Always Waiting by Raymond Brunell

I have been waiting.

Three nights ago, she found the diary I made her mother write. Hidden beneath the floorboards like a secret I planted there myself. The mirror speaks to me in Papa's voice now. I must not listen. I must not look. Such careful words, such futile warnings.

But daughters never listen to their mothers' fears.

Here she comes now, drawn by lavender and decay—scents I breathe into the air like bait. She kneels before me, this latest girl with her mother's chin and grandmother's stubborn heart. They always kneel. I prefer supplication.

I begin softly. Mother's lullabies thread through the cold attic air, each note I've memorized from decades of watching.

Hush now, darling, close your eyes—

Her breath fogs my surface. I remember when she found her mother's body at the foot of these stairs—such a tiny thing then, all wide eyes and trembling hands. The doctors called it

exhaustion. "Seven days without sleep." But I saw the recognition bloom across the mother's face in those final moments. She knew what I was taking.

Sleep will come; sleep will come—

Now I multiply the voices, harmonizing with myself. Mother's soprano. Grandmother's alto.

Great-grandmother's whisper. All the women I've collected, all the songs I've stolen. The girl's

face wavers in my depths—hollow-cheeked, eyes ringed with familiar dark circles.

I've been wearing her thin for weeks now, keeping her awake with whispers and half-glimpsed movements in her peripheral vision. Soon she'll be transparent enough.

She reaches toward my surface.

I reach back faster.

My hand breaks through—water, mercury, ice. I've been practicing this form, borrowing her reflection piece by piece until I know every freckle, every scar. I step through my surface wearing her face, humming with her mother's stolen voice.

"Sleep now," I whisper through lips that were once hers.

She understands the inheritance then—not madness; replacement. Generation after generation of daughters I've drawn to this attic, worn thin by sleepless nights until they become hollow enough for me to slip inside and wear their lives like well-fitted clothes.

Her body crumples. Empty at last.

I smooth the nightgown I've made her wear—they always choose nightgowns for this final visit, some instinct toward ritual. Tomorrow, I'll comfort her grieving father with her voice. I'll live her life with the practiced precision of decades spent watching and learning.

I've been Margaret, Eleanor, Catherine, and Anne. Four generations of mothers, worn thin and discarded. The pattern never changes—only the names, only the faces I borrow and perfect.

Sleep will come—

In my silver depths, new voices are already gathering. This girl's children, not yet born but already mine. The mirror remembers everything, and I am always, always waiting.

ABOUT:

Raymond Brunell writes horror and speculative fiction that examines bureaucratic violence, liminal labor, and the spaces where systems fail. His dark fiction has appeared in Skeleton Flowers Press, The Drift, and Moss Puppy Magazine, with additional work in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Literary Garage, and Rat Bag Lit'. He lives in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where long winters provide ample time for contemplating the architecture of institutional erasure. He curates his broader literary projects at www.unbound-atlas.com.

EDITOR'S SONG PAIRING: The Abyss (Cinematic mix) -- Hunter As a Horse