Malthus The Beast

The tension in the air was so thick, Lacey Andrews felt as if she could could cut it with a knife. She sped down the dark highway, her daughter Helen in tow in the passenger seat. Neither of them had spoken in the last fifteen minutes.

It had been a chance tip from the mother of one of Helen’s friends that had lead Lacey to find the truth about her daughter. That Helen had lied to her about having a slumber party with some of her friends. That she was at a party in the woods, sucking face with some weirdo covered in tattoos and piercings.

At the time, Lacey had been mad. Now that things had cooled off, she just felt worried. Her baby girl was now eighteen - technically a grown woman. Still, she didn’t seem like that in Lacey’s eyes. To Lacey, Helen was still her darling daughter, apple of her eye.

Lacey glanced over at Helen and took a moment to really see her. Time had turned the cute little girl she remembered playing dress up with into a beautiful young woman. Helen wore her pretty brown hair short in a stylish and sleek cut. She had a delicate face with a button nose and piercing blue eyes. In many ways, Lacey and Helen looked similar, but Helen’s eyes were one way in which she stood out. Compared to Lacey’s own drab brown eyes, Helen’s were otherworldly and beautiful.

Lacey understood why boys were after Helen. Hadn’t it been the same way when she was younger? Beauty ran in the family, after all. Lacey just wished those boys could be sweet high school quarterbacks, not goth freakazoids.

“Are you going to talk to me?” Lacey asked.

“What’s there to talk about?” Helen responded, not bothering to look her mother in the eyes.

Anger flashed in Lacey’s heart. Was Helen really talking back to her now? After lying and betraying her trust? Nope. That was not happening.

“What’s there to talk about? How’s about that guy you were making out with? Why don’t we start there.”

Helen groaned in frustration and hurried her head in her arms.

“Oh my god mom, that was nothing.”

“Nothing? Nothing? You were kissing him pretty hard for him to be nothing.”

“He’s just a friend.”

“Oh that’s rich. Do you do that with all of your friends?”

Helen popped up, her crystal blue eyes burning with anger.

“Leave me alone! I’m an adult anyways. Why do you care what I do?”

Lacey felt her own anger fade as her daughter’s peaked. Helen had a point. She couldn’t protect her baby doll forever. Eventually, Helen would have to sink or swim.

“I just don’t want you to make a bad decision. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes your father and I made.”

“I can make my own decisions, mother.”

Lacey sighed. Mother. Helen had become fond of using that word against her, forming it into a verbal dagger to pierce Her heart with formality and coldness.

“I’m just worried about you, Helen. Can I be worried about you?”

Suddenly the look in Helen’s eyes turned from anger to complete bewilderment. With all her might, the girl screamed “Stop!”

“I’m your mother, I won’t stop worrying about—“

Helen cut her off.

“No Mom, Stop the car!!!!”

Now Lacey saw it. A hulking figure stood in the middle of the road on a collision course with her car.

Oh god, she thought.