It tore Beckah to bits when she woke up from the fairytale fantasy and learned that true love was a long shot gamble rather than a certainty and that she was not talented enough to do what she loved for a living, but each dawn she tried to begin afresh, to be a more polished version of herself, better, beyond reproach, perfect. That was until she met her mother at the breakfast table, who dashed her hopes on the rocks, leaving no doubt in her mind that everything she dreamt for was impossible.

Gladys Hofstadter, née Cummings, was a woman who practiced a lifetime of tiny deceits, petty deceptions, and random, unnecessary acts of selfishness which slowly inched her so far afield from the good person she foolishly imagined she was that she could no longer spot the path back to being a better or even halfway decent human being. And she made the decision that she wouldn’t remain lost by the wayside alone. After all, what use was it to have a daughter that didn’t share in her mother’s misery?

Text and Audio ©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys