“When I was with my mother, I sometimes thought of myself of a trophy—something to be flaunted before friends. When out of public view, I sat on the shelf ignored and forgotten.”
― The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
The duality of narcissistic mothers
This post will talk about two short stories that actually take place right after each other. It was a decision I made only after I got done writing the first one. See, I wrote My Perfect Son after listening to the nonsense of a, particularly toxic parenting style. You know what I’m talking about. The type of parenting where a child is forced to do activities that the parents want so they can brag about it to other people. Worse yet, if the child fights back, they are disciplined for “not respecting them”. So, I wanted to explore that.
Oddly enough, or sadly enough depending on how you look, it wasn’t that hard to write the story as I had a lot of real-world inspiration to work with. All I had to do was listen to altercations between a teenager and their parents while taking mental notes of it all. Despite it being a common practice of mine, I admit it was a bit…intrusive for the most part. Nevertheless, I feel that it help make the story that much more real and terrifying. But, at this point, it’s pretty obvious that I couldn’t stop there. Haha!
I decided to take a page out of my favorite childhood anthology series, Goosebumps. Specifically, the episode called “The Perfect School”, where kids were forced into a school where they are trained to be perfect for their parents. Spoiler alert! The book is hella darker than the TV Show. It’s actually one of my favorite episodes of the series and I do plan on showing that to my students.
Anyway, I knew I wanted to add some science fiction element to the story so I decided to add something like that to the story. I’m not going to talk too much about it because it will go into spoiler territory but I will say it will bring about some heartbreaking endings for everybody in the two stories. However, I don’t fully go into it until Isn’t My Life, Isn’t It?, the second half of the two.
Let me just say. The second half was the darker of the two for me. I mean…both of them are pretty dark but I feel that the second one is much darker. Why? Because, with the right sequence of events, this future can become a reality and it scares me. I actually had to take a moment to myself to mentally recharge because, after writing it, I came to realize that I’ve made the vilest mother to date in my career. Trust me! I can outdo myself and I plan to in the near future.
Tell me which of the two short stories you like. I highly doubt this is going to be a favorite among a certain ethnicity of people but I hope it reaches the hearts and minds of many. And, with that, I hope you enjoy the story.
You can buy the book on Amazon. The link is here and here.
You can also learn about it on Goodreads. The link for it is here and here.
