𝐃𝐄𝐏𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐃

1

HER PREY

They say you attract the flaws of your parents.

I gasped.

My upper body jolted out the icy wetness, rocking the water like a storm brewing its tea. I was still gasping- gasping for air as I slid my faintly pink stained hands down my face to brush the droplets from my eyes. Although blurry, a dingy white bathroom wall, cracked cement hard and ancient stood between each of the white tiles, and a white, chafed tub, far from porcelain, swallowed me whole.

I feel like I'm in an insane asylum.

White, white, white.

I wiped at my eyes again, quieting my breathing as I looked around. I didn't want them to hear. Didn't want to hear what they had to say either, for that fact. The door was locked and an old chair was pressed underneath the withered brass knob just in case it rattled, across the small space.

'Why do you have a chair in the bathroom, Casei?'

'Oh, because I was doing my hair and I didn't feel like standing.'

I have to be natural when I say that. I have to be.

When I have to say that...

They notice everything but not nearly enough.

Everything I do comes under scrutiny. They're the microscope and I'm just a small ant, trying to live my life. So much so, that even when they aren't here...I can feel them staring.

I live in my parents' observational gaze.

"Casei?"

Not a moment alone. Ever, it seems.

Little clumps of clumsily dyed copper brown hair floated in the water like cirrus clouds around me. This house seemed to reek of hair product and soap and...something else.

Sex.

I let the water out of the tub and stood up, letting my heavy hair hang to my shoulders, tickling my skin. I stepped out, my body marred with the scars of permanent dye, and the battlefield that waited beyond the door.

Never alone.

"Casei?" my mother banged on the bathroom door, making its peeled white frame shake in terror. It had seen as many things as I had. Maybe even more.

I lifted my heather gray towel around my body and pretended for a second that I was in a hotel, and
my mother was just a pesky maid bothering me while I had my afternoon champagne. Didn't she know who I was? Didn't she know my status? I could have her fired. I tsked, twirling my hand around in a nonchalant manner as I pictured a grand room with large windows that didn't need any curtains in an affluent area like that, and a big bed to do whatever my heart's content on, and soft carpet that cushioned between your toes instead of scratching my sole.

"I'll take this door off!"

Those words felt like hot steam, screaming to escape a scraped, dingy pot. Its own metal prison-

I snapped back to reality, quite literally, my fingers brushing together sharply as the last remnants of my daydream wafted away like the humidity clouding the mirror. I looked over at the glass, cold fingers gripping the counter's edge. We didn't live anywhere nice, but it wasn't too bad. Subtract a roach or too, and maybe a splinter from the wet wood, maybe poor maintenance but- like my dad said, we'd be alright.

We didn't need much. We never will.

Unless my mom has that baby.

I see it in the way he grits his teeth, a tooth pick between the chipped one and the real yellow, rotten one at the bottom. Mood always sour like his-