Three years later...
The light bulb flashes, dances, flutters, and fools with my mind.
I need to turn off the bulb, but it's like the fireflies I never get to see in Sacramento. They hide in secret spots and they are difficult to find. The light from a firefly in California glows dimly. Nothing like the fireflies you see in books and on television. I spent hours looking for them when I was younger. I would create perfect wetland habitats to attract them near the pond.
My eyes blur and my head lurches.
The glow from the light the flickers, flashes, and then fades.I pull my knees in closer to my chest and conserve the heat. I can't distract my mind. Clutter thoughts run rampant in my and twist my brain in knots. My head fills with the one TV station we got when I was younger, it had documentaries on Fireflies.
My eyes tighten up block out the flicker from the light. The last sparks from the bulb to dies. Cold penetrates my clothes and digs into me.
The room spins.
No.
My breath quickens as dark memories flood my thoughts. I draw my legs in even tighter, fervently try to block out the day my life finally completed its slow crumble. The last moments of my brother's life stab through my mind like sharp spikes. The gunshots scream through the night and slings his large frame like a rag doll.
My eyes shut tighter as I fight to push out the sight of my older brother's blood pools...
Fireflies glow because, because...
The spins stop.
I grasp at the memory, and force the other bloody thoughts back. Push the blood into a spot that I won't have to touch. Behind the place, I keep my older brother safe and alive and whole: Behind the glow of our life together in the time before, when we were safe from the monsters.
Breathe.
I try to swallow tiny puffs of wet stale air in the unfinished remodeled bathroom. The sink drips with slow pings down the bathroom drain. Each drop of water clicks and fills the air with a musty muddy scent. My foster family's precious unfinished Italian marble bathroom. It's a victim of the Global Financial Crisis that everyone once said could never happen.
I try and calm myself down before I make too much noise. Don't alert the monster of my presence. The ebb and flow of medication crash through my mind again spinning the room. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep quiet.
Quiet, quiet, please, please.
He'll come.
I plead with myself, but I already know it's too late. The calm I need to deal with the panic attack isn't something I will find this time. The forgotten bathroom door opens with a loud creak of disuse. My eyes flip open wide, my pupils constrict than dilate to adjust to the harsh backlight. His large mud-crusted black boots fill the bathroom doorway.
He's the son of a good upstanding upper middle-class family. A family that was nice enough to take in a little black girl who lost everyone and fell into the system. Five different houses with only a backpack and a large black plastic bag. Every move was the same routine, fit everything you could possibly care about into your backpack and one trash bag, leave it all behind again for the next house. A ready-made plastic life, each house unlovingly provided. With my trash bag in hand, I internalized the message sent. I was moved from house to house but never to a home.
I look up from his boots into his eyes, it's always a mistake, but I've never been that smart to begin with. His hand snaps out fast to wrap around my ankle, digs his fingers into my skin and drags me across the unfinished tile floor into the hallway. Splinters of pain radiate from my ankle as I try in vain to roll and twist away. I'm caught by him as effective as a fly stuck in sticky paper. His clammy hand slithers around my ankle. His grip tightens pulling me back to him. He massages himself with his hand in time with my frantic movements. His breath gets jagged and faster as he drags me closer.
My fingers scramble for purchase in thick strands of the carpet. As if the crush strains are a lifeline I could pull myself away from him.
I know the more I fight him, the more he will hurt me, but still, I fight him.
***
He waits until I get home from school after they make me take the pills. The medication reminds me more of a bag of bad tasting skittles. They are prescribed and paid for by the state from a doctor who said he was going to help me. Instead, he gave the family that took me in a prescription for bottles full of pills, rubber stamped and ready to go. I guess they were supposed to make me feel normal.
Mostly, I'm slow and numb with sharp flashes of emotion sometimes.
At times, I see the old me peeking through the pills. The me that's not high every day doesn't exist anymore.
I don't remember.
I don't remember normal.
What is normal like?
Just breathe.
He's the fortunate son of a fortunate son and like any good son of a good family, he was supposed to go to a nice Ivy League college. The son who was to become the apple of his parents' eye, as the old-fashioned saying goes. He lives in a good neighborhood. He has a nice car; his father bought it in preparation for his private high school graduation.
His plans changed when his trip overseas with all his private school friends tour Europe was canceled due to the recession. Short on money, they returned their leased luxury car and sold off his graduation present. His mother has returned to the workforce for extra money, hedge her bets if her husband's real estate business goes under, ended all of her social charity work. They called off the big house remodel before completion, it left sections of their expensive McMansion house near the lake unfinished. Not the parts where neighbors could see from the street, of course. That part of the house remodel had to be completed, debt be damned.
