Just Mac

"Hey, Mom."

The woman was tugging a particularly stubborn floral skirt from the bottom of the laundry basket when her son tapped her in the forearm.

His mother looked down, blinking back up at him through the slight fringe of her sleek brown hair. "What?" she turned her forearm around. "Is there something on my arm?" Losing her patience, she let it flail back down. "What game are you playing, mister?"

"Crap, sorry." Mac sighed, drawing his two fingers away from the bridge of his nose. "Supposed to be two."

"Mac, have you finished your homework?" As the woman chastised him, he tapped her in the forearm again, causing her to tsk. "Stop that. You were grounded for truancy, but if you want, we can add being a child to the list." Tap one. "If you want to change my mind, start by helping your brother clean out the garage."

Tap two.

"Mac!" The woman rose her voice with a dead glare. "I told you, enough! This is no time to be horsing around. You're one strike away from suspension, you know that? You should be reflecting. Reevaluating. Something."

Eyes widening, Mac seemed to be in his own world as he let down his hand, and brought up his other in its place.

"Mac," sighed the lady, her white blouse and yellow lounging skirt pressed flatteringly, if conservatively, against her form, "what are you even--"

Tap tap.

"--trying--"

Suddenly, the older lady stopped. Her face froze with a slight wrinkle, as if she had swallowed a bug. A gentle one. Maybe a ladybug.

Then, like a light passing through a window, the color returned to her eyes. Then cast another hard glare back upon her son as she whacked him with a towel.

"OW!" In clear frustration, Mac shouted to the sky. Ceiling. Close enough. "Why can't I get this shit to work!?"

"Watch your language." His mom returned to the basket. Finally, she was able to untangle the skirt, matting it across the rest of the pile of freshly dried clothes. "Though, of course, if you really want to use those kind of vulgarities..." She grabbed the basket, one stare enough to indicate that she wanted him to move. Instinctively, he did, and up the steps she wiggled. "...then please don't let me stop you."

Like lightning through a blue sky, Mac's dismayed expression instantly brightened.

"Wait." He spun on his heels. If he was actually wearing heels, they probably would've chipped off and tornadoed into a wall. "What did you say?!"

"Please, Mac, not right now." As Mac followed his mom out of the basement, she could feel the work fatigue setting into her bones again. Being a supervisor in a real estate office did those kind of things.

"Sorry. In fact, I'm so shittin' sorry!"

"Mac! Language!"

"But you just said to not let you stop me," Mac protested. He sidestepped a set of shelves, photos of their family in numerous settings on decadent display.

Another exasperated sigh left his mother's lips. Another wiggle up another set of stairs to go. "Yes, dear. I did."

Step step.

"So..." Step. "That sounds like that means this shit is perfectly fine to say to me!"

The older woman said nothing. Both of them continued down the hall to the master bedroom, where his parents slept.

"Oh shit..." Mac was murmuring to himself, really loudly. "Mom."

"Yes?"

"Un-ground me."

"Sure," she pulls up a pink, short sleeved tee and begins to fold it in neat, perfectly aligned sections. "Just don't get suspended so I don't regret it. Deal?"

"HO-HO-HO, no way!" Mac threw his hands atop the dresser, rattling the basket nutty. "I'm really not grounded, anymore? I can go to Six Flags?"

"Yes, Mac." The woman was nigh deadpan. "You can go to Six Flags."

"Spit on that bra! Shower that thang!"

After a window of seconds that almost caused Mac to shrink away, out of fear that maybe, in fact, the whole thing was not as abnormal as he'd presumed, maybe it was all incredibly convincing sarcasm, and that that was very much a line and he crossed the heck out of it, he noticed his mom's cheeks puffing. Then, rolling in and out. A sloshing sound was clearly present, as, suddenly, she opened her mouth, strings of saliva bridged the inner faces of her lips. Even crazier was the bubbly pool of liquid rolling across her tongue, which was then ejected.

Right. Onto. Her black, pink-bordered bra.

Some more seconds passed. This time, of complete bafflement.

"Um... Mom?"

"What is it, Mac?"

Pointer finger. "Wear that."

The woman looked at where he was pointing. It was the same bra she had showered in her spit. "Okay," she said. "Just give me one second to change."

A few moments later, his mom emerged from the bathroom, adjusting the straps of her bra through her clavicle-exposing blouse, a clear grimace on her face. "Mac? I think that's enough shenanigans for now. I got to sort through these clothes." Another hand went up to squish her left breast, presumably against her somewhat dank bra cup.

"...yeah." Mac shook his head, standing upright once more. "No problem, Mom." He shoved himself off the dresser, walking to the doorway. Once he was just a step away, however, a pause seemed to overtake his body. Then, he turned to his mom, still folding clothes. "If I said I wanted to enslave the world, get all the hottest women to fuck me, and be the master of your life and every other **** now a part of mine, you would do everything in your power to help me, right, Mom?"

Mac's mom stopped folding. She tilted her head up, and brushed a smattering of hair out of her eye. "All jokes aside, dear?" She looked down to the floor, then back. "I would ensure the whole world prostrated before your feet and devoted their lives to mantras about your beautiful form and wit, if I had the power to do that. You deserve it, after all. I know I could be hard on you sometimes, but... but I don't know. Suddenly, while taking the clothes out of the laundry downstairs, I just understood. You are my master and I will do everything you want me to do, no matter what it is. I... it's just natural."

"Would you kill yourself?" Mac ventured, eyes flitting to the side somewhat uncomfortably. Still, he had to ask. To know.

"Would you like me to kill myself, Mac? What with? A rope? A knife? Or maybe even by jumping off a building?" The woman was dead serious, even with that twinkle in her eye. At my silence, she continued. "Whatever the specifications -- yes. Yes, I'd do it without any regrets."

That's a bit intense. This **** chip...

This was not a joke. Not one bit.

"Why?" Leaning on the wall, Mac converged his eyebrows. "Because you love me?"

"I always loved you." She returned to folding. "Now, I simply don't care about what I feel as much as I used to. Your satisfaction, your contentment, as it pertains to who you are, right now," she explained matter-of-factly, "that's what's most important."

"...huh."

Another one of those silences followed. Then Mac pushed off. He let his mom tend to her daily errands like normal, for now.

A few minutes later, he was in the family's backyard, in their dumpy, rarely touched shed. But inside -- inside, it was Mac's Domain: a ghetto, DIY, still dumpy laboratory, scattered with a triage of monitors running proxy programs and emulative bots hooked up to metal, cylindrical devices and a whole assortment of miscellaneous shiskebobs. Meanwhile, a guttural emission shook the barely contained wooden block off the ground.

"THE REVERSAL MECHANISM, I FORGOT TO INSTALL THE REVERSAL MECHANISM, AGHHHG I'M SUCH AN IDIOT, DAD'S GOING TO KILL ME, ABBY'S GOING TO IMPALE MY ORGANS, I WILL NEVER SEE THE PEARLY GATES AT THIS RATE, DAMN YOOOU SAAATANN!"

And so, our predicated hero's story begins; a master of one.