Kaleidoscope Eyes, Part 7

KALEIDOSCOPE EYES

by uciboy

PART VII

When Mary awoke, she found herself tied to a chair and placed in her bedroom
closet.  All of the clothes had been removed and only the above light bulb
remained.  Within moments Kim entered the small space holding her pack of
Virginia Slims - and for the first time in a long time, Mary felt real fear.

"Kimmie, please untie me," she pleaded.  "Let me try and help you.  We still
may be able to find a cure to your mutation when your Dad comes home."

Kim looked patronizingly at her mother.  "It's not me who needs help, Mom,"
she replied earnestly.  "It's you.  I'm going to help you become a smoker."

"Honey," Mary said anxiously, "you know that's not possible.  The lab
accident had a different effect on me than it did you."  Kim pulled out a
cigarette.  "Kim, please don't light that, you know I'll become violently
ill."

"I have a theory Mom.  Would you like to hear it?"  Kim lit her cigarette and
drew hard on it.  "I believe," she continued, her words punctuated by puffs
of smoke, "that this mutation is in you, too, but it just needs to be
developed."

Mary could feel her stomach begin to churn as smoke filled the airspace of
the small closet.  "Please," she begged with tears in her eyes, "don't do
this."

"I love you, Mom."  

Mary watched her daughter hollow her cheeks in a deep puff and soon felt a
wave of smoke wash up against her face.  Immediately the coughing began.
God, forgive my daughter, she prayed, she's not in control of herself.  


Kim gently took hold of her mother's chin, bringing her lips to hers, and
blew a gust of smoke deep into Mary's lungs.  Mary couldn't hold down what
was churning in her stomach and she vomited into the towel that Kim had
placed on her lap.

"Obey the smoke," Kim urged, and she blew another stream into her mother's
face.  "Remember how good it used to feel when you and Dad both smoked so
many years ago?  You can bring back that feeling."

"No," Mary gasped, "it's not possible.  You have to stop this."

"I'm here to help you, Mom," Kim said as she wiped the vomit off her mother's
lips so that she could blow another gust of smoke into her lungs.

This went on for nearly two hours until Mary's vomiting was reduced to
dry-heaves.  Kim only stopped when her mother finally passed out from
exhaustion.

The next morning, Kim found her mother pale and dehydrated.  Only the support
of the ropes held her weakened body to the chair and her head hung loose.
"Kim," Mary pleaded, "you have...to stop this.  Please...untie me."

"Mom, I feel we're very close.  Your eyes are shining brighter today then
last night.  I really believe that we can accomplish this and allow the
mutation to flourish within you."

"Kim," her mother responded breathlessly, "I don't want it to."  She
struggled to raise her head and look into her daughter's kaleidoscope eyes.
"I don't want to smoke."

"But you will," Kim replied wickedly and lit a cigarette.  Again, the dry
heaves came as Kim worked to bring about a transformation from her mother's
own mutation.  She took heart after an hour at the fact that the dry-heaves
were occurring less frequently, and Mary was no longer coughing.  Kim felt
she was making real progress as she kept close watch on her mother's pupils
which continued to dilate.  But by the early afternoon, Kim had reached a
brick wall.  There appeared to be no further change in Mary, and Kim wondered
if any further efforts were useless.

And so she decided to stop.  She felt she had done all she could to help her
mother and didn't want to inflict any further suffering.  Her objective,
after all, was not to hurt her Mom, but to spark the transformation that
would allow her to understand life's pleasures in a new way.


Nearly unconscious, Mary only had a vague sense of what was now happening.
She felt the sensation of being lifted from the chair and placed into bed
where the covers were soft.  She could feel that her bloodstream and body
tissue were saturated with nicotine, and she wondered whether she would live
through the day.  She sensed her daughter's presence by her side, fingertips
touching her cheek and a soft voice saying, "I have to go now, Mom.  It's
time to fulfill my destiny."

And then the touch and the voice were gone.

________________________

The following Sunday morning, Mary stood washing a plate at the sink lost in
thought while her youngest daughter sat at the kitchen table completing some
homework.  It had been nearly a week since she had seen or heard from her
oldest daughter.  The last anyone saw of Kim was at St. Mary's on the
previous Tuesday afternoon when she arrived on campus to attend the meeting
of the No-Butts-Anti-Smoking Society.  Teachers were perplexed as to why a
majority of the members voted to disband the popular club, and administrators
have since expressed concern of an upward trend in youth smoking in the
all-girls school.

Mary suddenly heard the front door open and her husband, back from Taiwan,
call out, "I'm home.  Anybody here?"  Annie turned towards her mother who
walked calmly from the sink to the kitchen table.  "Mine or yours," Annie
asked.  

"We'll use mine, dear," Mary replied, and she lit a Saratoga Menthol 120 free
handed.  "It's stronger."

Annie watched her mother walk out of the kitchen and heard her say, "Welcome
home, Yao."

"Mary," her husband replied, "what's happened to your eyes?"

End

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