My Demons

Chapter 3

~~~~~~~~

I was not fortunate enough to have a repeat of last night. Meaning, a night free of any sort of communication with either my Mother or the man she was dating. In reality, my Mother slept with me man whenever he wanted in return for him to cover half of the rent.

It disgusted me.

However, compared to some greetings i have received, this one was not too bad.

By the time I had dragged myself home, it was about half past three. This was about the usual time I would arrive home, so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.

The moment my shoe came into contact with the wooden floor boards, I was hauled inside by the front of my hoodie. Before I could even register what was happening, a fist collided with my face, splitting my lip. A soft groan omitted me mouth, and just as my vision began to focus, the same, terrible force slammed into my stomach, forcing me onto my knees.

“You fucking shit! The school rang and said you fucking walked out! How many timed do I gotta tell you, you can’t just fucking do what you want?!”

This time, his knee collided with my stomach, and I groaned, wishing that Darren would stop.

“Why won’t you ever learn your lesson?” Punch.

My head snapped back, slamming into the door behind me, and I knew that it was bleeding.

“Answer me, you fucking shit!”

“I- I-“ No words left my mouth, for they couldn’t. Not when the next forceful blow was delivered to my side.

“Answer me!” He yelled.

“I’m sorry.” I wheezed out of my cracked lips.

Darren grabbed the front of my hoodie, pulling me to my feet. Staring into my eyes, he glared at me with such an intensity I cringed. “Ugly shit.” He dropped me onto the ground and stalked off, leaving me on the floor.

It took me two minutes to cross the few meters separating me from my bedroom. Dizziness would overcome me, and I would have to cease moving. Disgusted at how vulnerable I was, I finally drew myself up and stumbled into my room. Barely managing to place the chair under the door behind me, I collapsed onto my bed in pain.

It wasn’t long before the sleep I had long since evaded crept up on me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I held my hand out. The man I was playing against glared at me, but not without reluctantly handing over four crisp hundred dollar notes. It certainly payed to be a good gambler. As surprising as it may seem to some, I only started to get into gambling because I needed money.

My Mother wouldn’t pay for food for me, and we were minutes away from being evicted. So, as I was tipsily shuffling around the neighbourhood, I came across a warehouse where people came to do illegal gambling.

After watching, I started against some other non experienced people, and started to win slight amounts. Sure, I lost a few hundred, but for every hundred I lost, I seemed to gain three. Eventually, it got to the stage where I had acquired a talent for the game, and rarely lost.

The money I earned usually payed off most of the rent, as Daren rarely coughed up more than twenty bucks a week, despite the sickening ‘agreement’ with my mother. The rest went towards drugs and other similar substances.

The atmosphere was tense, thick. The air itself smelt terrible, it was stale and smelt like vomit and alcohol. Even the lighting was poor, and sometimes I found it hard to read my cards. But that was on my bad days. The walls were a crumbling cement, that appeared to be about as unstable and unpredictable as a fresh drug user.