Monstrous Affections by David Nickle

of
bottled-up rage to get to Dad.
    So Shelly just watched as events unfolded.
    Mom’s fist tightened around the edge of the basin, and she
shifted her weight so she didn’t need the cane under her and could
lift it into the air so as to swing it. “I’ll give you a fuckin ’ state,” she
said in a low and terrible voice, finally turning her angry eyes to
focus right on Dad. The basin began to tip toward her under her
weight. Dad smiled, and the metal bonged again.
    There was a third bong, and it seemed as though Mom’s already-unsteady footing slipped, and the basin overturned. Mom yelped,
and tried to yank her hand away. Dad’s grin opened up into a toothy
smile, and he let the basin fall to the floor. Shelly shut her eyes as it
hit — thinking about all the tar inside it, and how it’d be to clean up
tar, how long it would take and what kinds of solvents she’d need to
do the job to Mom’s standards.
    But when she opened her eyes again, she saw there’d be no
need — the old shag carpet didn’t have a drop of tar on it, because
the tar baby was all over Mom.
    It had taken hold of her hand first — two twig-boned fists grasped
her fingers, and it must have used her fingers to swing on because
all of a sudden its skinny tar-black legs were wrapped around her
elbow. Mom was wearing a bright yellow tank-top, no sleeves, so it
hadn’t gotten on her clothes right at first. But as Mom reached over
with her free hand to try and yank the tar baby off, she pushed the
thing’s back against her chest, and that did it. She was a mess.
    Mom looked like a big bat as she lifted both arms away from her,
strands of tar making a web between them and her chest — where
the tar baby seemed to have fixed itself. “ Get it off! ” she hollered.
“ Get this fuckin’ thing off me! ”
    Dad was laughing so you could hear it now. He bent over and
slapped his blue-jeaned knee, and fell down to his knees and laughed
some more, shaking his head.
    “Look at that,” he said. “Damn me if it’s not suckling off you,
Mama!” And he howled.
    Sure enough, thought Shelly, it did look like the tar baby was
suckling. Somehow, it had managed to get turned around and now its
face — or at least the front of its head; the tar baby didn’t really have
a face — mashed into Mom’s left breast, like it was taking milk.
    With nothing there to hold it up, the tar baby started to peel away
from Mom’s tank-top; and for a second, as it turned first to face the
ceiling and then forward, Shelly thought she could make out a little
grinning face on the thing — mouth open, thin snot-strands of tar
between upper and lower jaw, and tiny little button-eyes, staring up
at Mom’s tit. But the face went away as the tar baby turned, and it was
just a mound of hardening tar again. Mom’d stopped hollering, and
she’d started to sob. Dad picked up the basin from where it’d fallen on
the floor, and held it under the tar baby. It fell into it with a bong.
    Everyone stood silent. Mom was covered in tar — somehow, it’d
gotten on her face and into her hair; it smeared down her shoulders
and onto her hands like lines of thick, black finger-paint. Mom
looked up at Blaine, and cleared her throat.
    “Blaine honey,” she said, voice calm and reasonable. “Fetch your
Mom her cane.”
    Blaine did as he was told, but when it came time to hand the cane
over, he didn’t get too close to Mom. Shelly didn’t blame him. Mom
took the cane, propped it against the floor and pushed herself to her
feet.
    “I’ll just put the baby in the basement then,” said Dad, to no one
in particular. He whistled as he carried the basin into the kitchen
and down the stairs.
    “You mean the tar baby,” said Shelly, but Dad was beyond
hearing.
    Dad drank beer from a bottle at the kitchen table, and Shelly sat with
him, sipping her Coke from the can. They didn’t speak at all while
the shower ran; Dad had just stared out the window into the dark
yard, drank his beer, and