"Pandora...Pandora...Pandora!"
My head returns from my from my phone slowly and I'm looking at her like she wants me to, but my hands still twirl my hair round
and round. Her eyes are drawn to my fingers, she squints and lingers there for a while. It bothers her but she wont say anything, she doesn't have the nerve.
shes looking at me again, she pauses then-
"didnt you hear me?"
"what"
She doesn't grace me with a response...only shakes her head just a little.
"Come eat"
The door creaks after her like usual. I don't remember a time it didn't. She's probably made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches again, she
doesn't know how to cook. Oh no that's my job, my job to clean, my job to take care of her, my job to make sure the the kids are ready for school at 5:00am everyday, my job to make sure they know everything needed to survive to live to breath to talk to shit to sleep. If they come up missing or hurt, well that's my fault I must not have taught them what to do incase of in emergency. Must not have taught them any better or how else will they know? I've always had a job, I'm just not getting paid for it. I get breaks at school and oh but of course there's no "days off" for me because who else will do it? If I don't do it, then it just won't get done.
"Pandora if you don't come now! You'll go to bed hungry tonight"
Can't leave my food for too long, one of those greedy children will eat it before the plate touches the floor.
I leave my room, making my way towards the crowded living room where im liable to step on someones leg or foot. I wish one of the adults in this house would invest in a table. don't they ever get tired of eating on this dirty fucking floor!
we live in a trailer park where theirs mold growing up the outside of every single trailer you come across.
its disgusting but its the best my mother can do for us so im grateful anyways, but do we have to have the whole trailer park living with us? Its 8 adults not including the kids and if ive counted correctly 7 people younger than 10, so take an educated guess on how goddamn crowded this place is. I just want my room to be MY room again.
im stopped in my trackes by a small foot stretched out towards me. I tilt my head down to see him better.
"tie my shoes for me" asks kyo.
he's 8 and should proably know how to tie his shoes already but thats my fault, im too busy to teach my brother how because i haven't finshed teaching the other kids yet. I guess he'll just have to learn a little later then the rest.
"pandora go change my daughters diaper, then give her a bath"
"Pandora make sure you clean thoses dishes before you go to bed"
"Pandora i need you to put the baby to sleep while i do this right quick"
"you better eat that damn food because you won't get nothing else tonight Pandora"
thats my mothers friend and what she needs to "do right quick" is watch the football game thats coming on. I figure it won't be off for a few hours. She watchs every game, ive never seen her miss one.
"i want to eat first, everybody else has gotten to eat but me"
maybe I should learn when to shut up, because everyone quiets down their conversations to hear us. She's turned the tv off and I've never ever seen her do that, it's something new.
Rose is up on her feet fast, so fast her feet thudding against the floor makes the whole trailer shake so hard, you hear the walls rattle. I don't know what I expected but I think I knew when I saw her coming towards me with her jaw clenched and her bodying swaying from side to side, that she was going to hit me. I didn't try to stop her because I thought my mother would say something, anything but-
She didn't.
She slapped me so hard my ear rung and I put my hand out to grab something. I was disoriented as expected, but I was shocked and disappointed and and and...hurt. Not because she hit me, no she's done that before but never in front of my mother and somehow I had convinced myself that she would help me. That she would yell and scream or maybe kick her out. how could I have really thought she would just do her fucking job for once!
My mothers face proved me wrong when I looked to find her with her eyebrows raised while she shakes her head back and forth like SHES the one disappointed in me.
"YOU don't get no fucking wants! You do what I tell you to do when I tell you to do it, do you understand?"
I don't respond. Not when I'm still staring at my unconcerned mother waiting for her to look at me, but she doesn't. in fact she never looks my way even once.
" DO YOU UNDERSTAND!"
"Yes"
"matter fact take your ass to bed and don't even think about grabbing that food"
i don't want her to grab the extenstion cord or one of her metal hangers. Those rip the skin and i don't have any cream left for that, so i went to my room like she said.
i lay there in the dark on my mattress that has cigarette burns and knife holes it. Its on the floor but i know even a piece of tarp would be more comfortable. A little bit of light slithers in from the cracked door, but i know i closed it which means someones in here.
"what do you want Kyo"
"are you ok?"
"I'm fine"
he doesn't speak again for a while but eventually-
"you shouldn't make her angry all the time..she'll keep hurting you"
"i know"
he leaves but im still awake and i know i won't sleep. my mind is still awake, thinking constanstly about what occured early. Im not dissappointed, i feel more, deeper and it aches. I wish it would go away, just stop bothering me all the time with this feeling when i can't even describe it! I feel humilated, like my own mother slapped me instead of her friend. Feeling despondent is nothing new to me. Its borrowed deep inside the depts of my eyes, my skin, my blood, my brain, my nails, my very soul, my everything. It leaks from my hair and eyelashes then drips back onto my skin to be reabsorbed. The smell carrys a horrid stench and it doesnt go away in the shower, there is no escape from me and i am despondent. It lives and breaths like me and who am i to deny myself so i let it in.
the smell of dissappointment is egregious and it is living inside of me so...tomorrow i will do this all again, be dissappointed again, and so on for the next day. i should have known better then to dream.
YOU ARE READING
My diseased mind
Horror"Pandora is living a lie...fantasy's created by her own mind, real and fake is one in the same for her. Pandora hates her reality so she lives inside herself, where she doesn't have to face the inescapable jaws of death"