Way Down We Go

Chapter Twenty

"Marriage isn't a business transaction, Catherine. I'll help you and your businesses, but I can't remain married to him anymore. It's only because of the business partnership that this is taking so long." I said.

"I'm sorry he did this. He knows our feelings on it."

"Our?" I frowned.

"Henry and I are furious with him over this. Not just on the business level, but the personal, too. You know you're our daughter, as much as Elisabeth, Claude, Margot, Joan and Victoria." I nodded. "He hurt our child."

"He's your child." I whispered, turning around. "You have to defend him."

"I don't justify what he did, and you are just as much mine as he is." she kissed my head. I leaned into her embrace. "We are similar, you and I. Not just in the mother, daughter sense. But we have lead similar lives and faced similar consequences. But here we are, a little sad, but bloodied and alive."

I smiled softly, reaching up to brush a lock of hair from my face.

"I wish it was that simple." I lowered my hand, but her eyes widened and she grappled for the wrist. I hissed in pain.

"Mary, what the hell is this?!" she looked at my forearm, top to bottom with hawk like eyes, grabbing at the other. I was too weakened to stop her. She looked at the skin, pale as porcelain. Marred with skinniness, so much so that my bones were almost visible. Blemished. by tattoos that I hadn't covered up with makeup. But tarnished by long crimson scars. And mutilated by little dots on the crook of my elbow.

"Some habits are harder to quit than other, mom."

"Wake me when the shakes are gone
And the cold sweats disappear
Call me when it's over"

"Are you insane?!" A security guard shrieked at the tour manager as I lay whimpering upon the floor. My skin was covered in sweat, white graphic tee sticking to my clammy skin, sipped jean shorts crumpled as they clung to my skin. My arms lay out to the sides as I breathed in and out, harshly and harder than ever before. They became shaky as the legs, feet and ankles that I saw before me blurred with tears. I inhaled as best I could, but the fever and the shakes trembled my being so much that my fingers vibrated upon the floor. "Look at her, she can't go out like this!" he yelled, pointing to me. Feared by the noise, I whimpered and looked up at him, as if that scared little girl again, fearing daddy's whip whenever she had done something wrong. My stomach rolled as the need appeared once more. I reached out for it, trying to find it, but came up empty.

"She has to!" the tour manager snapped loudly. I heard cheers suddenly, now realising why everybody around me was shouting so loudly. "There's fifteen thousand people out there screaming her name, she has to go and preform! We're already late!"

"Look at her! Kids so messed up she can't even stand up on her own two damn feet! How can she sing out there, she's not a fucking puppet, Michael!" the large, imposing man roared. I sniffled, tears suddenly coating my cheeks, mixing with the sweat and grease. I tried to stand, to prove him wrong, but fell to the cold stones once more. I whimpered with the pain.

"She got herself into this mess by getting hooked up on that stuff, and she's gonna go on whether she likes it or not!"

"She's not your fucking cash cow, man. Look at the kid!" he pointed at me. I whimpered aloud, wondering what was going on and where I was and where people who would protect me were, but I came up empty again. I was forced to my feet by people and cried out with the pain. My stomach rolled with the quick movement and I barely managed to get to a bucket, regurgitating whatever morsels I had been able to eat those couple days.