It was nearly midnight when Judy Stevens re-entered the dimly lit kitchen and made eye contact with her son for the first time since that morning as he sat cross-legged on the table in waiting.

            The silence between them was deafening.  At last, Judy uncrossed her arms and, with index finger extended, reached down toward the table with her right hand, gently grazing under Scott’s chin with her fingertip, forcing his chin to tilt up even more.

            “Hi, honey,” she stated sweetly.  “I guess we should have a little talk, shouldn’t we?”

            “Maybe,” Scott drawled, trying not to let the coldness through.

            “Well, let’s go get comfortable, then,” she sighed.  Clasping her palm to her son’s chest and wrapping her fingers around his sides, she plucked him like a doll from the table and strode nonchalantly into the living room.  Though her hand remained motionless as it gripped him with complete security, Scott noticed that his mother wasn’t bothering with the courtesy of hugging him into a cozier cradle, instead allowing his legs to dangle awkwardly over the drop and kick occasionally at her thigh.

            As he mentally prepared himself for the second difficult conversation of his evening on this couch, out of the corner of his eye, he could see the PMRD resting idly in its case on the coffee table.

            Judy lowered herself into the deep cushions.  She leaned casually into the pillows, draping her free arm over the back and propping both feet up next to the PMRD.  At last, she deposited her son onto her right knee as it crossed over her left, allowing him the highest perch available.  Her other arm followed suit as she allowed herself to recline smugly like a warlord on a throne of slaughtered foes.

            The bitter standoff continued silently for another minute.  Judy’s lips were pursed tightly as she studied Scott, who bit his tongue and clenched his hands together to keep them from shaking as he sat atop his mother’s warm skin.

            “You must hate me,” the woman breathed at last with a tilt of her head that allowed several strands of her blonde hair to cascade over her eye.  “Don’t you?”

            Scott felt a scowl welling in his throat, but he willed himself to keep it bottled up.  He’d convinced himself earlier to show some restraint for the sake of his newfound rigor, thanks in no small part to Ella’s encouragement, and he’d be damned if he was going to just give in and provide his mother with more ammunition.

            “You might as well be honest with me now, Scott,” she suggested.  “Because that’s what I’m going to do for you.”

            “I doesn’t really matter how I feel about you, Mom.  Or any of this.  Does it?” Scott countered frigidly.

            “It does to me.”

            “Okay.  So I hate you,” he snarled, realizing that she’d already decided what his opinion was.  He noticed a visible flinch in his mother’s composure.  “Happy?”

            “No, but I wouldn’t have expected anything less,” she declared at length, after closing her eyes for several moments in reflection.  “I think I’d hate me too if I was in your position.”

            “That’s comforting,” Scott offered.

            “I’m sure you aren’t feeling much goodwill toward Nancy, either, after today.”

            Flinching at the mention of the woman’s name, Scott had to pause in his state of barely quelled indignation to let his brow bend into a frown.

            How would Judy have even known?

            “Right.  Goodwill,” Scott said with a defeatist chuckle and a disbelieving shake of his head.  “You know she forced my head inside herself, right?”
            “I know, honey, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to put a stop to it,” Judy commented softly, her expression virtually unchanged at this recognition.  Her words rang genuinely, and she had indeed been true to her word last time she made such a promise, but her irises displayed no additional spark of compassion.  She was a monolith.  “I’m going to have a talk with her tomorrow and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

            “Okay.”

            “So you can be honest about her, too.”

            “Okay, sure then, I hate her too.”

            “I don’t blame you for feeling that way.  There do need to be boundaries, even with your work here,” Judy insisted.  “I think we can work things out to everyone’s satisfaction.”

            Work things out.

            That seemed like a longer shot than Scott jumping up and touching the ceiling at his current height.  Even if Nancy never laid a finger on him again, it wasn’t going to do a damn thing about the memory of it, as well as this whole wretched day.

            Still, Judy had found out somehow, and he had a feeling that Nancy hadn’t bragged about it to her.

            How?

            “I guess it won’t make any difference to say that I still love you just the same,” Judy offered.  “Or that I’m sorry if you’re unhappy with how things are now.”

            “I thought you said you wanted honesty now.”

            “I do.  And that’s the truth.  I still have your best interests at heart, like I always have.  What I’m doing for you doesn’t change the fact that you’re my son, and my greatest concern is your wellbeing.”

            “What you’re doing… for me?” Scott choked, already feeling his raw eyes flooding with angry tears.  “Mom.  You told the whole city and anybody else who was listening that you’re going to fight to keep everyone like me small… forever.  How am I supposed to feel about that?”

            “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the good of what I’m doing,” Judy said with a slight shrug, adopting a less apologetic tone now.  “You’re still just practically a child.”

            “I am not still a kid, Mom,” he spat indignantly.  “I know you’ve looked at me that way since you could start choosing how tall I am whenever the hell you want, but it doesn’t change that I’m my own person.  Was my own person, until all of your legal bullshit took it away.”

