This happened when I was seven.

Mom and Dad had separated.

I have the foggy memory of, shortly after their divorce, mom bringing me to a holiday resort. Something to help the two of us relax and "get past all the sadness."

I didn't know what it all meant. She was clearly giving me too much credit as a child.

Her behavior was marked by desperation, paranoia, mania—things I didn't have words for at the time, so I instead just chalked them up as 'weird'.

In our substandard hotel room, everything she'd packed for us was strewn about. She swore something was missing though.

"I'll go fetch it from the front desk, and you stay right put okay?" she said, cracking open the door, squeezing through and closing it.

I didn't like being alone but I also didn't particularly like being with her.

But, after five minutes, it really did feel like the clock was taking longer to tick. Time was elongating; getting slower. The gap between her being here and being gone grew more and more obvious and palpable. I had a real worry that if it kept going, maybe she'd never be back and I'd have no way to go home. Real home.

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Bumps, sounds, sensations of someone walking down the hall nearby, conjuring up false hope.

Nothing. Still alone.

For quite some time.

Then—I heard the knock.

And the low, scratchy voice of a woman.

"Hi baby," she said.

A pause. "Hi."

"Baby, are you scared? Mum left you all alone?"

"Yah."

"That wasn't very nice of momma."

"No."

Then—

“Do you want me to kill momma?”

I remember her saying it so sing-song, so quietly at the time.

“No.”

“What if i just made momma really really quiet?”

I didn't respond.

“And really really still?”

I didn't respond.

“And what if momma was just always lying down?”

...

"Maybe, once we're done, we can put momma under the bed? She could live there? And you could visit her anytime?"

"No."

"What about in the forest? Under the trees, in the bushes?"

"No."

And then, an air of personality to the voice I couldn't place. The illusion of anger, but something else underneath it.

"Sounds like you wanna stay with momma. She's a good momma."

I lied to the scary thing on the other side of the door. "Yeah."

The door opened and mom was there. "Baby," she said, voice returning to her original tone.

I didn't say anything.

She came close and hugged me tight.

"I'm so glad you passed the test baby. I'm so, so, so, glad you passed the test. You're so special. You're so, so special to me."

After three minutes of her hugging me—minutes that stretched longer and longer with each tick, as I feared she'd never let me go—I asked:

"What would've happened if I said yes? If I didn't pass the test?"

"We don't need to worry about that anymore sweetheart. We don't need to worry about that."