My Mother Showed Up at My Apartment to Collect the Debt

People repeat that revenge is a poison swallowed by the one who exacts it. I was never that sure. What I lived through that night in my student apartment still haunts me, and not exactly as a punishment. It haunts me like a memory I can’t shake, even though years have passed.

I was twenty when Roxana showed up unannounced at my apartment door. I had been away from the village for two years, living in the city, trying to become an engineer on split shifts at a downtown pizzeria and all-nighters bent over my notes. The public university had taken me on with a short scholarship, and I clung to it like a lifeline.

My mother never fully approved of my leaving. She said the city would swallow me, that the women there weren’t fit to look after a man, that I’d come crawling back with my tail between my legs before Christmas. I answered in monosyllables over the phone and, little by little, I stopped calling.

That afternoon I climbed the four flights with my backpack on and found her on the landing, leaning against the wall, with two grocery bags at her feet and a smile that wasn’t just any mother’s smile.

—Look what fate brought me —she said, dropping the bags to open her arms.

Roxana had just turned forty. She had the suntanned skin of someone who spends her afternoons in the courtyard, jet-black hair cut in a pageboy style, and a body that was a minor legend in the village. Her breasts had never been her thing, but her waist narrowed like a caricature’s and her hips exploded into firm thighs and an ass people talked about in low voices.

—Mom, what are you doing here?

—What kind of question is that? —she replied, grabbing me by the neck with both hands to plant a long kiss on my forehead—. I came to see my son, to cook for him, to remind him he has a mother.

I let her in. The apartment was barely a living room with an open-plan kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a windowless bedroom. She looked everything over with her arms crossed, nodding like someone assessing land they were about to buy, and went into the kitchen.

—I’m going to make you meatloaf. Your favorite.

—I’m not hungry, Mom.

—You’ll be hungry when you smell it.

Ten minutes later she patted her pockets with an annoyed look.

—I forgot the tomatoes. Is there a supermarket nearby? I don’t know my way around these streets.

I went down without thinking. It took me twenty minutes to come back with the tomatoes and two beers she hadn’t asked me for. When I walked in, my mother was setting a small ceramic vase on the TV shelf, angling it so it pointed directly at the sofa.

—The living room looked so plain —she said without turning around—. I brought it from the village, so you’d have a bit of home here.

We ate at the low table because the other one was covered in folders. Roxana served two huge plates, uncorked a bottle of red wine she had also brought in the bag, and filled my glass before I could refuse.

—It’s delicious —I said, and it was true.

—If it’s so good, why didn’t you come to the village even once in two years?

I looked up. Her tone had changed.

—Mom, I explained it to you a thousand times. Work and school. My pay doesn’t stretch to the bus. I call when I can.

—When you can —she repeated, setting her cutlery down on the plate—. Do you know how many times you called me last year? Four. Four calls. Three of them less than a minute. The last one was to ask for the rice pudding recipe.

—Mom…

—No, let me finish. Your father left when you were eleven. Do you remember that? I broke my back so you could study. And you, as soon as you could, did exactly what he did. You left and never looked back.

That wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t a lie either.

—I came because I missed you —she said more softly—. But I also came to collect something from you, Damián. I’m not going to lie to you.

—I don’t know what you’re talking about.

—You will.

She stood up, leaned over the little table, and grabbed the back of my neck with spread fingers, like someone holding a pitcher. Her mouth fell on mine before I could pull away. It was not a mother’s kiss. It was a long, wet kiss, with her tongue going in where it had no business going, searching for my teeth, my tongue, the back of my palate, and it lasted long enough to cut off my breath. She sucked on my lower lip, bit it slowly, and pushed her tongue back in until I felt her saliva running from the corner of my mouth.

When she let me go, the plate had fallen to the floor and I had an absurd erection straining my jeans, so pronounced that she looked right at it without hiding anything, licked her lips, and ran a finger over the fabric.

—Look at that —she said softly—. My little boy’s hard cock. You weren’t ashamed to get it up like that for your mother, were you?

—What the fuck is wrong with you? —I managed to say.

—I’ve spent months thinking about how to make you pay for leaving me alone, son. And I decided the best way for you never to forget me is to give you something you can’t tell anyone about.

—You’re crazy.

—Maybe.

She took off her pants in one swift motion, without urgency, like someone taking off their shoes when they get home. She wasn’t wearing underwear. Her ass fell heavy into the living room air, round, marked, with the deep crease and her dark cunt already shiny between her thighs. I backed up to the sofa.

—Mom, no.

—Quiet.

