Sunday Brunch is a part of my short story collection, you can purchase on my Ko-fi shop or the physical books online.

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Sunday Brunch

A Short Story by Jona Nightingale 

There was blood in my mouth. 

Biles of mucus rose up my throar as I hacked and coughed up the thing scratching at my insides that I swallowed last night. In a frenzy of people and the belief that I was worth more than the disdain on my friends’ faces, I took one look at my girlfriend and swallowed a spider.

I wanted her to think of me as brave, but I was sure I looked like an idiot then. Between the spider and beers, she only stayed around long enough to see me home. Her face was probably still riddled with disappointment. I don’t blame her.

 Right now, I felt like death had taken one look at me and frowned. 

Not good enough to die and too stupid to live. 

The spider fell from my mouth in a cocoon of slime and alcohol that might have killed someone with a weaker liver. 

Then, as if not bothered by its visit to my internal world, it shook itself off and crawled away. My mouth hung open as I passed out for the second time today. 

I awoke to the sun dancing through the slits in the blind and my mother banging at the door. 

“Stevie!! You missed church again. Come down for lunch.” She spoke with the staunch resignation of a disappointed parent. 

It had been years since I had gone to church, maybe a little less than when I had lived with her.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I dragged myself off the floor and towards the bathroom. If I were presentable enough, then my mother wouldn’t stare at me with her dead eyes. 

As I washed my face and spit out the blood from my mouth, a small tooth fell into the sink with a plang sound. I should have been scared then, but I wasn’t. I was too focused on cleaning up the blood, so my mother would worry less about me and more about my father laying in bed drunk and delirious. 

Blood pooled in my mouth as I made my way down the stairs and locked eyes with my father. I had not seen the man sitting up straight in months, but here he was smiling. 

“Steven, it’s good to see you up.” His voice was a rusty umber and felt vaguely familiar, but I could not place where I had heard it before. 

My mother motioned me to sit and eat. 

Something itched at the back of my mind, something that didn’t seem right.

My parents did not say grace. 

They had spent the years since my inception drilling into me the benefits of the Baptist church and prayer. And yet here, with brunch between us, they simply ate as if it was normal to do so. 

The steady clank of utensils to plate rang out through the house as we ate silently. 

My parents were the talkative type; they hardly ever had a moment of silence with each other. 

Oftentimes, I grew up with the chatter of a thousand stories. My mother would talk to herself as she cooked dinner or each moment when she wasn’t talking to someone else. My father was the same, except he had been drunk for as long as I had known him. 

His drunken rambles were loud and chaotic, with broken bottles and a wife who took the brunt of all his hate. 

But here they sat in total quiet except for the sound of chewing. 

Blood mixed with sandwiches, and my tongue felt like leather against the roof of my mouth. 

Looking up from my food, I saw my father crying silently. Before I could say a word, my mother rose from the table with the clattering of her plate and left us without a word. 

Something felt wrong when my father smiled at me through his tears and spoke with the softest of voices, “Don’t mind her, she is having a moment.”

My father had never been a soft-spoken man, but as the blood dripped from my mouth, he was almost gentle. 

I shook my head and excused myself from the table, following my mother out of the room and down the hall to find her huddled in a small bundle of clothes, crying. 

Piles of clothes littered around her, blocking my path. Yesterday, before I had gone drinking, I was sure this room had been clean and untouched for years. 

Her shoulders shook as I watched her, the room was dim except for the light streaming through the blinds. 

My mother wailed, and I drew near her to comfort the woman who had grown me all these years. There was nothing but a mirage when I tried to touch her. 

The chambers of my heart collided, and I felt bile rise in my throat once more. My vision swam for the first time since waking up, and then like a bolt of lightning I remembered. 

I had buried my parents years ago; they had both died in this house from knife wounds. Tears filled my eyes as the taste of cobwebs lingered on my tongue. 

Staggering, I returned to the kitchen to see my teary-eyed father smiling at me. The sandwiches were still there, fresh and warm. There was only one plate with food on it, and it was mine. 

“Don’t mind us and eat. You look like you lost weight again.” My dead father watched me with caring eyes. 

I sat, sobbing and with the beginning of a headache. I ate my food, all three sandwiches, and the tea they had prepared. 

When I was finished eating, I excused myself from the table and fainted with blood streaming from my mouth and ears. 

At least, in my final moment, I got to see my parents again, even if it was only for Sunday brunch. 

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