18+ | Eva French relocates from sunny Florida to the gritty streets of Detroit, seeking a fresh start. But her new beginning takes a dark turn when she experiences a traumatic assault on her very first night in the city. Haunted by the incident, Eva...
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tw: I said I wouldn't do tws after the authors note, but this whole chapter is a massive tw for substance abuse and sexual assault. It made me wince while writing it so please proceed with caution!
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One Year Ago
It had been a year since he last laid eyes on his mother. She had a habit of appearing out of the blue, always reappearing just when he thought he had finally found peace from her previous visit. It was a never-ending cycle, a drawn-out torture that left him yearning for an end. On many occasions, he found himself wishing she had died during one of the many overdoses she had during his childhood.
But even as his thoughts wished her to die, he had let her in every single time. The handful of times she had visited in the last five years, she had always asked for money, or drugs, or both. Vince would always give it to her. As he opened the door and his eyes settled on the small frame of his mother, he knew this time would be no different.
Her hair, thinned out and matted, filled with knots and tangles, looked unwashed and unkempt. Her face was sallow and sunken in at the cheeks, and her eyes which were once beautiful and blue, were now blank and hollow, devoid of any emotions they once held. Her skin had been picked raw—red dots scattered across the plains of her forehead and cheeks, some darkened and brown from scabbing, some pink and glistening from being perpetually ripped and scratched open.
She wore a brown sweater, though Vince was sure the color only appeared brown due to never being washed. It was half-zipped, leaving her torso exposed unevenly, with one of her bony shoulders peeking out. It was splattered with sun spots, wrinkly and freckled orange from sun damage. Her sweatpants appeared worn and stained, their cuffs tattered from constant contact with concrete and footsteps. On her feet were sneakers that seemed weathered, perhaps even older than Vince himself, and she wore them bare, without a pair of socks to soften their impact.
Vince would often think about his mother throughout his days. Most the time, it was about how much he felt he hated her. And yet, as she stood there before him, he couldn't bring himself to turn her away. Even though he knew she wasn't there for him, how could a child turn away their parent in this state? She looked worse than the last time he had seen her. She was a walking skeleton— a caricature of her old self.
No matter how vehemently he convinced himself of his hatred towards her, he was always scared that it would be the last time he would see her. The thought of the last image of her being him slamming the door in her face filled him with an unsettling fear that he wasn't willing to entertain.
"You gonna make me stand here all day or what?" Her voice, hoarse and strained, carried the weight of years of substance abuse. No longer feminine, smooth, or even remotely human, it emerged in a low and raspy croak, akin to a lifetime chain smoker on their deathbed. It grated against Vince's ears like nails on a chalkboard. "You don't recognize your own Ma, boy?"
