Black Blood

Abuse

I wake up with a very startling jolt. However, before I can even look at my alarm clock to check what time it is, my snobby, always late mother yells up the stairs. 

"Get your lazy ass up! You're going to be late for school! You have five minutes to get ready!" 

"And you couldn't have gotten me up any sooner?" I yell back, not to my surprise my reply was met with heavy stomps coming up the stairs. It was my mom; the stomps were slowly creeping their way toward my room. 

I have made my mother mad. She is the scariest person alive when she is mad; she always results in violence. She steps into my room and stares daggers at me with her dark brown eyes, which almost turn black when she is enraged. As she nears my bed, inching her way closer to me with that menacing look in her eyes, my sad eyes met hers making me look away almost instantly. 

"Do I intimidate you so much that you can't even look me directly in the eyes?" she yells in my face, a sort of laughter present in her voice. She was preparing her hand to hit me. 

She's abused me ever since my father died; he died when I was only eleven. He was the victim of a robbery gone very wrong. I watched this all happen; it still kills me to relive this memory I have of his death. However, I relive it almost every day and that is all because of my mother. My mother causes me to relive it because she has always blamed me for his death, I never knew why. I guess it could be because I watched him die and couldn't do anything about it. According to her though, I could have stopped it all from happening. I could have distracted them, or even gone with him. My mom would give anything to have my father back, including her own daughter. With my mother being the way she is, she has even made me believe that I actually killed my own father like I was actually responsible for his death. My mother literally makes me feel like I should have just gone with the men to save my father. According to my mom, I was the one the people who broke into our house that night wanted; although, I couldn't imagine why. But, yes, if you were wondering where my father is, he's dead. He fought his last battle and lost, fighting for me. 

My mom raised her hand and slapped me across the face as hard as humanly possible; it had left a giant red mark on the left side of my face. My first thought was if anyone would notice the huge mark on the side of my face when I finally got to school. No one but my best friend, Olivia, really cares about me, so no one but her normally notices small details like that. I have made a habit to just blame it on me running into something; I have always been a clumsy type of person. If I actually told Olivia, or anyone for that matter, how I actually got my marks and bruises my mom had already told me she would kill me and anyone I said a word to. I don't tell anyone for their safety more than my own. I know my mom is actually capable of killing. 

After my mom had finished with her rage, she left me to get ready for school. However, I just laid there for fifteen minutes thinking of the excuse that I was going to give Olivia for the mark on my face, which clearly looked like a handprint, to no avail. I finally said fuck it and got up to get ready for school, after all, Olivia was already texting me asking me where I was for the fact that school had already started; I was late. I reluctantly got out of bed and walked towards my bathroom, when I got into the bathroom I just stood in the mirror looking at the red mark that was slowly forming into a bruise due to the earlier incident with my mom. Since I was already late for school, I decided a nice hot shower wouldn't hurt, so I started my water, got undressed, and got in the nice hot shower. The shower helped with my tenseness and it felt so nice that I did not want to get out. However, I knew I had to so fifteen minutes later I was drying off and finishing up in the bathroom by brushing my teeth and washing and moisturizing my face. Since I was in no hurry, I put on a bit of light makeup and walked out of the bathroom back to my room to find clothes. At this point, Olivia had texted me twenty-five times, so I finally texted her back and told her not to worry I overslept and I'll be there soon. I found a cute outfit that consisted of a red crop top that had the word "lifeguard" on it and a pair of my black ripped jeans; I put on my outfit and braided my hair in two dutch braids. I decided it was finally time to face going to school, so I grabbed my school stuff and proceeded down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the front door to my car. I managed to get out without another confrontation from my mom. Once I got to my car, I hooked my phone up to the Bluetooth and started my Spotify playlist. I texted Olivia and told her that I was on my way and took the twenty-minute drive to school.