I could hear the screaming, almost muffled as my vision went blurry. The leather seat still cold from before I sat down. The deafening screams drew my focus back. My face burning from the frustration and anger, the tears half dried covered my cheeks like hot pavement drying from the previous days rain. My eyes were burning and heavy from the lack of sleep and the tears, the splitting and scratching feeling in my throat with every scream I let out. My face was getting puffy, like a balloon filling with hot air. Her voice echoed in my ears with the hateful, cruel words she threw at me. The dogs in the background whining, hiding under the table and behind the couch, scared. My Stepfather pouring another drink in the kitchen. I could hear the ice as it hit the glass, the fizzy, room temperature soda popping when it collided with the cold ice and Jack Daniels.
I could smell the beer on her breath as she grabbed my shirt and pulled me out of my seat and close to her face in one swift movement, to ensure I could hear every ugly word she uttered. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hand radiating heat. I will never forget the hateful almost violent look in her eyes as I tried to tell her what happened. The tears flowed as I shouted, pleaded for her to listen. My throat tired and sore. I wanted her to understand. Every word that I dared to utter she responded three times louder and four times angrier. Her face getting redder and redder like an apple as it aged as she repeated three words that still ring in my ears from time to time. "You are disgusting". Those three words and my voice stopped working, my throat closed, my mouth glued shut. My body got heavier as if I gained 200 pounds in 2 seconds, my legs gave out under the pressure of the newly added weight. The chills that ran up my body like stepping out of your warm comfortable house into the dead of winter, completely exposed to the elements.
Time slowed. I remember the itchy carpet under my legs. The quiet when the screams were halted, only filled by her footsteps as she receded into the kitchen for another drink. The ice, the Captain Morgan, the soda. The slam of the basement door and the loud almost thudding footfall down the stairs. My dog as she slowly walked over, half hunkered down, to lick my face as if she could hear the hopelessness my newly fallen tears were screaming, as if she could read in my eyes that my heart had given up. I remember hearing the soft almost unintelligible tears from up the stairs coming from my frightened younger sister. The noise faded out as I had become numb to my surroundings, stuck in my head. Weaving a web of lies that burned every previous belief about myself, about people, like acid. A web that just like a fly in a spider's web I would be stuck in with no way to free myself but still fighting relentlessly and violently for a way out. With every sliver of hope, with every part of myself I would inch free another one would be stuck deeper than before. And with every passing moment I was stuck in that web, my mind would become more and more mangled.
