Distraction

24.

Michael

We both got out of the car and slowly walked to the house. I walked behind Riley and tried to give her as much space as possible.

Riley was standing completely frozen in the living room when I walked in.

"Why did you bring me here?" She asked me with a shaky voice.

I went to stand next to her and gently put my hand on her shoulder.

"You're scared and angery because of what happened in your past. You need to confront those old memories instead of trying to repress them."

She nodded but not because she understood or agreed with what i had said. Because from the look in her eyes i could see that she wasn't listening at all.

"What are you thinking about right now?" I asked her.

She took a few steps foward and let her hand hit the old couch. "How life used to be when I lived here. It's like I can still hear my parents yelling to each other while I am trying to watch TV."

"What did you do when your parents started to fight?"

"Depended on how I felt. Most of the time I would try to drown their voices out. But sometimes when I heard my mom screaming I would ran to her to protect her."

"Did you dad often hurt your mom?"

She nodded. "But she also hurt my dad and together they hurt me."

"She also hit you?" I asked in complete disbelief.

She turned around and gave me a small smile. "She never meant to, it just always sorta happened in the heat of an argument. Please don't think of her the same way you think of my dad."

"I won't, I understand with you're saying."

She turned around and walked to the stairs. They looked like the were going to fell apart at any moment but she still stepped on them.

"Need some help?" I asked as I went to stand behind her.

She shook her head and walked upstairs with her crutches.

I followed her in to a room with ripped up wallpaper on the wall. It was pink with small yellow flowers on it, this was probably her room when she was younger.

I looked at her and saw a completely different face compared to how she looked in the living room. Back there she looked sad and unhappy but now she had a small smile on her face and her eyes were lit up.

"My mom used to tell me bedtime stories every single night when I was young. Sometimes she would fall asleep before me and then i covered her in my blanket."

"Did you have nightmares when you were a kid?" I asked wanting her to open up as much as possible.

"Yes but not the vivid kind of nightmares I have now. Back then they would be about a monster in the closet and I never got them very often. My mom made sure I wouldn't have nightmares."

"What did she do?"

"She would turn on my nightlight, kiss my forehead and tell me that she was here for me."

But after she said that her smile dissapeared.

"What's wrong?" I asked with a soft voice.

"She stopped doing that after my dad started coming home late from work. It didn't take long before the fighting started after that."

"Was your dad cheating on your mom?" I asked feeling even more hatred towards that man.

She shrugged. "Who knows. I was too young to understand things like that. All I knew was that my mom stopped kissing me goodnight and that my dad would get mad at every small thing."