Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back

The two of them immediately sat down to talk. All the resentments of the past five years poured out of the Boy Genius, and his Genius Mother listened empathetically. Then, she started to tell her side of the story. When that happened, the Boy Genius soon realised he had been mistaken all along. His Mother had never wanted to leave him.

Like him, his Genius Mother had grown up feeling terribly lonely. Like him, she was so far above the rest of the human race that they could never understand her. Her scientific accomplishments gave her comfort at first, but eventually it came to mean nothing, and she despaired.

When she was in her early twenties, she started to believe she could quench her feelings of emptiness by becoming a Mother. She carefully chose a sperm provider she deemed suitable for the task, but when the child was born—him—she discovered that Motherhood did not provide the emotional relief she needed. So, in her cowardice, she fled, travelling the world and hoping to find solace elsewhere.

Now she has returned, to meet with her son. As the two of them talked further into the night, they started to realise that they shared much in common. Night soon became dawn, and then to night again, as the two of them talked for three days without sleep. Their minds met on every conceivable level, and to minds like theirs, this was a startling revelation.

On the morning of the third day, they could no longer deny their reality. The Boy Genius and his Genius Mother were meant to be, and no other human being on this earth could ever come close to their intellectual superiority. They were unreachable, elevated from the inferior bulk of humanity that inhabited this planet.

They had been Made for each other. They were in Love.

The two of them felt an urgent need to consummate their Love, but given that Boy Genius was only five, this wasn’t possible.

‘Perhaps I can invent a machine that ages me to whatever age I need to be? Say, late teens, early twenties?’ The Boy Genius suggested. Such a thing was simple, for someone of his quality.

The Genius Mother pondered this for a moment, but turned down that suggestion.

‘I don’t think we should consummate our relationship with sexual intercourse. It’s too… typical. Too conventional. Too plebeian, for minds as Great as ours,’ she said.

The Boy Genius nodded. He understood her reasoning. What they were contemplating was incest, a taboo to every culture there was on earth, but he and his Mother were far above the moral codes of ordinary people and their tiny minds.

‘Then what do you suggest, Mother?’ He said.

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