Perfectly Imperfect

Prologue: Awoo

"Hey, sweetie."
"Sweetie?" A foot nudged me in the side. I opened my eyes, it was still dark outside. I don't think I had been asleep very long. She smiled her crooked smile at me. She emitted an odour I still hadn't gotten used to despite the fact I had been around it all my life.
"Mum?" I asked. This wasn't normal, this was not routine. What was she doing? Why was she sober? This terrified me much more than seeing them comatose on the couch. Much worse than being pawed at by their friends. It was the unknown, it interrupted everything I had grown accustomed to.

"Get dressed sweetie, we're going for a little drive," Her voice was hoarse, it was the most I had heard her speak in a long time. She was shaking gently. When she realised I hadn't moved she shouted, "Now!"
I shot up and got dressed, I wasn't sure what I had thrown on, there wasn't much light and so I couldn't see what I had grabbed. Who knew if they were even the right way around. The familiar feeling of panic crawled up my spine and lodged itself in my throat. 

There was no denying it, I was terrified out of my wits. 

I found it difficult to breathe and swallow as I was dragged out of the doorway. I saw my Mum scratch viciously at her forearm more than once. Was she going through withdrawal? Is that even possible, it had been less than 24 hours since their last hit, that much I knew. 

Were we in danger? Did they do something dumb to their supplier? Oh god, did the police find out? I was only vaguely aware of the fact that we were being pelted with rain. The night was dark and ominous the creepy silence made my skin crawl. I was shoved roughly into the backseat of a car. Wait, what? We don't own a car. "Mum, who's ca-" 
I was cut off.
"Shh, baby. It's okay. We're taking you somewhere safe." She stroked my cheek. I had to hold back a shiver. Her hands were as cold as her words. There was absolutely no warmth in what she said.

I curled myself up as small as I could, trying to seek comfort in myself as I had been forced to do for so long. Only, this time, it didn't work. My Dad was driving, and he didn't look to be in any fit state to be doing so. He looked even worse than my mum did. He was shaking a lot more visibly and he was sweating. He looked paranoid, constantly checking in the rearview mirror as if something was following us.

"Are the police on to us?" I ask.
"Shut up." She growled, clearly already fed up of me. 
I squeezed my knees to my chest tighter. Hoping in some paradoxical way that by squeezing them into my chest maybe the terrible tightness between my ribs would ease. Something bad was going to happen, I knew it. I knew it more than anything. I squeezed my eyes shut, I wasn't naively going to hope this was a bad dream.

But I was very much naive enough to hope there was some kind of intervention. The car crashes? The police pull us over for his terrible driving? They come to some kind of epiphany of their terrible ways and take us back to the shoddy mould-infested apartment? I didn't know nor care, I just hoped anything would happen so that we wouldn't make it to wherever our destination was going to be.

It briefly crossed my mind to jump out of the car. But what would that achieve other than some severe gravel burns. I would be either homeless, if they left me, or dragged straight back into the car. I also noticed that the doors were locked. Definitely paranoid about something. I shivered from both my cold damp clothes and the fear that attached itself to me like a second skin. I didn't even know how long we were driving for. Were we still in Yorkshire? Who knows, something about fear makes your sense of time irrational. 

All I knew was that we were driving through some heavily dense woods for so long that I felt my eyes shutting against my wishes. A stinging slap to my cheek ended that nonsense, I looked over to my mother but she was already facing ahead, I wasn't sure why she needed me awake so badly. Why was she sat in the back with me and not the front? So many questions. The morning sun was beginning to peak up along the horizon at this point and it lit up one side of her face. It was haunting. The large dilated pupils, the sunken cheeks. The pale skin from being neglected from sunlight. She was a walking, barely talking corpse. And she just slapped me, hard, with the bony hand.