Longing

Chapter One

Melanie spent most of her days suctioned to her laptop, obsessing over online games that didn't have any sort of conclusive ending, blogging out her diary entries under an internet alias and stalking people on Facebook. The only remarkable thing about her was her imminent lack of responsibility, not that she cared. She rarely went to class and barely ever passed her tests unless they had something to do with social experiments or psychology. Her absences had recently gotten to the point where her principle knew both her face and name. He insisted on seeing her every day, or rather, every day she decided to show up on campus.

Sarah, Melanie's mother, wasn't happy with her daughter but hadn't taken any initiative to fix the problem other than grounding Melanie or taking away her cell phone. Melanie's father wasn't around anymore but even when he was, he must not have cared one way or the other. Melanie couldn't remember even one day when her father scolded her; he was too busy flirting with his secretary or some work associate or the waitress or the cardboard cut-out of a Hooter's girl he kept plastered to the inside of his closet. Melanie would have said she resented him for it, but she really didn't care. Her parents hadn't ever gotten along anyway. Nonetheless, the divorce left Sarah devastated. But Melanie's father had taken the opportunity to scamper off with some busty blonde chick with a fake tan and crimped hair that was way too young for him. He hadn't contacted the rest of the family since, so nobody knew where he was. Melanie remembered her mother saying, "Good riddance," and then slamming the bedroom door so she could cry over the holiday socks she had once purchased for him on vacation. He never even wore them outside of the house, but Sarah cried anyway.

From Melanie's perspective, the divorce invoked Hell for the next three years. She was appalled that she was the only one to put two and two together. When her mother told her that theory was nonsense, Melanie stopped calling her "Mom" and instead opted for "Sarah." Sarah wept again that night, moaning from under her pillow about abandonment and respect and asking why over and over. But Melanie, who was listening outside the door with her mouth a scowl, knew that all the tragedies had started about a month after her father ran off and she couldn't bring herself to ignore that fact.

First the house burned down; later that incident would prove to be arson. Then the dog died. After that, Sarah's goldfish turned belly up two days later like a curse was killing off the first-borns, except with pets instead of people. Melanie turned into an insufferable delinquent and Sarah desperately tried to keep hold on their new apartment while struggling with management problems at work and pay cuts that made it difficult to keep up with the rent. Their new landlord was an ass who never fixed anything and wouldn't compromise on the rent checks. Sarah couldn't find a loan and Melanie was missing so many days of high school that she may well not have gone at all.

Then, Sarah snapped. She decided wasn't going to deal with this anymore. She wasn't going to let her ex-husband and whoever burned down her house get away Scot-free. She'd force Melanie to get her ass in gear and she'd tell her manager at work to suck it and quit, just like that. She could do it. She had nothing left to lose except a daughter who hated her anyway and a shitty apartment that wasn't fit for rats even with all the repairs. So Sarah took the day off work to buy a chainsaw.

She was all fired-up at the hardware store, holding it proud in her hands at the display where miscellaneous woodworking tools hung on hooks like dead fish.

Sarah missed her goldfish. The dog had been Melanie's and an untrained brat but the goldfish had been hers. She had won them at a church fundraiser; they were a prize at that silly game where you have to pick out plastic ducks from a kiddy pool and whatever the number is on the bottom is your prize. Sarah had won the two goldfish, taken them home and put them in a nice little tank with a nice filter and even nicer decorations so the whole thing looked like it was fit for saltwater tropical fish instead of just dumpy prize goldfish. She had managed to keep those two goldfish alive for years despite their life expectancy being less than a week. The neighbors used to marvel at them as they swam around in circles, saying there's no way they'd ever be able to keep a goldfish-in-a-bag alive for that long. Those comments had always made Sarah swell with pride. Despite all the wrongs in her life, despite the fact that her husband was so blatantly cheating, despite her daughter's nasty attitude, she could, at the very least, expand the life expectancy of the only two prizes she had ever won. Sarah had even named them: Speckle and Freckle. Right then, seeing the tools as they hung down from each metal hook like prized pikes, Sarah realized how much she really missed Freckle and Speckle.