Kate's Demons- Chapter One

Chapter Two

 The journey home had been very long and Kate had nearly dropped to sleep on her mother’s shoulder; that had earned her a sharp reprove and her mother shuffling over in the seat. Feeling charmed and unwell, Kate had stumbled up to her room to hang that dress up before it got creased. It had been something along the lines of, “I don’t want all that money to go to waste, Kate.” Yeah, well, money clearly means a lot to adults; personally Kate couldn’t care less if she’d received a bin liner and a roll of duct tape. At least then she could cover all those mirrors her mother had plastered all over the room; they were momentarily covered by haphazard piles of books and tee shirts with funny slogans on them. Fire hazard, yes; mirror hazard, nil… Sort of… Kate fell onto her bed and was soon asleep, kicking off her shoes in her unconscious state. She dreamed. She dreamed of the old her, the one who looked and felt great no matter what, who had had boyfriends and was invited to all the parties. And then she made an appearance and ruined Kate’s life, with her fat and incessant eating. She’d made Kate ill, repulsed her into throwing up because she lived so close by; there was no escaping her. She forced the real Kate to hide in the background whilst she scoffed and ruined her friendships with everyone, making Kate shrink in the wake of her hideousness. Her once glossy dark hair had become dull and unkempt, the ends splitting in record time; her smooth porcelain skin had become swathed with spots and redness, another chin and rubbery fish lips. Her sparkling hazel eyes had turned swampy and grey, receding into her washed out face. Kate resented herself for letting it happen, but now that it had… Kate snapped clean awake in the half dark of her room. She always woke up like that, because that was the dream she always had; yes, there were small alterations- once she’d dreamt that her first boyfriend that she’d had when she was fourteen had asked her out so he could parade what he called the ugliest girl in the school- but the idea was still the same. She knew it was wrong, somewhere; the girl everyone saw wasn’t her, but no one else knew that, so what was the point of clinging to something that no one else remembered? Then came the tears, the ones that always follow the dream; they flooded her sallow eye sockets and rolled off her razor cheekbones, leaving shining tracks on the greying skin. Not that that was what Kate saw, but what everyone else did. Her friends longed to get her back, had tried and tried to bring her back to herself, make her eat… but no. She hadn’t managed an entire meal since, well, the accident. That accident, the one where her dad had been crushed on his 1500 cc bike under an international haulage wagon, eighteen months previous. She remembered the scene every waking and sleeping hour if only for a fraction of a second; he’d been following them in the car, because it’d been filled up with materials and clothes for her mother’s next show and there hadn’t been enough room. Kate had been watching him, smiling as he came along side and over took her mother’s four wheel drive. He’d winked as he’d passed, his face squashed slightly from the helmet crushed onto his head. She’d liked that he was so safety conscious, so ready for anything. And then that lorry had driven up, exceeding its old limiter- the driver had removed it so he could get around faster, only managing to do so because it was quite old- and had under cut her dad so severely his bike went into that weird side to side action seen before a huge collision in a motor cross event. Her dad wasn’t a new driver; he’d had a bike since he was sixteen, and he’d never thought he’d die on the road. But he did. He lost that crucial balance and control as the wagon sped beside him, Kate unmoving and unspeaking in the backseat as her dad was flung under the wagon’s middle axle wheels, his bike slamming into the back tires and ripping them to shreds. He’d loved that bike, was all Kate could think. She couldn’t think of her dad, neck snapped in two places and all his ribs shattered, stabbing his lungs as he died on the grass verge where he’d been rolled to. No. he’d loved that bike as much as he’d loved Kate and her science textbooks, quirky tees and sensible trainers. He’d be so upset when he saw the state of his bike. She didn’t want to be the one to have to tell him. The police had come to tell her, holding her hand and petting her shoulder. She didn’t feel it in the slightest, but from a distance she guessed it was nice. The paramedics had pronounced him dead at the scene, and the police were swilling the road with industrial strength bleach to get rid of the blood, once they had the evidence they needed. They’d arrested the lorry driver on scene but Kate was none the wiser. She may as well have been on the other side of the universe for all she knew. All she could think was how sad her dad would be at losing that beautiful electric blue and black bike. Her mother was screaming and crying, but she figured that they were more worried about her because she was the one who’d watched it all happen. The paramedics had later told them how quickly he’d died, but that hadn’t sunk in for a long time afterwards. She remembered that chilly morning when she woke up at three a.m. and really heard the words for the first time,

“He died as soon as he hit the wagon.” he’d done so with his ribs in his lungs and blood coming from his ears. That was when she’d cried; six months down the line, three in the morning on a Thursday. She’d screamed and cried and kicked and punched just like he’d taught her to, when someone pinned her down against her will. She’d asked the obvious why? But she’d asked some other questions too, like how come I can’t punish the driver who killed him and why the hell didn’t the driver stop straight away, rather than driving almost a quarter of a mile before his wagon had given up the ghost? She’d been angry, irate at everything and nothing. It was no one’s fault that Kate felt that way but still… that’s when she’d let down her guard and that thing had taken her over. Feeling as though they’d lost her forever her friends had despaired and they’d tried but everyone reaches the end, some sooner than others. She’d faded from view and she hated it, that thing that had taken her over. It’d been a year- give or take- since she’d looked in a mirror and for that her body had suffered; she couldn’t see it until something made her look in the mirror, only a short time after she’d flopped onto the bed after the exhaustive shopping excursion.