https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/11f5iws/heritage_the_broken_boy/

I was sitting in a comfortable chair playing Star Fox with a bowl of cheetos sitting on a small end table that was next to the chair. I was tired and I knew that I needed to go to sleep, but I was playing a video game. It might be the last time I ever got to play one for all I knew. I wasn’t going to miss out.

Everything was perfect except for the family who was sitting down to dinner in the same room. The chewing noises were getting so loud that I turned up the television as far as it could go, but it still wasn’t enough to drown out the chewing and the slurping. I looked over to Tommy.

“Dude!”

“What?!” Tommy pulled his cracked face away from his meal.

“Can you guys please be quiet?! I’m trying to play the game! Shit!”

“Well I’m starving! Sorry!” Tommy turned back to his food and continued to ravenously inhale his meal. The chewing was all around me now. It was impossible to enjoy the game. I paused it and looked over.

Tommy and both of his parents were only halfway through their dinner. The remaining pieces of Phillip, Cody, and Chris were in a pile on the floor. It started making me hungry. I crouched next to Tommy and I began to eat.

I woke up from the dream in a small hotel room on a crusty bed with soiled sheets. My mother was worried about me. It had been a long time since I had been allowed to sleep on a bed. Sleeping on a bed was bad because that’s where someone would expect you to be in the middle of the night. The floor was better. Safer.

My mother was on the other end of the room hanging her hand out of an open window having a cigarette. She was talking to herself, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.

I knew right then that she thought she had made a mistake with this new town; she only ever talked to herself when she was really nervous. I had made a mistake in the church.

My stomach was in knots. It was reacting to the smells of the hotel room. There was a strange earthy smell; a fungal-like scent that was both rotten and yet strangely alive and vibrant that made the air thick and hard to breathe. But there was another smell, a lovely smell that was making my insides scream.

On a small table was a clear glass pan and it was steaming. I ignored the obvious signs that something was terribly wrong with this new place in favor of the food. I jumped off of the bed and ran over to the pan. Cheesy biscuits were poofing their way over the sides of the pan and I dug my fingers in it to scoop some into my mouth. Underneath those heavenly biscuits was a mixture of sweet beans and ground beef. My hand was already going back for more when I realized that there were a couple of paper plates and plastic utensils on the table as well.

Once I had completely filled my mouth, I looked around the room. A television, a love seat, a table with two chairs, a small fridge, and the crusty bed. There was a door that led into a shower and toilet.

The walls and ceiling looked like they were stained with the age of a hundred years and a putrid fungus was growing through numerous cracks in the walls.

Every surface had a slick sheen of a mucus-like film over it and there were crunchy things hidden in the worn shag carpet. The bed I had been sleeping on was covered in a mold or moss that I had never seen before, but the gnawing pain in my stomach made me reach for more of the casserole in spite of the nasty apartment.

I had already shoveled the third handful into my mouth when my mother put out her cigarette.

“Doc…Doc! Go wash your hands. You can get a plate and a fork. We’re not animals.”

“Mom, this place is disgusting.”

“Don’t talk with a mouthful. I know it's small…”

“No, it’s gross. Look at it.” My mom furrowed her brow and looked around the room. She rolled her eyes back to me and pointed to the bathroom.

“It’s just an old hotel, go wash your hands.”

I walked over and turned the knob on the grimy sink and a spurt of liquid rust shot out for a few seconds before it turned clear. The bathroom was even more disgusting than the hotel room.

“Use the soap please.”

“It’s gross.”

“It’s soap. Use it.” I looked down at the bar of soap in the little dish next to the sink. It was covered in an orange film and hair, and it bore the wounds of someone trying to squeeze the life out of it. I just stared at it, not wanting to pick it up. My mother looked in and saw me just staring down like a moron.

“Oh for God’s sake!” My mother walked in and grabbed the soap and rubbed it all over my hands. It was greasy and some of it broke off in muculent chunks between my fingers as my mother forcefully rubbed it against my skin. It looked like I had shoved my hands into a rotten pumpkin before she rinsed it off.

When she was done, she used a ragged towel that she grabbed from a hook on the wall and dried my hands. She walked over to the table and scooped hefty piles of the casserole onto both plates. I walked out of the bathroom and just stared at the walls.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice startled me, and I snapped my eyes up to hers.

She didn’t see it. My mother had always insisted on everything being very clean, even my midnight emergency buckets, and it surprised me that she was ok in that room. But then I realized that she didn’t see any of it.

