“You know how mothers are. She just kept pushing. I'd say ‘Fine, mom. Be a wh^re. Be a drunken wh^re even. But don't be a NAGGING drunken wh^re. Don't come yell at me to do the dishes when you've been banging a clown in the next room!’ You know?”

The boy began to laugh. At first it was low, menacing, and a tad scary then it grew. It grew into this unhinged sort of cackle as he looked to the old man sitting next to him. Rage and disgust painting his face. No longer the boy that the elderly blind medium had once treated so fondly.