Warped Minds

Chapter 1: Prelude

Chapter One: Prelude

"Mum! I'm home!" I yell at the top of my lungs as I push away all the garbage and empty pill bottles that litters the downstairs of our house and drop my bag on the floor in the hallway and close the door behind me. She steps out from the kitchen and gestures to the phone next to her ear "shhh!".
"Yes ma'am" I whisper and tiptoe up the stairs to my room. She isn't talking to her friends because she wasn't smiling. She isn't talking to her mom because she wasn't crying. She wasn't talking to my therapist because she didn't have her calendar out.
She must have been talking to my dad.
I sneak back down stairs, careful not to make a sound. I need to Hear what they are talking about. Mum never calls dad because he gets on her nerves, She only texts him. Dad only calls her when he is making another excuse not to pay child support. The spare phone in the living room is just out of view from where my mother is standing. If I'm quiet and fast I can sprint to pick it up before she turns around and sees me. Step, step, jump over the loud spot on the floor, dang parkour helps, step on the carpet and I'm safe I'm out of view and she doesn't suspect a thing. Safe.
Slowly I pick up the phone receiver, placing it against my ear. The static-ridden voices escape the speaker.
"Madeline, I'm just not sure about this. how would she take it?"
"Henry, we're going we are gone and there's nothing you can do about it. It isn't good for her here."
"It's perfectly fine here! You can't go off on your own, you still need help. I'm not going to have you take my daughter away from me again!"
"No no no no Henry. We aren't your family anymore anyways. She needs this, I need this" my mother was worked up, almost in tears when she slammed the phone down onto the charging dock. I sprung up the stairs so she wouldn't know that I was listening. Whatever this is, it's bad.
I try to erase thoughts from my mind with music, pumping the lyrics and beats into my head and drowning out the world flushing out my demons with powerful bass and heartfelt lyrics. Caffeine. Coffee. Energy. I need to think and be hyper and I need to be able to work. It's important. I slide over the edge of my bed onto the rough uncomfortable carpet that conceals the original wood flooring underneath. I have a moment of panic when my hand meets the cold surface of the coca~cola underneath my bed, my brain tricking me into thinking that the surface of the bottle is the knife of a serial killer waiting to slaughter me. But only for a moment.
My mum doesn't like me having caffeine because she says it's going to make me short but I'm practically addicted to it. Practically. Almost. Not enough. Oh well.
I'm so absorbed in the opening of the room temperature flat soda that I almost don't notice when my window rattles in its spot in the wall. Someone is at the front door. I can't hear anything downstairs so my mum is ignoring them but they aren't going away.
Knock-knock-knock-knock-knocking consistently, not politely. I slowly open my window, careful not to alert the knocker that I can see them. It's late summer, fall, dying, decay. It fills the air with its own intoxicating scent that wraps me in its arms, seeming like it's wanting to protect me from the slight chill that comes with the breeze. I always loved the fall. It seems it's called the fall because it's so much of a purgatory. A time for the absence of change. Summer and school clash and you can stick with yourself or be cast away with the wind. Summer falls to winter and so on. It's a warning. The calm before the storm. It's almost as if the fall is summers protector, trying so hard to make winter stay back stay back. Go back.
I am almost lost in the autumn wind as I step out onto the firm tiles of my roof top. I'm not supposed to be up here but oh well. Throw all your caution into the not warm not cold fall breeze.
I'm careful to keep my head down in the shadows as much as possible while I glance around at the knocker. She has a messy web of mousy gray wrapped up in an attempt of a bun. Strands freely waving around, grasping at the air trying to get away from the bag of wrinkles that they were attached to. She skinny and short, looking like the wind could turn her to dust any instant. My good old friend Ms. Wilter.
No wonder my mum isn't answering our door. She doesn't like the landlady. She doesn't trust her, and I don't blame her. The landlady is a wisp of existence the world could do without. I slink back in through the window, careful to keep moving but move slow and don't make sound. She's a snake. A dirty lying thieving snake who needs to be avoided. Such as when you're hiking in the mountains and you stumble across a rattlesnake. It's vicious eyes meet yours and though you're not really afraid of snakes a shudder runs through you because you're terrified. Terrified by the vision of the snake, the poison, the bite, a slash, flash and sirens, oh all the things that could come. So you move, step away and take a different path. Avoid and run avoid and run. So I go, walk downstairs yet again but this time making myself known. That's the problem when you're me, sometimes I forget I'm a real person. An actual thing with a heart and a life of her own. I observe. I watch. I'm careful. I'm not someone who is there because I'm not. I'm analyzing and saving it all for later cause I don't want to be alive and have a part. Don't get me wrong, I'm not depressed or want to die it's just that I don't feel like being alive is for me. being an individual. I want to be invisible and be able to see and watch and not be judged. Can't I just leave?
My mum thinks I'm depressed. My counselor thinks I have ADD and ADHD but that's just the caffeine. I don't have issues like crazy people. I'm not depressed, I don't want to die, I'm not normal though. Oh well haha they can't pin emotions down onto me. I'm not like them but they're not like each other. I just wish I could change things.