            “That legal bullshit is the only reason you’re not locked away in a prison cell right now, honey,” Judy said coolly.  “Did you forget that I did that for you, too?”

            “No, I didn’t.  And maybe it was still what I wanted.  But… but not with this, too.  Not when you’re trying to take away my right to live,” Scott hacked with agonizing clarity, his limbs trembling from the adrenaline of airing his grievances so blatantly.  “So maybe I was better off without your help and just going in a cell for a few years.”

            “If that’s how you feel, then maybe there’s something else I need to make you understand,” his mother sighed, at last lifting her long arms off the back of the couch.  Without warning, the fingers of her gigantic right hand curled into a claw and she snatched Scott by the shirt, dragging him along her firm thigh and lifting her hand closer to her face until he was forced to stand on his tiptoes against the surface of her shirt to avoid dangling.

            “You’re going to want to listen close to this, sweetie, because it’s important,” Judy said as she gazed unblinkingly into her son’s eyes while he struggled against her massive clenched fingers directly under his nose, her fist the same width as his chest.  “This thing that I’ve started?  That I’ve gotten so many people to support now?  Whether you agree with it or not, it’s going forward.  We’re going to make the people understand what this country needs, and soon, everyone who chose the way of harming American citizens is going to be permanently taken down to this level, where they belong.”

            Scott grunted, his chest heaving with acidic rage.

            “So what you need to start learning is that the options were never to become mommy’s little boy again, or go behind bars.  They were to become my little boy again, or become a little prisoner in a box on a shelf, like some zoo exhibit.  Is that really what you wanted?”

            Fuming now and practically imploding at his own powerlessness, both in Judy’s literal grip and in her authority, Scott vengefully grasped one of his mother’s curled iron fingers in each of his fists and locked eyes with her again.

            Staring into her irises gave Scott worse chills under his skin than the most extreme PMRD readjustment.  Far more frightening than raving madness, there was a sincere honesty in her eyes.  He could see it.

            She believed every word she had been saying all day about consequences and human rights.  There was nothing about her power play that was grounded in her intense desire for control, present though it was.  This was well beyond that.  This wasn’t just a political mission.  This was his mother’s religion, pure and unadulterated.  Her reason for living.

            “Well, is it?” she repeated.  She drew her hand closer toward her face until Scott’s legs were left kicking in the air again and his head was an inch away from her cushioned lips as they expelled muggy air stickily against his face with each syllable.

            “I don’t think I know anymore,” Scott whispered defiantly, though his words were true.

            “Aww, honey, you’re going hurt my feelings,” Judy responded with far more tenderness than the young man knew was actually swelled inside her.  Puckering up, she planted a soft peck on her son’s face with a moist smack, then went in for a second, this time practically enveloping his head back between her wet lips on a satisfied inhalation.

            Scott’s heart fluttered painfully in memory of several days before, when he’d found himself inside his mother’s mouth at a twelfth of this size, but he managed to keep it together as Judy pulled his saliva-drenched head back out again.

            “I guess there’s a lot of that going around lately,” Scott said with a swallow, and did his best not to cough humiliatingly from the few bitingly flavorful dribbles of stray saliva that had worked their way into his nostrils and throat from the kiss.

            A smirk cracking over her lips, Judy snickered and shook her head piteously.

            “I do appreciate you sticking with this honesty policy, honey,” she said genuinely.  “So as long as you are, I might as well do the same for you.”

            “Okay.”

            “Everything I’ve ever done was to ensure you grow up healthy and productive.  I tried when you were younger to steer you right, but again and again you defied me, fought me every step of the way.  You proved that you simply weren’t capable of it, and you’re obviously still having a hard time seeing the bigger picture now.  Your purpose is and always was to be a servant of the values I raised you on.  And I think, with time, you’ll begin to understand that being back where I can keep your life on track for you is the best thing for everyone.”

            “Wanna bet?” Scott hissed challengingly.

            “No, not particularly.  Because do you want to know something else?” Judy posed casually.  “Whether you learn to like it or not, you’re here for the long haul: in my house, under my roof, under my rules…”

            Before he knew it, Scott was being thrust away from his mother’s lips and toward the floor between her legs.  She pinned him by his shoulders with her powerful fingers, forcing him to stare up at what he knew was coming before his back even hit the carpet.

            Her right foot descended immediately from the coffee table, her toes wriggling above his face and her peachy, crinkled sole hovering ominously above him before planting itself onto his body, burying him beneath its heat and weight with a loud grunt automatically coaxed from Scott’s lips.  The doughy heft of the ball of her foot pivoted ferociously against his chest, cementing its absolute dominance in motion and might.

            “…as well as anything else I happen to want you under,” Judy simpered, scrunching her toes aggressively against Scott’s face and pinching his cheeks stingingly between the fleshy folds.  “The time has come for you to make a couple important decisions, honey.”