It was then that I knew that whatever delusions and sickness my mother suffered from, I must be suffering from something far worse. I had already seen what her sickness had caused her to do, and I was terrified at what mine could do to me.

“Nothing. The soap just stinks, that’s all.”

“Come sit down. Enjoy it while you can.” She turned her face down to her plate and began shoving food into her mouth. “This is so good. One of the ladies from the church brought it over.” It was the first time I had heard my mother sound happy in a while. I sat down at the table and started to eat.

“We can’t stay here. At most, I’m thinking three days. I told them that your father is abusive and I’m trying to get to my parents in Boston. So we’ll make sure we go southwest. You want a coke?” I nodded.

She reached over and opened the fridge. The inside was filthy, but the can was clean.

“I want you to stay in this room. You are not to go outside under any circumstances, do you understand?”

“What if there’s a fire?”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

“Ok.”

“We may even leave tonight if I can get some money together.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“You let me worry about that. You should slow down a little bit. Everything on your plate is dead, it’s not going to run away from you.” I just kept stuffing my face as fast as I could. My stomach was starting to feel hard.

“You want to tell me what happened in that church?” I ignored the question at first. “Doc?”

“Nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing. Did you see something? You looked like you were scared.”

“I just…I…”

“It's ok to tell me. Did you see something in there?” Her eyes were pleading. For the first time my mother was asking me a question as an equal, but I didn’t recognize it at the time. I was only twelve.

I think she was desperately hoping that I could confirm something she may have seen. Desperately hoping for the first time in her life that someone else didn’t think she was crazy. I don’t like to think about that moment very much, because I know now that she thought she might not be alone after all. Maybe I could have given her a little peace of mind. If I had thought that back then, I may have answered her differently.

“I…I was just thinking of my friends and I remembered how they looked when…when we left.” My excuse had the effect I wanted. She quit talking about it. Both of us finished that entire casserole. My stomach was huge.

“Honey?”

“What?”

“You need to go do it.”

“Mom…”

“I’m sorry, but you have to. We have to keep up appearances.”

“Can I just wait a little bit longer?”

“No. I’m glad you got to enjoy it while you could, but it’s time. Sometimes we have to suffer to make our way in the world. You can have some tuna in just a little bit.” I sulked my way into the bathroom and stuck my finger down my throat until all of that wonderful stuff had come back up and plopped into the toilet.

I hated being Disease Boy. I hated having to stay skinny and hungry all of the time. As sad as it sounds, I thought at the time that my mother wasn’t completely cruel. At least she had allowed me to enjoy the taste of everything, even though keeping it down wasn’t an option.

It was getting close to dusk when I walked out of the hotel. I had been looking out of the window at the playground and the park just across the street for over an hour. There were a few families out there and a bunch of kids were playing. They were all real people.

The playground had a jungle gym, two of those metal animals that bobbed back and forth on a giant spring, and a large wooden structure with some slides, poles, and a swaying bridge.

My mother had been gone for two hours and I was bored. I was afraid of going anywhere near any other kids after what had happened, but I reasoned to myself that my mother wouldn’t do anything to anyone out in public. All of the people out there were normal. Those kids and their parents would be safe. If I were to go play for a little while, it would probably be ok. I may be yelled at for it later, but I figured that life couldn’t get much worse.

According to an old rusty plaque, the park was the town square, and as I walked through it up to the playground, I realized that it was surrounded on all four sides with old fashioned buildings that looked like the pictures of Main Street in Disneyland that I had stared at with my mother for hours on end. One of my mothers only possessions was a picture book about Disneyland. It’s the only thing I still have from her.

I climbed up a slide on the wooden structure and went to the swaying bridge. I stood right in the middle of it and made it swing back and forth as far as it would go.

All the parents in the park were looking at me, and within a few minutes, they had all packed up and called their children away. It was a small town and I was sure that word had spread about my mother and her screaming freak of a son. I was the weird kid after all.

I had my back to our hotel while I sat alone on the bridge and watched the sun go down behind the old buildings. It was getting cold and I knew it was time to head back to the hotel. I hadn’t been caught yet. I figured that I could get back and my mother wouldn’t have to know a thing.

Before I could stand up, I noticed a sheriff's car cruise down the street in front of me. The man inside looked toward me. I stayed calm, got to my feet and hopped down into the sand under the structure. I tried my best not to act suspicious.

I turned around to walk back to the hotel and saw that a large pretender dressed in a sheriff's uniform was walking towards me through the empty park. His eyes were glowing yellowish green in the fading light, and he was smiling. I knew if I ran, he’d catch me. All I could do was just watch him walk up to me and try not to shake at the sight of him.

