What a Horrible, Wicked World: A Collection of Horrors

Her: Part One of Two

"I ripped away the only thing that I had to show for. I think it's wrong for me to seek sympathy -no, I know that it's wrong- yet I felt like I had to do it. She was my entire world, and that wicked, snake of a woman wanted to drag her down into her darkness with her. How the hell was I supposed to let someone take my sunshine down to such a place? I'm sorry, I'm getting carried away again. I'll start with the morning of.
She wouldn't wake up to her alarm to get ready for school and I didn't want to wake her up because it was my last day with her. Fuck it, I unplugged that alarm around 3 am that morning, just so she wouldn't wake up. I stood outside her door, peeking through the crack to watch her sleep. You know, I felt my entire heart stutter when I thought about her looking that way forever: peaceful.
I crept away from her door and started making breakfast. Not just the eggs and bacon weak-parent shit, but her favorite. The nice fluffy pancakes from Japan. I busted my ass figuring out how to make those pancakes rise, because we always went out to get them instead. I wanted to leave her with a good memory of me, so I put my heart and soul into whipping the eggs and patiently watching the tutorial for them in between each step.
Around 10 am is when I finished, and I scooped her up while she was still sleeping and sat her at the kitchen table. It took her a little to wake up, rubbing her eyes and all that morning routine stuff. You should've seen how her face lit up when she saw those pancakes. You would've thought that girl had never eaten before. Those pancakes were absolutely perfect.
No, they weren't perfect enough for her. She deserved more. I wish I hadn't burnt the sides of a few of them, or the butter had melted more before I got her out of bed. God, she deserved so much better than from a measly man like me. What a fucking joke am I? I should've spent more than two hours making those-I should've been making them all night to practice just so they would've been better.
I'm losing it again. I'm sorry, let me just continue off from when I started driving her to school. It was around 12pm by then, and the sun was beating down onto our car. I let her borrow some of my glasses and spent a few minutes just laughing about how they fell onto her little face. When we pulled up to the school, I broke out in a cold sweat thinking, 'I won't see her for half of today if I drop her off now. I need more time.' So, of course, I just pulled around the school instead and told her we were having a hookey day.
I had about 1,000 dollars in my savings, and I was planning on spending it on her birthday presents: the big "13" you know? But I just said to hell with that. It's not like I would've been able to give her any of them anyway-that woman would have nothing of it.
We went to the pier, so we got there about 1pm give or take. I felt like I rushed her on everything the whole 4 hours we were there. I got angsty when there was a short line to the rides and felt shitty if I didn't ring the pins to win her the biggest prizes. Rigged carnies-they're the lowest. They're the type of people that make me cringe and turn the other way, but she wanted to haggle and I took the fall for it.
The food wasn't good enough either. At one point, she wanted to grab cotton candy that was 'freshly' spun. That garbage tasted like it was marinated in pig fat. She spit it out and told me it tasted like styrofoam. If she hadn't been there, I would've slit that man's throat ear-to-ear. I would've pasted the skin from his face on his front door, so his wife would come home after work and see that cheeky bastard smeared across the wood. I would have- sorry. I'm getting carried away again, aren't I?"