Ran Right Into Him

Chapter 2

In short, I hated my mom. She was the most two-faced,back-stabbing, and selfish person I've ever met. She had the perfect mom mask. Out in public she's an angel and I am the perfect child. But at home she's vicious and I'm nothing but a bitch servant she couldn't give a damn about if she tried. She punished me in cruel ways for almost nothing. She yells and beats me  and all I can do is cower in helplessness. I can't stand up to her because she would kick me out no questions asked and I would have nowhere to go. I have no other family, I have a best friend, Maxine is her name, but her parents fell hard for her mask and would call my mom the minute I walked through the door. So all she could do was suck it up and deal.

I walked up to her house and saw all the lights were off. Maybe she was asleep.

"No," I thought, "I've fallen for that before."

My mother was waiting for me just around the corner, just waiting to pounce. I'd been caught once and had the life almost beaten out of me, I would never try that again. So I slipped quietly through the door and flipped on the lights. There she was, my mom was waiting in her favorite chair, back straight and belt in hand. She was just staring at me. Like the thing in front of her couldn't possibly be her daughter.

"Welcome home, Mavis," she said coldly.

I flinched at the name. She used it all the time just to spite me. My dad gave me that nickname when I was a toddler. I had a thing for Hotel Transylvania back then and so he started calling me Mavis since the first letter of my name put in place of the first letter of my last name just happened to be Mavis.

"Hey Mom," I replied, the word, mom, tasting bitter on my lips.

I tried to walk past her to the kitchen and get a drink of water but she grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"You know where I've been. I told you before I left that I'm going running."

"Well I didn't expect you to be gone until 11 o'clock at night. That's not really a normal time for running. So why don't you tell me where you really were all this time." She said, not loosening her grip on my arm.

"I told you," I said, pulling my arm out of her grasp, "I was out running."

She didn't like that I gave her attitude.

"You don't speak to me that way!" she yelled, as she got up from her chair

I stood there silently. I didn't react to her yelling, if I did it would only make what was coming worse.

"I don't care what you do, but if you aren't back before dark then things don't get done." she said, yelling at me.

"Then maybe you should do those things yourself." I said quietly.

As soon as the words left my mouth I instantly regretted them. I regretted them even more when my mothers hand struck my face hard.

She stared right at me with evil in her eyes. It's like staring into the eyes of Satan himself. Then she turned and stalked off down the hall. She went into her room and I heard the clinking of the metal belt as she took it off the wall where it hung. I closed my eyes and listened to it as I mentally prepared myself for the following events.

I opened my eyes and saw my mother staring down at me with flaming eyes.

"Get up," she said, the words coming out cold as ice, "Turn around."

I did everything she asked the minute she asked of it. I closed my eyes and prepared myself for the first blow.

It came as a sharp sting and a second afterwards it was an aching burn and intense pain. I had to bite back a scream from the pain. You'd think that I would be used to it by now, but no. It never goes away, the pain from the belt or the pain from the fact that it's your own mother, the one person who is supposed to love you no matter what, that's on the other end, dealing it out.

The second hit came before the pain from the first one had time to get too bad. They kept coming and they would keep coming until she was satisfied. It takes longer than it used to because I learned to hold back my screams. As my hatred for her grew I wanted to stop giving her the pleasure of hearing me scream and cry because of her. That made her mad so she would keep going until she broke me, until I cracked. I never did. So she just hit me time and time again until her arm got too tired and then she walked off and went to smoke in her bedroom.

After she stalked off and slammed her door closed. I started to walk towards the kitchen. I winced at the first step but I pulled myself after that. I started to work around the house as I do every night. First the laundry, mine and my mother's, then dinner. I looked up a recipe that seemed good online and got started on that, even though I'm forced to cook dinner she doesn't care what I make as long as I make it so I can have whatever I want for dinner and I have become a pretty decent cook too. While that was cooking I did the dishes by hand because our dishwasher is broken and my mother refuses to get someone to fix it. Then I went around and cleaned up anything else around the house like cigarette stubs, beer bottles, I cleaned up spills from various alcohol bottles my mom and her lame-o boyfriend, Drake, had drank that day.

After I told my mom that dinner was ready I took a plate of food to my room and ate there. I didn't want to have to look at her.

In my room I took out my phone and FaceTimed my best friend, Max.

"Hey," I said when she answered.

"What's up?" she said, in her usual perky voice.

"Nothing much, I went for a run today but I went too far and took too long to get back and it was dark by the time I got home and my mom was not happy about that."

"Ugh, your mom is such a bitch I swear," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, she made me scrub Drake's vomit out of the carpet today. I don't know why he drinks so much if can't hold it down, dumbass."

"Honestly. Hey, do you wanna sleep over next week? I mean I know that tomorrow is the anniversary for your dad, and your mom gets, well you know how she gets, but the offer is on the table if you want it."

I sighed and said, "You know what I might. Let me think about it though. Okay?"

"Okay, I'll see you at school tomorrow,"

"Okay. Hate you, kidding," I said.

"Love you, mean it," she returned.

I hung up and tossed my phone onto my bed, then turned to look in the mirror. I frowned at my reflection. I looked like a mess. My hair was all over the place, my face was red and wet from the tears that streaked silently down my face now. I never cry in front of people. Not even Max. Especially not my mother.

As I've grown I've been forced to think of crying as a sign of weakness. It gives people power over you when they know that they have the ability to make you, that they are stronger than you, so much stronger than you that they can cause you enough pain to cry. Whenever I cried as a kid, shortly after my dad died and right before my mom spiraled, she would say, "stop crying you weak child, crying means you're a baby and people take advantage of babies. If someone knows they can make you cry then they will use that against you,". I took that to heart and now the only person who knows I cry is, well, me.

I lay in my bed, freshly showered, scrolling innocently through my Instagram feed, when a random photo popped up. It was from a user I've never seen before and it was just of something random that I immediately forgot, but it reminded me of someone. Benjamin. Fucking Benjamin. His name echoed off the walls of my head and the sound of his name sent an entire army of butterflies to my stomach. Ugh I hate him for making me feel like this. Love is a trap. It's fake. A complete lie. Not that I love him, but still. Even a crush is bad. Depending on anyone except yourself for anything even relatively important is bad, because more often than not no one will show up for you. So I try to avoid that completely. I hate that he makes me feel this way. And he doesn't even know it. I'm tired of thinking about him and his incredible soft brown hair that he's always running his fingers through but not in an annoying and cringey Chad way, and his slightly chiseled jawline and his way more than slightly chiseled abs that I saw once on accident. Ugh. I can't get him out of my brain. I'm going to bed and I'm going to have completely forgotten him in the morning.

Plus he probably doesn't even know I exist.