Cursed

࿏ Chapter Three ࿏

Hayden

I remember everything about the day I was born. My mother was wearing a mint green hospital gown as the nurses ripped me out of her arms. I was shoved underneath a sky filled with fluorescent lights and injected with a variety of needles. Obviously vaccinating babies was all part of the plan but they don't expect you to actually remember it. Pain was part of my life from the get go and yet everyone questioned why I was such a depressed toddler.

My mother said that when she would take me to play dates I would shun the other children and preferred to sit by myself. No matter how much my aunts and uncles would try to coax me out of my reverie I wouldn't give in. Don't get me wrong, there were moments that I thoroughly enjoyed in my childhood, but that all went to shit around my sixth birthday.

My parents had gone out and left me at home with the neighbor girl, Judy, who would frequently babysit for cheap. My parents never had much money so Judy was their only option. She had just gotten her driver's license and she would let me pretend to drive her car. She would take out the keys and hide them from me since the one time I actually started the engine freaked her out. This time I was pretending to be a NASCAR racer while she painted her toenails hot pink in the passenger seat. The toxic smell of the polish filled the car up but I didn't mind. I was just happy to be sitting in close proximity with her, even if she was busy doing something else. My six year-old brain thought I loved her, as much as any other little boy loves his babysitter.

One night after Judy had finished reading a chapter out of the Star Wars series she gave me a peck on the cheek and said, "goodnight rugrat, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite." I listened to her walk down the stairs and turn on the TV before I rolled over and fell asleep.

I must've had a nightmare that night because I remember waking up drenched in sweat. I had no idea what time it was or if Judy was still downstairs or not. All I knew was that I needed comforting and I was going to risk walking through the dark to find it. I pushed off my blanket and started down the stairs to the living room. I could see the electric glow of the TV but Judy wasn't in her usual spot watching it. That's when I heard the noises.

To my naive ears it sounded like dogs whimpering. The noise was coming from my parents bedroom door, so I put my hand on the wood and gently pushed it open. I saw my mom seated on my dad's lap with Judy crouched over his face, they were completely naked. Their bodies rocked back and forth as they kept moaning and grinding on each other. They never knew I saw them but I stayed for longer than I should have. Once I realized that no one was going to comfort me, or tuck me back into bed, I decided to go sit on the couch. I proceeded to watch TV until my eyes burned, trying to get the image of their bodies out of my head.

After that I stopped viewing my parents as "adults." I was more cautious of their ability to lie and manipulate the truth right in front of me. I grew distant and it seemed like they were OK with that. I was never a very touchy feely kid and my parents didn't foster that tight-knit family cheer that I saw at my friend's houses. 

It was around this time that I began to take note of things that my parents did differently from my friends' parents. For example my dad would continue to fuck all my babysitters until my tenth birthday. My mom was never home when it happened. One day I finally decided I had enough of his shit. I looked him straight in the eye and told him that I was too old to be babysat. From the way his eyes darted nervously from my mother to me, I could tell he knew he was busted. He looked at me with concern but we both agreed that from that day on I could handle myself.

Things really took a turn for the worst my freshman year of high school when I found out about my mom's special box. My buddy Shane was over to play my second hand Nintendo 64. We had been waiting all year to get our hands on a new one but our parents were too poor to get it. My mom yelled excitedly to me one day after school.

"Hayden, come look at what I found on Craigslist!"

Once we saw that someone was selling it twenty minutes from our town we hopped in the car right then and made the trip. That was one cool thing about my mom, even though her mothering skills weren't the best, at least she was always down for a spontaneous road trip.

"Dude this Mario Kart game is the coolest!"

Shane squealed as we jerked our bodies back and forth as if we were riding the go-karts ourselves. After hours of being immersed in the world of Mario we were parched so I went to grab us some Mountain Dew from the kitchen. When I got back Shane had an open shoe box sitting on his lap.

"I'm so sorry Hayden, I dropped my controller and when I reached under the couch to grab it I found this!"

I took the box from his hands and emptied out the contents on the couch. We scrutinized every object, trying to figure out what it was. The thing Shane was holding almost looked like a light bulb, except on the end where you would screw in the bulb was a long glass tube. The bulb had black residue stuck on all of its sides. There was also a lighter with the Rolling Stones iconic red mouth with its tongue sticking out on it. The last item was a small zip-lock bag of fine beige powder. I looked at Shane, wondering if he remembered the D.A.R.E workshop we had done a few months back in school. Shane pointed at the round part of the pipe.

"I'm pretty sure that's the end where the powder goes into."

Neither of us seemed scared by the drug paraphernalia like we should have been. Shane had an older brother in college so I trusted his instinct on this one. After poking at the powder Shane gave me a devilish looking grin and handed me the bag.

"I dare you to smoke it."

It was not what I had expected my best friend to say, but I was never one to turn down a dare.

"Fine, but I'm googling this shit because I don't want to do it wrong."