The Bleak Guide to Selcouth

Chapter one

I plan to kill myself.

Maybe tonight, or tomorrow, or probably right now but I just plan to do so.

I saw her in my dream again. Other days when I distracted myself with sex, it did not feel real; more like a bad memory like the times we fought or the times my mom would punish the both of us. But this time, it felt real; like a memory of the two of us thrift shopping for a new style of dressing whenever I had a new crush in elementary school. We'd eat ice-creams and walk around the mall a bit before heading home, ready to face our mom.

We buried her silently, my mom and I quiet as she was lowered into the ground, the intense weight of guilt and hatred clouding our minds and filling up the space of emptiness we felt inside.

And soon, six years flew by, I lost all my friends and my virginity to a one night stand I barely remember. It was always work, Friday night random sex, come home to my drunk mom sleeping on the couch, surf the internet before sleeping.

I'm sure you're wondering, where the fuck was my father?

Well let me tell you a brief history of my parents' gunned-down marriage.

Park Dong-Yun was an immigrant working at Ford as a mechanic and my mom Louise Harold owned a white Ford RS200, it was the '80s. He was the special engineer assigned to her vehicle and she was adamant on watching the job because the car was new and it was her 'baby'. I guess she couldn't resist those sweaty muscled arms turning the ratchet or the way he would roll out from under her vehicle with his black grassy Asian her that made him look like the Taehyung of our century.

Of course there was mad chemistry between them, she was the rich brown haired fierce girl from the rich side of town and he was the new ripped-Asian with an apartment he could barely afford. She picked him up, gave him a better job and they eventually got married and had two girls. The first girl they named Andie Seojun Park who looked exactly like her dad(me of course), and the second they named Ivelle Sunhye Park who looked like her mom.

"So cliché." I would roll my eyes like my mom whenever my dad would tell us the story when I was five and my sister was a year old. Although she did not understand any of the words he spilled, he would hold her high and tell her to listen well while he tickled her.

Life was pure then, until he cheated and frauded my mom on half of her investments. He ran away with his girlfriend, leaving my mom with so much pent up rage and hatred that she changed. She never smiled, worked extra hard and forced decisions on us.

"Maybe one day when we're older, we'll be able to make our life decisions and we'll be happy." nine year old Ivelle whispered in my ear when I cried to myself because my mom burned my diary for staying up late in elementary school to play tag with my friends.

Then we grew older, I became 17 and she 13. I began to notice things like how my mom would blame for me for every single shit that happened in our home and would never lift her voice against my sister. Maybe it's because I was in that rebellious age where you think you're starting to know it all but you're not even halfway there.

I changed a lot. I rebelled against my mom which often resulted in her hitting me a few times and forcing me to do things that eventually I still did. She was like a remote control and I was a channel programmed to act according to her desires.

I hated my sister because my mom loved her so much. I had no clue she was also depressed and when she drowned herself in the bathtub, she drowned my happiness and any other bright emotion I had.

I became empty, waking up everyday, preparing for the day I would decide to kill myself.

"Did you hear? Andie was the only staff who missed boss's wedding." I sat up on the toilet, stuffing the remaining piece of donut into my mouth quietly so the ladies from the other side of the bathroom wouldn't hear a thing.

"She feels she's better than all of us. I bet she hand-jobbed her way to becoming operations manager, I really fucking hate her." I flinched when my phone notification echoed.

'We're having dinner at the Seb Avenue, don't miss it.'

It was a short professional message from my mom and I sighed and came out of the toilet, avoiding the look of surprise on the two ladies' faces and walked closer to one of the sinks to wash my hands.

I walked over to my side of the office I shared with a colleague I barely knew.

The thing with people is once they notice you don't talk to anyone, they tend to mistake you for a stuck-up bitch whose mommy pays for everything. They don't know how much dreams you have to sacrifice to impress your mom, or how much terrifying nightmares you have to surpress so you wouldn't remind her of how much it was your fault her younger daughter died.

I fixed my work dress and dusted my stilettoes when I spotted her from the transparent glass of the restaurant but frowned when I noticed a guy around my age in front of her. He was staring at his rolex watch with a frown on his faded mustache that made my inside recoiled like a month old cooked spaghetti locked in a drawer.

"I'm sorry I'm late, the queue at the train station was surprisingly much." I apologized, sitting close to where she patted, picking up the small glass of transparent wine and locking eyes with the Russian-eyed suited-up man that sat across us. He smelled rich, like fashion designer secretly mafian rich. I hated that, I felt nauseous.

"Andie, meet your husband to be."