Other Worlds - The Wilds

Chapter 36

Another darker one so TW's for that. Hope you are all doing well! The big confrontation xx
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  Toni knew before she even turned around. "Carol." Her voice shook. She moved to face her slowly, hands raised. An instinctual gesture that was necessarily not likely to improve her situation.

  The second she met the older woman's eyes, she knew that there was an almost zero percent chance that she was going to come out of this unscathed.

  Carol looked detached, like she was outside her own body, every inch of her face stone cold and her eyes totally vacant. Toni had seen Carol is many states but there was something about this seething, quiet and cold anger that made Toni genuinely wondered if she would get out of this one at all.

  "Toni. You have no idea what you've done." She spoke calmly, the untrained ear might not have been able to detect the venom in Carol's voice but Toni knew the woman well. Knew that she had hit a breaking point.

  She looked around for something in the room that could help her but it was totally empty, even down to the coat hangers.

  She couldn't have come in before I packed everything? she thought bitterly.

  Toni wondered what happened to Melanie, whether Carol had hurt her or if she had left her alone. Surely she wasn't that inexperienced? Maybe she didn't actually believe her? Toni tried not to spiral. She couldn't split her focus now, not when Carol was looking at her as though she was already dead.

  "Carol, I'm sorry. I couldn't do it any more. I just don't understand why you do it? What do you actually get from this?" Keep her talking, Toni thought.

  With trembling hands, Carol popped an oxy... probably from the bag that she had recovered from Toni's room. Withdrawal. Surely Toni had the upper hand here then?

  "You have no idea what it was like for me to grow up in the house that I did..." Carol stared off into the distance for a moment before coming back to herself and laughing dryly, "Well, I suppose you understand some of it."

  Toni decided to stay quiet. Opting to let Carol fill in the blanks herself.

  "My father... was a cold man. He grew impatient with my mother very rapidly. But my mother was smart, she took his beatings, choosing to release the tension on her own kids instead of on her husband who she knew could easily overpower her."

  Toni's heart tried to sympathise, knowing the feeling, but she squashed it down, no good could come of her becoming distracted by Carol's story. It was just to keep her occupied until the police arrived. If Melanie even had the chance to call them, the dark part of her brain whispered to her, the intrusive thought weakening her confidence.

  Carol continued her story fingers running over the fixtures in Toni's room, "I remember it as though I was yesterday. The day I finally realised that, like my mother, I could have it too."

  Toni was afraid to ask. "Have what?"

  Carol sucked her teeth, her nostrils flaring, "What have I told you about interrupting!" She sighed loudly and shook her head, regaining her composure. "Power. Control. Survival instinct. Whatever you want to call it, it lived in my mother. And I respected that about her, but I had it too, and I don't think she really knew that until that day."