Unearthly Battles

1.

Skyler had always considered herself to be a fairly plain person. Her looks were nothing extravagant, and she always got decent grades but she was nowhere near being a genius. She had spent a lot of her childhood fending for herself and friendless. Sure, there were a few acquaintances at school, but there was never anyone who was really there for her. And it was for that exact reason that she had nowhere to go when she ran away from her father. Her father, he really didn't deserve the title. He had been a good man for her mother, but that had all ended when Skyler was four, and her mother had just gotten pregnant. 

But it wasn't truly the pregnancy that was such an issue, no, everyone was happy for a new baby to be born. It was the fact that the pregnancy ended with a great struggle, and that even though her sister had made it out alive, her mother hadn't.

Her father was completely and utterly broken, shattered. His grief had caused him to turn to the worst possible options. Alcohol. Drugs. Cigarettes. Sex. A new, skimpy woman being dragged off the street and into their apartment building at every opportunity. Each of them as glassy-eyed as the man they were giving their bodies too. And yet, even all of that wasn't enough to distract him, he needed more. And thus, his grief was transformed into an intense rage, and Skyler was at the receiving end of it all.

She had tried so hard to hate her sister. For causing their father to be like this. For being born and taking away her mother. Her mother, who she also wanted to hate for leaving them with such a vile man. But she wasn't able to despise either of them. Maybe her father would have eventually turned out like this anyways because it seemed to be who he really was inside.

From the young age of five, she was forced to find her own ways to support herself and her newborn sibling. But making money at that age was impossible, and she soon realized that she could fit a few necessities inside her baggy sweatshirt and sneak out the door of the store. So she stole. She stole everything she could get her hands on, bringing them back to their grungy apartment to try making life a little better.

But the bills could not be paid with cheap convenience store food.

For such a young child, she was an amazing actress. Pretend to be terribly sick, steal the purse of the woman who stopped to ask if she was okay. Pretend to fall off the bicycle she often stole from a neighbor down the street, and steal the wallet of the man who was kind enough to lift her off the sidewalk. She had done it all, everything she possibly could, to maintain an okay lifestyle for her and her sister. She took the worst of the abuse, begging him not to touch her younger sister. And it worked for six years.

Six years of taking double the beatings. Waking up to the loud and disgusting moans from her father's bedroom. Feeding and clothing her sister. Going to school. Stealing from local stores, changing her outfit and hairstyle each time she went in to make herself less obvious. Taking the pocket change of passing strangers. Teaching herself basic self-defense in order to protect herself from the dangers that filled their neighborhood. She was good at fighting. But she could never protect herself from the monster that lived in her own home.

Skyler was at an impressionable age, when the bad habits of people surrounding her could easily be taken up. And some days she found herself smoking weed next to the window in her bedroom, watching her young sister sleep in her bed. Cigarettes weren't as good, but they were still calming, and alcohol was helpful for making her forget all the bad that she was surrounded by. She was only nine then, and the weight of the world was already straining her shoulders.

And yet, she was broken even farther two years later, when she arrived home a moment too late. It was her sister's sixth birthday, and she was returning from stealing a cupcake from the bakery down the street. Maybe her father hadn't been able to find a bimbo to fuck that afternoon, and maybe that had made him terribly bored. And he hated being bored. So when the six year old got off the bus and climbed the stairs of the brick building, she entered the belly of the beast, and she had no older sister to protect her.