back.
Everything was quiet. Celia layed white and pale on her back, slowly she lowered her head onto the waiting pillow and closed her eyes. Her lips moved as if she was speaking but no words came out. His mother bent over her and held her hands, crying a little. It made his stomach twist when a grown-up cried; it was all wrong. He left the bedroom and sat on the dingy living room carpet, letting the smell of the room climb all over him. He thought about opening the front window but the fear of Celia rooted him to the spot. He imagined her waking suddenly and leaping around the room, tearing up the drapes and grinding her teeth, her purple face dripping sweat and eyes boring into his skull. So he sat on the grimy floor with the grimy smell until his mother was ready to leave.
That night he listened to the light underneath his parent's door, laying on his bed in the dark, A single streak of light spread across the sky, his eyes stayed on it until its upward arch dissapeared. He heard his mother crying, and imagined himself flying with that streak of light. A rocket ship returning home.
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