Plastic Hearts ✸ Rafe Cameron [ english ]

i. killing me slowly

𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 ——— pleasing a storm
killing me slowly ——— 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞

✤

          "You can't do anything right!"

The sound of my mother's scream filled the house, and a moment later, she appeared in my room like a tornado. The cup she had in her hand exploded into pieces with a loud crash on the wooden panels. I jumped from the bed and looked at her in shock.

"What's wrong with you again?" I shouted, and it took a moment for me to realize I shouldn't have. I didn't want to make her even angrier, but I think I did. I looked at the pieces of the cup that lay beneath my feet. "I mean... what happened?" I added quietly.

"I told you to..." She hung her head for a moment, looking at a point behind me. "It's Selina's..." She swept past me, and with a furrowed brow, I turned to follow her. And then I realized what she meant.

There was a dress from my older sister — Selina. She had given it to me a while ago because it was too small for her, and I had forgotten to hide it from our mother.

Selina has always been my authority figure, and I have admired her more, than any other person in the world. She was the one, who always helped me through our mother's aggressive episodes. In fact, I don't have any idea why she was like that, maybe she had some kind of illness or something, but she never had a diagnosis. One day, she would be throwing plates at me, and the next day she would be acting like the mother, I had always wanted to have.

My sister eventually met a Kook, fell in love with him, and shortly afterward my niece Olivia was born. Unfortunately, her prince turned out to be a regular asshole and left her for an oxidized blonde from Figure Eight. Our mother, hiding behind her beliefs, kicked her out of the house and gave me a categorical ban on seeing my sister. That's how I ended up alone, with a tyrannical mother, at the age of twelve. And I still live with her today. My friends or my sister often ask me why I'm still here, and why I let my mother treat me like a rag. But the truth is, I don't know myself. Maybe it's because I've become too attached to her over the years, or something like that. After every big fight, I promise myself that I'll finally move out and be free and happy. But when I calm down, it all goes away. And I end up staying in the same place.

"Why do you have it in your room?" she asked. My mother picked up the dress and looked at it for a moment. She even gently pushed it towards her, as if to hug it, but with a quick toss, she threw it on the floor and turned to me. "You're meeting this bitch behind my back!"

She comes closer and I feel sweat start to run down my back. She's about to punch me in the face. I don't want her to see that I'm afraid of her, so I straighten up immediately and gently raise my eyebrows. "I'm not meeting her! The last time I saw her was in the supermarket and..."

I didn't get the chance to finish. My mother slapped my cheek with an open hand. "Clean up this mess," she says as she leaves, and then slams the door shut behind her.