I tried to get up and run for the door. She was faster. She caught my wrists, threw me onto the sofa with a strength I hadn’t known she had, and trapped my head between her thighs before I could stretch my legs out. I felt the pressure closing around my neck like a warm vise. Her perfume —coconut and something darker, more feminine— filled my nose along with the clean, sharp smell of her wet cunt, two fingers from my mouth.

—Mom, let me go —I gasped—. I can’t breathe.

—Do you realize? —she said, squeezing a little tighter—. That’s how I felt when months went by without hearing from you. Like I was short of breath.

—Please.

—I’ll let you go if you say something for me. Repeat it: “I belong to Mommy.”

—No.

She squeezed. The room began darkening at the edges. I hit her thigh with an open palm and she didn’t even budge.

—I belong to Mommy —I spat.

—Again.

—I belong to Mommy!

She loosened her grip. I gulped in air in big mouthfuls, my head still trapped between her legs, my cheeks wet without my having noticed. When I straightened up a little, she was already pushing me back down. Her hand grabbed my hair and drove my face against her parted cunt, with no transition, no permission.

—Stick out your tongue —she ordered.

—Mom…

—Not another word. Lick me. Lick your mother’s cunt, baby, that’s what I gave birth to you for.

I obeyed. I stuck out my tongue and buried it between my mother’s swollen lips, feeling the thick, warm, salty flow entering my mouth. She gave a short groan, almost a surprise sound, and pressed my face with both hands, rubbing herself up and down until her clit was caught against my tongue. There she stopped.

—There, my love. Right there. Lick slowly, no teeth, like you’re eating a candy.

I licked slowly. I sucked her clit as she asked, first with the tip of my tongue and then with my whole mouth, tugging gently, letting it swell between my lips. I felt her stomach tighten against my forehead, her thighs tense around my ears. Every so often she gave my hair a light yank and whispered that sluts obey, that sluts don’t think, that sluts know what their tongues are for. She made me go down to the entrance of her cunt and slip my tongue inside, fucking her with my mouth, until she was riding my face herself with no shame at all.

—Deeper. Deeper. Like that. Eat everything that comes out, don’t you dare spit anything.

I didn’t spit anything. I swallowed everything she gave off, with my nose pressed against her mound and the taste of her sweat flooding my mouth. Roxana rocked faster and faster, gripping my head with both hands, sighing as if she could finally breathe properly. When the first orgasm hit her, she squeezed my face so hard I thought I’d be smothered between her thighs, and she flooded my mouth with a thicker, hotter liquid that ran down my chin and stained the neck of my T-shirt.

—Swallow it. Swallow all of your mother.

I swallowed. I swallowed gagging and teary-eyed, but I swallowed. She stayed still above my face for a few seconds, breathing, and ran her fingers through my hair with absurd tenderness, as if she’d just combed me for school.

My head felt heavy and my cock was tight in my jeans to the point of pain. Something in me had broken without permission.

—Turn over —she said, panting.

***

What came after I remember in fragments, as if it had been someone else who was there.

Roxana sat on my face with all her weight, settling me against the backrest, and let me breathe between every rise. She made me kiss her whole ass slowly, marking each kiss with my tongue, from the small dimple at the base of her back to the fattest part of her cheeks. Then she spread my ass with both hands and made me lick her asshole.

—There too, son. Get it in there. No disgust. Tell your mother from the inside how much you missed her.

I shoved my tongue into her ass. I circled it, opened her up, made it wet enough until she writhed on top of me and called me a pig in a hoarse voice I hadn’t heard from her before. When she finished rubbing herself, she sat me back up with a shove and pulled my jeans down with the same calm she had used to take off hers. My cock sprang out hard, red, with a thick drop hanging from the tip. She looked at it, clicked her tongue, and without warning bent down to take it all the way into her throat.

—Fuck, Mom —I moaned without meaning to.

Roxana didn’t answer. She sucked me off completely, her eyes locked on mine, strings of saliva hanging thick from her chin. She pulled my cock out of her mouth, spat on it, swallowed it again, made my balls smack against her chin. When she thought it was wet enough, she straightened, looked at me with a calm that was frightening, and climbed on top of me astride.

—No condom —she said when she saw I was about to speak—. Sluts get fucked without condoms. And sons too.

She guided herself with her hand, set the tip of my cock against her parted cunt and dropped down in one stroke. I yelled. She laughed with her mouth open, threw her head back, and started moving violently on top of me, grabbing my face, giving me soft slaps between kisses, calling me things that in another life would have made me cry from rage and that night, for reasons I still don’t understand, made me grit my teeth and beg for more.

—Look at me, Damián. Look me in the eyes. This is your mother and she’s fucking you. Do you hear me? Your mother. The one who bathed you, the one who wiped your ass. Now she’s fucking you with her cunt. Repeat it.

