The October Malice ༄ (gxg)

six, stephen

"He's taking another goddamn day off work."

That was her mother's response when Opal asked why Dad was not in the kitchen making his usual morning bowl of Cheerios—not neglecting, of course, her favorite curse word used most often to express her irritation that was hardly ever absent. It was most prevalent in the mornings when her mother's brain decided to wake her up at 8 A.M. after getting home from her night shift at the wee hour of 3 A.M.

Eyebrows creased above eyes that raised to the short ponytail hanging from the back of the brunette head. "Is that a bad thing?" Her voice edged with suspicion that her mom was being heartlessly impatient to her dad's grief. Her own heart soaked heavy at the fact that her dad was still in bed when he usually would have been up two hours previously. She was unsure how much more pain her father could take since he had already had an aroma of melancholy clouding him every waking moment.

For once in her life, Amanda hesitated to speak as she poured into her white mug the steaming coffee that she always preferred black. The rare reluctance to shoot bullets with her tongue was either from realization of her harshness or from anger that Opal dared ever disagree with her—she was always right, obviously.

"Work is a priority," her mother said determinately, voice clipped as she put the coffee pot back into its slot on the old, dwarfed machine.

"And Mrs. Browning wasn't?" Opal shot back, the contradiction of her resentment towards her mother and the pain of the late woman's mention caused a whirlwind inside her.

Amanda sighed with exasperation, whipping around to reveal her face that had one or two new wrinkles on it. Her eyes were dull and tired but ablaze with the flames of anger that she seemed to love to dwell in. "Don't put words into my mouth like that," she demanded with grit in her tone, bringing her mug up to sip her coffee as her eyes bore into her daughter's.

"Well," Opal began, pursing her lips together as that familiar sense of hatred flooded her veins, "It seems like you don't even care he's hurting."

"You're such a brat."

Green eyes flashed towards the woman instantly at the loosely handed insult spoken with such lack of grace from her dreadful mother. She opened her mouth to fire something back, but her mom already had grabbed the newspaper and was shuffling her feet back to bed—she didn't care; she never did.

It was worthless; it was futile. Her mother always made her feel like a bird with no voice box, ripped out from the fragility of its throat every time that woman even opened her mouth. Opal couldn't even remember the last time her mom had said something nice to her.

Not caring to put her bowl in the sink, she grabbed her bag from the back of the chair and stormed towards the door, partially glad that she had to walk to class since her dad hadn't gotten around to fixing her bike yet—it gave her more of a chance to let off the steam that Amanda Indick never failed to boil within her.

"Fucking bitch," she whispered to herself as she adjusted the straps of her backpack, the chilly October air nipping at her nose as her feet crunched the gravel driveway below them. She began her trek down the highway, nails digging into her clenched palms. She was so furious that the steam blowing from her mouth into the cold air was cloudier than usual, as if her insides had heated up about thirty degrees.

Still reeling over the pure hatred rattling around in her brain infectiously, she was momentarily distracted by a figure that she noticed walking a ways down the highway. Fear nearly struck her—the figure was wearing all black, and the only thing that differentiated them from her memory of the strange man in the trench coat was a pale neck and a blonde head that she recognized as none other than Stephen. He actually lived just a few patches of woods away, and it looked as if he had just walked out of his own gravel driveway.