The kitchen smelled of cinnamon and burnt toast.
William froze in the doorway, his Macuahuitl slipping from numb fingers. The linoleum floor gleamed under fluorescent lights. A coffee pot gurgled on the counter.
And at the table.
"Mom?"
She turned, her floral apron stained with pancake batter. "There you are, sweetheart." Her voice was exactly as he remembered warm with that slight rasp from thirty years of smoking. "I made your favorite." She pushed a plate of blueberry pancakes toward him, the syrup pooling golden between the berries.
William's throat closed. His fingers twitched toward the fork. "This isn't real."
"Of course it is." She smiled, the crow's feet around her eyes crinkling in that particular way they did when she was about to tease him. "When have my pancakes ever not been real? Sit. Eat. You look half-starved."
The chair creaked under him the same uneven one Dad had never fixed. The vinyl seat stuck to his thighs. The syrup smelled impossibly sweet, like childhood summers.
"Tell me about your trip," she said, pouring orange juice into his favorite Superman glass the one he'd broken when he was twelve and she'd glued back together. "You've been gone so long."
William stared at his hands. The scars. The blood under his nails no amount of scrubbing could remove. "It's... not a good story."
She reached across the table. Her skin was warm, her nails short and unpolished like always. "Try me."
And like a dam breaking, he told her.
About waking up in that black room. About the Catalyst's voice in his head. About Max how his screams still echoed in William's dreams.
His mother listened, stirring her coffee with that little silver spoon from Grandma's set. The clock on the wall ticked. The refrigerator hummed.
When he got to the jail, to the prisoners, his voice cracked. "I was so hungry, Mom. You don't understand what it's like"
"I do," she said softly. "I know what hunger does to a person."
William flinched. His mother had worked three jobs when Dad left. There'd been months when dinner was ketchup soup and saltines.
"It's not the same," he whispered.
"Isn't it?" She took a sip of coffee. "Hunger's hunger, Willie. The body does what it must to survive."
The childhood nickname sent a spike through his chest. His mother never called him Willie. Hated the name. Said it sounded like a stray dog.
"You always were too hard on yourself," she continued, tapping the spoon against the rim. A drop of coffee landed on the table, black as oil. "So what if you ate a few people? They were probably sinners anyway."
The spoon clinked once. Twice.
William went very still. His mother went to church every Sunday. Volunteered at the soup kitchen. The woman who'd once grounded him for stealing a candy bar wouldn't call anyone a sinner.
"You're not my mom."
The thing wearing his mother's face sighed. "No. But I could be." Its voice rippled, layers peeling back to something slick and ancient. "Wouldn't it be easier? To come home? To be loved?"
The pancakes on his plate writhed. Blueberries split open into tiny, toothless mouths.
William stood so fast the chair toppled. "Who are you?"
The lights flickered. The thing patted its lips with a napkin, leaving smears of black oil.
"What's left when even God turns away," it said pleasantly. "The arms that will always welcome you home."
The kitchen dissolved into rot.
William woke up screaming.