"Miss Salome, I've come to tell you that I'm quitting." Ms. DeVorne said in a tone both absolute and frightened. Her hands were to her sides, scrunched up and her posture was struggling to maintain its straightforward, stubborn grit.

Salome looked at her. One glance, top to bottom, looked instead to the direction of screaming and childish suffering and said, “We’ll talk about this later.”

She went up the stairs, through the halls, past portraits of long-dead Wolfe’s and the small lights igniting them with a warm glow from below, the color palette orange and glaring, like Halloween ornaments painted on the walls. The maid followed, closely behind, mumbling words.

"Miss Sa-Salome," She said. "I need a severance package. I’m moving, you see."

"I told you, we'll talk about this later. My son needs me." The screaming beckoned Ms. Salome’s fast pace. She rushed now, on her bent and struggling heels. She touched the handles of twin white marble doors.

The maid put her arm in front of the handles of the door. Salome stared at her, and particularly to her freckled skin that bled down her neck. It made her skin appear dry and old, though she was thirty-two. Still young, still full of possibility. Salome knew it. Both of them did.

It was youth that gave her courage to hold stern to those doors. Courage, stupidity.

"You’re interrupting me, DeVorne," Salome said. “My son is frustrated, you know what that means, right?”

"I’ve been trying to speak to you for ages. I’m not waiting anymore, I want my severance package."

Salome breathed deeply and closed her eyes. It was that calm composure perhaps, that made DeVorne remove her hand. Though she still mumbled desires, even as Salome ignored her and walked through into the doors.

Junior needed to be taken care of. Both of them knew how difficult that was. DeVorne, most of all, who stopped at the door frame.

Junior, Thomas Wolfe III, sat there in his king sized bed, with the little dinosaur blanket laid atop his moving body, he was bundled underneath the dinosaur blanket, coddling himself with the light stimulation of a rocking body. In front of him, center of the room were train tracks coiling around the room and a miniature gold and black freight toy whistling through the tracks. And Junior, in his bed, the big, burly boy (now in his thirties, though being a man and being a boy is more a result of attitude and temperament, of which Junior had neither). No, Junior was a child in a man's body, an autistic child as DeVorne had found out ten years ago on her first job when she cleaned up his ‘dinner mess’ off the bathroom walls (and bedroom carpet)'.

She had found out that day, for better or worse, how uncontrollable Junior was. That was the first time she had taken care of him and -

“I’m not helping you with him anymore, you hear me?” DeVorne said. Salome looked at her, she flashed her fake teeth with the little cracks running through and turned to face her ‘poor child’. She ran at him and grabbed him, wrapping her arms around his head and cradling him close to her by the edge of the bed.

"They know, they know they know they kn-kn-kn-kn-ow" His words deteriorated with his thoughts. He shook in his mother’s hands. Salome held him, the more he shook, the tighter she gripped until his whole face was sucked into the netting that was Salome’s turtleneck sweater.

DeVorne held the door. She knew it was coming, as Junior cried. She calmed her breath and waited, watching the mother and soon. It didn’t take long. The earth shook, perhaps only this floor shook. But the building, certainly, was made to fear Junior. As he slammed his fists down, crying, afraid, so too did the walls and floors slam down. DeVorne held the handle of the door. The chandeliers fell behind her. She yelped like habit had taught her. It only made the next wave that much worse.

Junior pushed himself off his mother and slammed his head on the bed frame. This one is going to be big.

It was. She fell. She got into a ball and hoped and screamed and begged that the glass would not fall on her, that the doors would not slam themselves shut on her.

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She was still screaming as it ended. Salome shushed her,

“Be quiet, you’re scaring him!” She held her son from behind, stopping him from slamming down again on the wooden bed frame. She looked at the two, Salome noticed, from the corner of her eyes as she held her son and kissed him on his cheek. The thirty-odd-year-old man, with the rough beard and the messy, wavy hair that fell down to his face was being held like an infant.

Junior. This was their heir. The resident autist, diagnosed at a young age at the age of six when she noticed him staring into the corner of the wall with little, colored building blocks laid out to the rainbow-order of a crayon set. Nothing much changed since then, only his obscene strength. His obscene talent for arcana. And the roller coaster of emotions the savant existence came with, a topsy-turvy freight train with all the erratic momentum the wild turns brought. Through every mountain and forest, into any lake or ocean. A true journey. One (DeVorne realized as she stood and pat her knees from dirt and glass) that had to end.