“Hey there young man! How are you this evening?”

“I’m good sir.”

“Gettin’ a little cold out here, isn’t it?”

“Yes sir.”

“You out here by yourself?” He looked around. I had to breathe through my mouth because he smelled so bad. The front of his uniform was covered in a series of glazed stains and they glistened in the light from the lamps in the park.

“I’m staying at the hotel with my mother. She knows I’m out here.”

“Oh, that’s good.” He stopped just a few feet in front of me. “It’s a safe town, but you know, kids still shouldn’t be out by themselves after dark.” He licked his lips with a tongue that was riddled with rancid pustules. Patches of hair were missing from his head and veins were pulsating near his temples. The cracks all over his skin were moist. They looked like fresh gaping wounds.

“Ok. Well, I’ll go back to the hotel then.”

“Well hold on there skipper. Why don’t you take a walk with me?”

“My mom says I’m not supposed to take walks with strangers.” He laughed and then began to cough. He horked up a fleshy bit of matter and spat it to the ground. The glob began to writhe in the sand. I tried to ignore it.

“Son, I’m a Sheriff's deputy.” The thing he spat up began to squirm through the sand toward me.

“You’re still a stranger though.” Behind him, I could see that another deputy had walked inside the hotel with his gun drawn.

“What’s your name son?”

“Peter.” I started to look around the square and I saw that my mother was coming down the street and parking in front of the hotel. The wriggling mass on the ground was now covered in sand and it was getting closer.

“Well Peter. I think you need to come with me anyway. I think you and your mother need to answer some questions.” I started to shake and his skins began to flutter. The squirming thing was inches away from my foot. “There’s no reason to be scared, son. We just want to talk.”

The slimy sandy thing was climbing up the front of my shoe and I screamed and kicked it off. The sudden movement caused the deputy to put his hand on the butt of his pistol.

“Alright now son, it’s obvious you’re a little touched, so I’m gonna be clear here. I’m not gonna shoot ya, but I will sure as hell pistol whip the shit out of you if I have to. Turn around and put your hands behind your back. Do it now!” He started breathing hard and he smiled at me with brown teeth. I slowly turned around and started to cry. I felt the handcuffs bite into my skin, and he spun me around. “Maybe your momma will go as quiet as you. Of course, after what she did to those kids and their folks, I hope she doesn’t.”

He laughed and then started to choke again. Another pulpy mess flew out of his mouth and splattered against my chest. I started screaming for help. I started screaming about a monster with cracked skin. His smile left and he jerked me toward him and his rancid breath.

“What did you just say?!” He knew. He knew I could see him.

Two gunshots rang out from the hotel.

“Shit!” The deputy grabbed me by the neck, spun me around, and pushed me forward, toward the hotel. “MOVE! Faster you little piece of shit!”

He had drawn his pistol and was pointing it toward the hotel. He pushed me toward a lamp post and hooked my arms around it.

“When I get done with your mother, you and me are gonna have a little talk.” When he had ressecured the handcuffs, he ran into the hotel. Just after he went inside, I heard another couple of gunshots, and then he stumbled back outside. He was trying to cradle his own guts, but they were slipping out of his stomach and through his arms. He fell to his knees just as my mother ran out of the hotel holding a gun in one hand and a bloody knife in the other. She held up a pistol and shot him in the head twice before she ran over to me.

When she had freed me from the handcuffs, we ran back to the car and drove off.

We were just out of town when I noticed that my mother was swerving the car. I looked over to her. Her stomach was soaked in blood and her hair was matted to her head.

“Mom!”

“It’s ok Doc, I’m ok!”

“Mom, you’re bleeding!” I pressed down on her gunshot wound and she wailed in pain.

“I’ll be ok. It’s alright.” Her head started to bob. I needed to keep her awake somehow.

“I saw them mom! I saw them! Tommy, his parents, the guy at the gas station and all the people at the church. They weren’t people. They were things.” She started to smile.

“We’ve got to hide…we’ve got to…” Her head fell and I reached for the wheel, but it was too late. The car ran off the side of the road and flipped over.

When the other deputies and the ambulance came, I had already managed to free myself from the seatbelt and was trying to help my mother. There was so much blood. I never told anyone what I saw that night. I had to keep it all a secret.

I wasn’t allowed to see my mother again after that night. Two days after that, I finally met the rest of my family, and everything about my world would change.