—You’re fucking me, Mom.

—Harder.

—You’re fucking me with your cunt, Mom!

—That’s it, my love. That’s it.

I could hear her perfectly. I also felt perfectly how her cunt squeezed my cock from top to bottom, how the hot liquid dripped down the insides of her thighs to stain my groin, how every drop of her ass coming down against my balls made a wet smack that filled the entire living room.

Mom’s cunt is tighter than any other I tried in the city, I thought, and immediately hated myself for thinking it. And yet I said it out loud, because she yanked my hair and made me say it.

—Tell me how it feels. Tell me how your mother’s cunt feels.

—Tight. Yours is tight, Mom. Better than anyone’s.

—Better than the city sluts, right?

—Better.

—Good boy.

She spat in my mouth and kept riding me. Every time she felt I was about to come, she slowed down, grabbed my balls with one hand and squeezed them right to the edge of pain, forcing me to hold back. She kept me like that for entire minutes, going up and down, pulling my cock out of her cunt to slap it against her clit, then taking it back in whenever she wanted.

Then she turned around, ending up with her back to me, leaned forward with her hands braced between my knees, and guided my cock against her asshole, still shiny with saliva. She sat down in one stroke, like someone sitting in a familiar chair. I screamed. So did she, but for a different reason.

—Hold on, baby —she said through clenched teeth—. Don’t you dare finish before I do. If you do, I swear you’ll regret it.

Holding on was almost impossible. Her ass swallowed me with a rhythm that seemed rehearsed, squeezing my dick with a ring of hot flesh that blurred my vision. Every time I felt I was about to break, she would stop, breathe slowly twice, take two fingers to her mouth, wet them, and slip them into her cunt to finger herself while I stayed buried in her ass. Then she would move again, lifting her hips to leave only the tip inside me and dropping down hard to the root.

—Listen to me carefully —she panted, looking over her shoulder at me—. When I tell you, you come inside. Inside your mother’s ass. No pulling out, no spilling it outside. I want it all the way to my guts. You hear me?

—Yes, Mom.

—Yes, what?

—Yes, Mom, I’ll come wherever you tell me.

—Good boy.

When she finally came, she did it with a hoarse cry that the neighbors must have heard, squeezing her cunt with her fingers and digging the nails of her other hand into my thigh. Her ass closed around my cock with a force that left me no choice. I let go a moment later, emptying myself into my own mother’s ass with a clarity of mind that scared me more than everything before it. I felt every spurt leaving me and filling her inside, long, thick, one after another, while she laughed under her breath and rocked on top of me so she wouldn’t miss a single drop.

When she finished milking me, she stood up slowly. A white thread dripped from her ass down the back of one thigh. She ran two fingers through it, took them to her mouth, and sucked them while staring straight at me.

—Tasty. My son tastes tasty.

She collapsed beside me, sweating, laughing softly.

—They say revenge leaves you empty. It left me full. Full of my son, on top of that.

I couldn’t speak. I stared at the ceiling and tried to understand what had just happened.

—That was… —I started, without finishing.

—That was the beginning —she said, and got off the sofa as if nothing had happened—. You still owe me a lot, Damián.

***

While she dressed, she went to the shelf and picked up the ceramic vase. She turned it carefully in her hands. Only then did I see the tiny lens among the dried flowers.

—You recorded it? —I asked in a thread of a voice.

—Every minute. Smile at the camera, my love.

—Mom, you can’t…

—Yes, I can. And I will. From now on you’re coming to the village every Sunday. You’re sleeping in your room. We’re going to have dinner together, watch the soap opera, and after the soap opera you’re going to do everything I ask you to do. If you miss even one Sunday, if you make a face at me, if you speak to me like you can’t be bothered, this video goes online with your first and last name. Do you understand me clearly?

I nodded. My voice wouldn’t come out.

—Good —she said, finishing buttoning her pants—. I’m heading to the hotel. Tomorrow I’ve got the bus at seven. Behave yourself with your notes, son.

She leaned down, kissed me on the forehead with the same tenderness with which she had kissed me when she arrived, and left the apartment, closing the door slowly behind her.

I stayed on the sofa for a long time, naked from the waist down, my cock still shining and someone else’s semen drying on my belly, staring at the vase as if it were an animal about to leap. Then I got up, stepped into the shower, and let the water run without soaping myself. My neck was warm and there was a strange taste in my mouth.

I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t tell whether what I had lived through was a punishment or a reward, an humiliation or a welcome. The only thing I knew for sure, as dawn began to creep in through the bathroom vent, was that the following Sunday I was taking the first bus to the village.

And that Roxana knew it.