Long drawn-out bouts of catatonic lifelessness, bouts of extreme manic depressive thrashes and self-harming was enough for her. Ten years of it was enough for her.

DeVorne walked into the room, hugging the wall as she did so. She was spotted by Junior who looked up, drool and bloody nose running down to his chin.

"Give me kiss, Vicky. (DeVorne)." He cried.

"No," DeVorne did her best to smile, her teeth were sensitive and dislodged though. Her head hurt. "No more kisses for you, sorry sweetheart.”

"Yo-you're what?" he had his hands to the temples of his head.

"I’m beginning to think you don’t have a brain," Salome said. “Because you really can’t imagine problems, can you? Or maybe you just don’t care about how badly your words hurt.”

"This isn’t my fault.” She said. Junior teetered in between shock and anger. “What’s got him upset?”

"Two heart-eaters with too much tenacity in their bodies.” She rubbed Junior’s head. “They’ve traumatized my poor son.”

"Well, that's unfortunate.” She walked up, stepping over a track. The set had been collapsed. The plastic passengers, if any in those ruined toy trains, were dead. “I’m sure you’re more than capable of handling him on your own.”

Salome put her hand on the man-child's cheeks and rubbed him. For in her the fear grew, and the contempt too. And the annoyance, too. And the earth shook as the manchild slammed down both hands on the floor. The three floors below and above shook, the lights would not stop quivering.

"Tell him to stop," DeVorne shouted.

"You know he can't." She screamed. "Come. Entertain him, before he kills us all."

She wobbled through the growing earthquakes. Judging by the lack of screaming or calls or worry from the intercom, it must not have traveled far to the floor. It was a concentrated earthquake, perhaps only terrorizing her and Salome.

She fell. Then crawled, hand on top of her head. She went for the child and on her knees started hugging and kissing him, and quenching that absurd rage of his. He fell, curled and pulled his head back in preparation to slam it down again.

“D-d-don’t l-l-leave me.” He said.

She lied.

“I’m not, I swear I’m not.” DeVorne held him. She held him, closed her eyes and hugged him. His heart brushed against her face. She heard Salome walk and close the doors.

When Junior settled and was ready to sit back onto the bed, she walked up and towards Salome who guarded the doors out.

“Okay, fuck the severance package. I’m getting out, okay?” She said.

“But why? Haven’t we been going? Don’t you love Junior.”

“I do.” She said. “But I’ve also realized that this family can’t be saved. That old man’s death has got you all confused and insane. I can’t help you. I don’t want to. I can only save myself. So I am, good day.”

She tried reaching for the door handle. Salome turned her body towards it.

“Those heart-eaters have him scared,” She looked passed DeVorne, to her child crying on his bed. “They’re going to get him, that’s what my son says. Do you believe that?”

“Let me out.” DeVorne tried pulling on the door. “I don’t know or care about any of this anymore. Let me out.”

“They’re going to kill him, gut him. They’re going to reach into his chest and rip his heart out, like crows.”

“Let me out!” DeVorne shouted. Junior stared at her.

“They’re ruining everything. Aren’t they? They’ll take my boy away and I can’t have that.” She said. “You understand that. You’re a mother, aren’t you?”

“Salome,” DeVorne’s voice quivered. “Salome, please.”

“This family will survive into my new generation. My son will be calmed, will be crowned, will be well-treated and well-meaning.”

Salome turned, to the manchild suckling on a handkerchief. She ran towards him, holding onto him. He seemed mesmerized.

Salome walked forward, her body eerily thin. Her shadow, eerily wife.

“I can’t have my son frustrated. I have to protect him, all of them. Or they’ll catch him. They really will.”

“Madam!” DeVorne shouted. She hugged Junior who hugged her back though did not seem to know why, his face looked stupified. He stared emptily, blood coming down from his face, marks of red on his forehead.

“Can anyone call love evil?” She asked. “Can anyone call the things done in love, evil?”

DeVorne’s face fell. Her eyes widened. Her jaw slacked.

"You ain't leaving," she said, holding something behind her back. "And you will be useful. I just know it,"

Salome approached, with the calm composure only a queen could have. With conviction in her eyes, only she dared follow through.

But this was Salome, not just any woman, but the mother of Wolfe’s.