For such an expensive house, it's surprising how thin the walls are at night. The nightly fights between husband and wife permeate through the thin walls in a fucked up duet of dysfunction.
At some point, I've become his family's albatross.
***
Dear God.
Just breathe.
He's finished with me.
My breath thunders in my chest as it races in and out.
Breathe slow.
Breathe...
My feet drag against the carpet into the bathroom. I slam the door with a crash. The door bounces open and my anger flashes at the stupid door. A house with no locks in some fucked up proof of their family's openness. I pick up a shoe and wedge in into the door to close it.
I take off my clothes and limp into the shower. Cold icy shards stream over my head. The cold water rivulets run over my dark skin. I wipe his leavings from my hair, spit his bitter saltiness out of my mouth, and rinse him away with the cold water. This is his version of help me with my homework while his parents work late. Chill invades my body as I wipe him off my neck, and scrub him from. My nails sink into my flesh.
Breathe.
Foggy panic as I take each breath slow. The noise from the shower completely fails to quiet my mind.
Just breathe.
Don't think about it.
The swing of the light keeps up its flickers of false mating calls to other fireflies. My older brother told me once that fireflies are disappearing due to light pollution. They can't find one another. I thought he was teasing me because he was older than me. I mean teasing is what big brothers, even though I was his legal ward. He was right, a world of fireflies who can't see in the bright nights. They can't reach out to find each other to mate. Maybe I'll never get to see fireflies in mass like on TV. A mass of firefly lights that light your way home.
I step out of the shower, my wet feet touch the cold tile. I dry off my body; my eyes shift away, restless. Avoiding the person who will look back at me in the mirror.
My twist braids drip water onto the unfinished tile floor. I wipe up the bloody scratch along my stomach where he pushed up my shirt. Blood welts against my deep chocolate skin, it could go unnoticed and blend in. I quickly hide the bruise on my breasts from my mirror self.
When I was younger, I got everything on my body, butt, breast, all at once around ten making me a thick girl. My older brother took me for my first bra. It was one of those uncomfortable funny memories that was once guaranteed to make me smile. The memory doesn't work anymore since coming to this godforsaken house.
My pace speeds up. Extra clothes I always keep in my backpack, just in case comes in handy. I open the bathroom's cabinet door, my hands shake as I replace the soiled basket of towels with a fresh one and put a little food and water in the basket. They both fall asleep in the basket. The only two secrets I've been able to keep in this house. I slide down to the cold tile floor with my back to the wall and my eyes watch the door. Is he done?
This is as clean as I am ever going to get in this house.
Has to be done...
If I tell myself enough times, maybe I'll believe it. Better to face the door and see him coming than to sit waiting in my room until his parents come home. They will be here soon enough and expect the perfect picture that they paid for. I'll have to sit at the table eating food across from him. A smile on my face that is more of a grimace than a smile. He'll tell his parents how he helps me with my homework. He explains in a sycophant tone how he double-checks my work with a subtle hint at how stupid and dyslexic I am. I must eat every last bite of the fucking perfect dinner that tastes of ash and dust in my mouth. Smile at his mother and father the whole time while my stomach churns slow.
Be perfect.
Remember the most important, rule this is a happy home.
Breathe
I'm always reminded that I should be grateful for the opportunity to live with their family and eat their food. My eyes slip closed and I let the numbness move through my mind. A haze claws across my mind. Talons of the prescription high reach out to suppress my thoughts. The haze clouds my mind, swallows my thoughts up whole as I swallowed those pills one at a time without chewing.
Flashes of dark feelings surrounded by all of the numb.
Maybe the pills are good for me?
[You might be wondering why I started at this point, for an urban fantasy book. I'm a comic book girl to my core. In comic books, we love our origin stories. Mostly, I start at this point in her life, because the bottom is not the beginnings or end of our dreams it is just a point on the line. We all hit bottom at some point, so I wanted to start at the beginning. Her independence might be born of a nightmare, but you had to understand it. The unhidden truth to understand her. It's not the whole of her, it's just a piece, but I didn't want to hide this piece.
please keep reading.
Thanks for reading publishing next part Thursday. please feel free to leave a message below. I'd love to talk about the book or if you catch a problem please tell me. Thanks for taking this journey with me - Miss O. ]