Velvet

When I was a kid, I could never wake up unless my mother sang “How much is that doggy in the window?” and let me have half a cup of coffee, black, no sugar or cream. I’d spit the coffee out and ask her to quit singing, but it was the only thing that woke me up. She tried other songs and cold water and yelling, but nothing else could wake me.

One morning, the neighborhood kids were playing hide and seek, running around the big wooden fence behind our house. I ran straight into Bradley, the boy that lives cattycorner behind us. We smacked head-on into each other, both of us in a full sprint. He ran home, I screamed, and my mother carried me into the house. A bump the size of a baseball swelled on my head, red and purple.

“You can’t fall asleep,” she told me as I sat back on the couch. “You might have a concussion.”

“What’s a concussion?” I asked, digging my feet under the couch cushion and leaning forward to prop my head on my knees. The material under the couch cushion was smooth and velvety. I ran my toes along its loose edges and stuck my feet further under the cushion until the material worked its way between each of my toes.

“Wake up,” my mother told me.

“I’m not asleep,” I said, sitting up and looking at her. She has a bulbous sort of face, like a potato that grew every way it could, bulging out in a series of lumps. Her face got closer and she started shaking me. I could feel it rattle me all the way down my spine, along my arms and to my feet, which were still tucked under the velvety material.

“Stop,” I told her.

She started singing “How much is that doggie in the window?” Her voice was higher than usual and she was singing way too fast, off tempo.

“Don’t sing,” I said. “I’ll stay awake.”

The velvet material was trying to swallow my feet, drinking them up, slick like watery quicksand. It was smothering my pores so no air could get inside.

Momma kept singing that song, her voice coming out in quick bursts, like barking.

“My feet can’t breathe,” I told her.

She got up and went to the kitchen, but didn’t quit singing. All that time she kept barking out the song, until she came back with a hot cup of coffee. She cupped my hands around it, nearly burning me and tried to force my head forward.

“It’s old,” I said. “It’s from this morning.”

The cushion kept climbing up over me, swinging itself back and forth like it was walking. The velvet surfaced tried to drag me further into the couch.

“It’s sucking me in,” I told her, but she didn’t care. She kept singing that song and holding the cup up to my lips, but I couldn’t drink it. The velvet was pulling me so hard, it took my socks off, swallowing them completely.

“Arf, arf,” Momma said.

I tried to pull myself free, holding onto the arm of the couch and twisting my body around, but Momma kept popping my hands so I had to let go.

“Stop,” I said, but it was like I was talking under water, almost fully immersed in the velvet. Somehow the velvet had filled up the inside of my head and my throat so that I could barely squeak out words.

“Arf, arf,” Momma said again and then she bent down on all fours to stare into my face. Her eyes got deeper and darker and her tongue lolled out the side of her mouth. Her golden hair grew down the edges of her face and along her back until she had a shiny yellow mane, like a golden retriever.

The couch kept sucking me in while she licked my face. The last thing I saw was her glistening pink tongue before the couch finished engulfing me.

The couch isn’t so bad, really. It’s dark and cool and soothing, like water lapping at a beach shore. The only problem is that Momma keeps digging at the cushion and jabbing me with her front paws.

“Stop,” I tell her in my watery velvet voice, but she thrusts her wet nose down into the couch. I pop her and she whimpers and shirks away.

I turn over and over and over in the smooth velvet until it is wrapped around my whole body and it’s all I can feel. Velvet, over and over and over.