Journey

Chapter 1

1994

A secluded, miserable looking, and run down double wide trailer in the outskirts of the woods surrounding a small South Carolina town. Inside, a lanky five year old girl wearing nothing but mucky shorts and a wife beater with more than a few holes in it blinks awake on an untidy bed covered in several different piles of clothes. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and holds her stained, tattered doll tight to her chest before she climbs off the bed. She's too short to have her feet touch the ground so she swings them and wiggles her toes in the air for a few seconds prior to jumping the distance from the edge of the mattress to the floor before she exists the single room in the trailer and onto the hallway.

"Mommy?"

The little girl gets no response. She walks towards the other side of the unkempt trailer and sees her mom at the table.

"Mommy I'm hungry."

She gets no answer from her mom. She walks closer to the brunette woman slouched over the table and speaks again.

"Can I have a sandwich?"

When the little girl gets no answer she climbs onto the booth and shakes her mom. When she does, the syringe still plunged deep in the woman's arm wiggles around. The sight of a syringe buried inside her mother's skin doesn't faze the little girl because she's seen many syringes and all of them going in and out of arms plenty of times before.

"Mommy wake up."

The little girl shakes her mom. She notices her mom feels colder than usual but she doesn't know what it means. The little girl slides off the booth and pulls up a chair to the coat hanger by the table. She climbs on it to reach her mother's blazer and pulls it from the hook. She jumps off the chair and goes back to the booth clumsily wrapping it around her mother's shoulders.

"So you're not cold anymore."

The girl sits next to her mom waiting for her to wake up. Her mother always does eventually, sometimes it just takes her a while. The little girl has learned she just has to wait.

A few hours pass and the little girl sits on the booth playing with her doll waiting for her mother to wake up. She has tried talking to her many times, but her mommy must be really tired because she's not answering. The girl's stomach grumbles.

"Mommy I'm really hungry."

She says again hoping that if she repeats it enough times then her mother will come to and make her something to eat. She waits a short while longer but when her mother doesn't respond she hops off the booth and opens the grimy fridge a few feet away. Inside there's some beer which she's told she can't touch. Not that she likes the taste anyway so she wouldn't have it. Besides the few cans there's really nothing more. The girl closes the fridge. She goes back to the room she slept on and grabs a pair of her handed down, worn out shoes. She slides her feet in, sticks the velcros on tight, and heads towards the front of the trailer once more. She stands by the door and pushes it but before she exits she looks back at the table.

"I'll be right back."

The little girl and her doll walk towards the rear of the trailer where there is a heavily weathered shed surrounded by overgrown weeds and trees. She walks past the shed and turns behind it towards a pile of stacked up rocks. She pulls a few of the rocks and uncovers a hole with some treasures. Inside there are cookies, a handful of fruits on the verge of rotting, and a few stale sandwiches. She grabs one of the cookie snack packets and ineptly covers the hole with rocks again. She sits on the dirt next to the shed and opens the packet. She grabs a cookie and hums looking at her doll.