Mistress of Stitches

Needle and Thread

I wake up in the middle of the night quite often. I open my eyes and let them adjust. When I look at the clock it reads '12:37'. I groan and lay back in my bed listening again. I try to find any sign that Taylor may be coming. The only thing is slight footsteps. Too heavy to be hers. It must be my father walking to the family room.

I decide to get up and head to the bathroom. Or, what seems to be one. Sure the toilet flushes and I have a working shower and sink, but the fact that no matter how much I clean it there is no way it'll be more than halfway decent.

It's so disgusting. Every time I go into that room the feeling of my worst fears overwhelms me. I'll twitch around acting as if there's a millipede or centipede about to crawl down the wall. I always check going in and out.

I hear a different pair of feet down stairs. It's very light. It's either my step siblings, Brian or Allison. I hear voices, one male and another male. Yep it's Brian. He must have had another nightmare. Just last week I overheard he had a nightmare about a horrid black monster picking him up with a horrible high pitch scream. Everything went white and that's when he woke up.

The description suits how I see my stepmother. Some terrifying black monster searching around until she finds me and punishes me for running away. And it's most definitely that after she's being drinking enough to get herself drunk.

I get up trying to hurry out of the room. My stepmother doesn't want to hear my toilet flush after 9:00 or she'll get me for it. Just my luck. Getting up I'm careful not to hit the knob, I'm so used to hitting it. But of course I stumble and bump into the counter it's so dark. The soap bottle tips and falls on the ground hitting the knob allowing the toilet to flush.

In fear I wash my hands with just water and run back to my room and listen. Nothing. As I'm thinking it didn't wake her I hear groaning of bed springs in the room across my wall. 'Please just let it be dad getting back in bed.' I pleaded in my mind.

Two minutes of silence. Then I hear a tiny squeak as if someone was rolling out of bed. The slight thud of a door shutting in the same room makes me tense up. I can tell she's coming. She heard it. Of course she did. It won't be but a few minutes until she's unlocking the door, dragging me from my bed.

I start shaking like unusually do when I'm not feeling well. The sickening feeling of her drunk and angry. Her coming for me knowing it was me. I can hear her footsteps getting closer to my door. This is the cliff at the end of the river to me.

I can hear the lock click and the door squeak at the bottom of the stairs. The heavy breathing and beating of feet coming up the hard stairs almost makes me whimper. Next thing I know she's pulled at my hair forcing me in the middle of the floor.

"Are you stupid??" She snarls at me. Tears are streaming down my face now. "Do you think we want to hear you?! YOU SHOULD BE ASLEEP YOU LITTTLE WHORE" she screams at me. I watch as she raises her whip tensing up as I do. She brings it down leaving a half foot long cut down my back. I scream into my teeth.

She brings it down once more hitting me on my right shoulder down halfway to my elbow. I can feel the blood trickling down my spine and arm. I start to whimper.

She strikes me again on my forearm. "You will never do that again do you hear?!" She yells at me. "Yes ma'am." I cry out sitting against the wall.

My stepmother leaves the room and I can hear her slam and lock the door. I start sobbing into the floor until I can't cry anymore.

I get up sniffing. I head over to the mirror looking at the cuts. They're huge except for the one on my forearm. They're all deep and bleeding nonstop. I grab my needle and thread and sit in front of the mirror.

I start threading each of them starting with the one in the back. Every stitch I have is the color dark blue, like a bruise. When I finish tying up the last cut, I count how many stitches I have. 23. Twenty three stitches. I'm starting to look like a torn up teddy bear..

Instead of going to my bed, I just lay down and go to sleep instead holding the needle still.