I Pray for Death

Chapter Three

It turned out that Grayson had all the same morning classes as me and because no one ever sat next to me he was always placed beside me.  I hated the feeling of someone close and every time he moved I would flinch back and as far away as I could get.  I hoped he hadn’t noticed my strange behavior and was thankful he didn’t try to speak to me again.  

At lunch I retreated to the bathroom like I always did.  I brought out the biscuit I had stole this morning and stared at it.  I would have loved to finish it but I knew I should wait as long as I could.  There was no telling when I would get more to eat.  

When the bell rang I slipped it back in my pocket and left the bathroom, walking slowly to my next class.  The school was big and had different hallways for each subject so it was easy to get lost in the crowd of bodies.  I was glad for the anonymity of a big school with many students; it helped cover the things that were impossible hide and let me blend into the background.  

When the final bell rang I felt the familiar sense of dread take over my body and thoughts.  I would have to go back home.  The only problem was that it was not home and it hadn’t been for a long time.  Home is where you feel safe and loved, not terrified and hated.  

I caught the bus and sat in the front alone.  Staring out the window, I tried to calm my heart rate and breathing as I felt the terror rise in me every minute closer to my own personal Hell.   When the bus came to a halt in front of my dilapidated house I thought about just sitting there and acting like it wasn’t my stop, but if I didn’t go home my punishment would be far worse.  

I stood slowly, feeling every bruised place on my body protest, walked down the steps of the bus and up the driveway.  My mother’s rusted out Chrysler was parked at an odd angle, giving evidence that she must of went out high earlier in the day.  Taking a deep breath and blanking my face of all emotion; I stepped through the front door.  

She was there to meet me.  Her bleached white hair stood in a halo of frizz around her jaundiced, wrinkled face.  An evil smile played over her lips and I could see the corners of decayed teeth peeking out from between them.  At my hesitance to walk forward she narrowed her eyes and stomped toward me.  

I tried not to flinch but the gleam of triumph in her eyes told me I failed.  Grabbing a handful of my hair she pulled me forward and through the house to the kitchen.  There were dirty dishes piled everywhere, crumbs and other indescribable things covered the floor and counters.  She whipped me around to face her and pointed at the destruction she had caused while I was at school.  

“Clean this shit up before your father gets home!”  She yelled, smacked the back of my head and walked out.  I refrained from rubbing my scalp incase she was still watching, I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.  I laid my book bag down and pushed up my sleeves with a silent sigh.  I scrubbed, swept and mopped until everything was spotless.  It was worthless to do it though; she would only make a mess again tomorrow.  

I slid my sleeves back down, covering the many bruises in different stages of healing, grabbed my bag and walked to the stairs.  

“Did you make me dinner?”  My mother asked from where she was planted on the couch.  She looked in my direction and then laughed like she had said the funniest thing known to man.  

I used to cook for her until she caught me sneaking food for myself, after she broke my nose I was never allowed to go near the food again.  She may have been a drug addict but she was religious about keeping count of the food in the house.  If something went missing I was punished for it and I was punished enough, so I tried to find my food anywhere else I could.  

I hated stealing but if I didn’t I would starve and death by starvation is a slow process.  Each day I would switch between wanting to die and wanting freedom.  There was no where for me to go; I had no money, no resources of any kind so I couldn’t get very far away.  My seventeenth birthday was in a few weeks so I only had a little over a year before I could legally walk away and they wouldn‘t be able to get me back.  If I quit school I could get a job but if I quit suddenly they would notify my parents and my mother would know exactly what I was trying to do.  Hopeless and pathetic; that’s all I was anymore.

I walked up to my room ignoring the laugher that followed me, turned on the light and closed the door.   My room had been ransacked again.  My mother always came in and trashed it hoping to find something incriminating; food, new clothes, anything that was out of place.  

At the sight of the drawers on the floor and all the rags I called clothes thrown everywhere, I remembered the biscuit in my pocket.  I had to eat it or hide it before she found it.  I took off my jacket and sat down in front of the door, blocking it from being opened and ate the rest of the biscuit so fast I thought I would be sick.  I moved to the only window in the room, opened it and threw the paper wrapping into the wind.  I watched that square of white until I knew it was safely out of sight.  

I looked down into the neighboring house’s back yard.  The grass was knee high because the house had been empty for the past year.  In that grass was another refuge of mine, a large swing set that the previous owners had concreted into the ground and left when they moved out.  On nights when I could manage it I would sneak out and go swing.  I had found a can of oil in the little shed next to it and oiled the hinges so no one would hear me back there.  

Swinging gave me a sense of freedom.  The wind blowing through my hair and the weightless feeling of my body gave me peace.

I jumped when my bedroom door slammed inward and my mother came crashing in.  She grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the open window.  

“Are you thinking about running?  You don’t actually think you could escape us; do you?  You are going to stay here and be punished for the rest of your fucking life!  You deserve it!  Everything is your damn fault!  You should have died!”  

She squeezed my arms hard, her nails cutting into me and causing rivulets of blood to seep onto her hands.  She shook me back and forth, my neck snapping with the action and I suddenly felt lightheaded.  I tried to pull away and the blood my mother had drawn came in my favor as her hands slid down my arms.  She struggled to hold me, but everything came to a standstill as a single drop of my blood fell onto her new blue shoes.  She looked absolutely horrified that my blood was staining something of hers.  Her eyes lit up with fury and she came at me fist flailing and connecting with every open part of my body.  

“What’s going on in here?”  A loud, deep voice asked from just outside the door and my terror was added to anew.  

My mother paused, a satisfied smile lighting up her face, while I cowered back against the wall and turned to look at her husband.  “Mark, this bitch got blood on my new shoes!”  She screamed and yanked me forward by my bloody arm.  She pushed me at my father and I landed on my knees in front of him.

I looked up into his eyes, hoping to see something of the father he used to be, but they were empty and glazed over, nothing like how they used to be.  I had no idea why I kept expecting a change to come over them; it never did.  He raised a platter sized hand and brought it down across my face.  I couldn’t hold back a yelp of pain as I hit the floor.  

He pulled his leg back and kicked me violently in the thigh.  I curled into a ball and let what was going to happen; happen.  I had long since given up begging and I had learned that the more noise I made the longer it went on.  When my mother felt I was properly punished for bleeding on her shoe, she pulled my father out of the room.  

“Let’s go.  She’s half dead as it is, anymore and she won’t be worth a shit at cleaning.”  She said as she walked down the hall and away from my broken and bloody body.  

I stayed where I had fallen and felt tears burn behind my eyes but refused to let them fall.  I was never going to shed tears because of those cruel monsters.  The pain caused me to black out a couple times and when I finally came to completely, the house was silent.  I sat up sluggishly and assessed my wounds.  There where gashes along my arms, small from my mother’s nails and large by my father’s work boots, and my legs felt as if they had been stomped by an elephant.  I was sure to be limping for the next couple of days.   

As gingerly as I could I stood and hobbled to the bathroom to wash my arms off.  There were no bandages so I had to wrap them in toilet paper and hope it would stop the bleeding.  I went back to my room, put on a faded black hoodie and silently limped down the stairs.  

I needed a little peace, a little freedom and sneaking out to swing would give me that.  

(A/N)  Please tell me what you think, I really like comments, votes and fans!  Video on side is Fade to Black by Metallica, the words fit really well with Memory's story.  Thanks for reading!  Bye My Bunnies!<3