What If?

One:

****
Argh!!!
Life's not fair!
Throwing myself heavily on the couch, I let out a sigh. When will I ever get a proper job! But again who's willing to employ a nineteen year old girl with neither papers nor experience. I curse!
I had taken the leftover food from the restaurant I worked for and wasn't hungry. I have no TV. It had become disfunctional months ago alongside the smartphone I used to own. I had sold them both in order to pay for water and electricity.. to buy food too. The little money I made from odd jobs is what keeps me alive. As long as I had water, electricity and food I was okay.
My mind wandered back to the days when I was happy. Days before my step dad had joined us, way way before my father had died even, I had been happy, I was ten and carefree.
My mom had remarried two years later. My step dad was very nice to the both of us at first but after two years things changed. He started being moody all the time and complained that I made expenses hike because of all the stuff I needed, he had told me this first when I began my period and was asking him for some money to buy sanitary towels, my mom wasn't at home. He didn't give me any, so I just sat in the toilet until my mom came home. I heard them argue but just for a few minutes before my mom rushed to my room and attended to me, she used to care for me a lot but I'm not sure about that now. At least not after what I did.
That wasn't the most tragic of days. Once, I had started acting out, I couldn't find peace at home with all the blows that man exchanged with my mother. By then I hated him with every nerve in my body. I used to hate my mother too for doing nothing even when he extended the blows to me, but I stopped when I read Colleen Hoover's 'It ends with us' , I understood her. At least she was being brave by fighting back but most of the time she got terribly hurt.All the drama made me resort to spending my free time with my friends from school, attending parties or volunteering anywhere. Being the sixteen year old naïve girl I was I had gotten pregnant in the process. I told my mom, who told my step dad. They never asked about it again, didn't even ask who the father was. One night, I had come home to meet him on the front porch. He had these fierce eyes, he wasn't intoxicated no, he was always sober, always! He had dragged me into the house and pounced on me beating me the hell up. I couldn't fight back so I just let him. I watched, at first I screamt at the top of my lungs which earned me more blows. I screamt until I couldn't anymore. So I just helplessly lay there as he continued kicking, at my stomach especially, cursing all the while. I desperately hoped my mom would open the door any minute and save me from him. I prayed and prayed, then I saw her get out of their bedroom door and she stood there and she watched. She didn't even attempt to look. When she finally did, I saw it in her eyes she didn't care, she gave me a cold glare and I swear, her eyes looked like she enjoyed every blow that met my stomach. The pain in my heart exceeded the one my step dad had inflicted on my body. I couldn't handle it anymore, I passed out. When I next woke up I was in my bedroom, she hadn't even bothered to clean me up. I did so myself. I still remember how scared I was when I realized my vagina was bleeding too. I bled for a month. I lost the baby.
I now imagined what life would have been if I had had that baby. I would have loved it so much and wouldn't let it know pain. I know it would have been hard, but I would have given it my all to provide and make him or perhaps her, I laugh at the irony, happy.
I feel my eyes become heavy. I force myself up and drag myself to the bedroom heavily throwing myself on the bed. It was the same room the two had shared. I had moved in after she left.
Fuck, I'm the unluckiest human alive.
I close my eyes and wait to drift, but I don't. Instead, those dark memories I had stuffed at the back of my mind keep haunting me.
One in particular made me start sobbing.
The fights between my mom and step dad became frequent overtime, and one day as they were fighting he managed to pin her to the floor. I had by then gotten used to the fighting and would normally just walk away from all of it. That day they argued for several hours, longer than usual. Then he started beating her up. She was screaming so loudly and sobbing that I could hear it all through the blasting music on my earphones. I knew getting out of my room was risky and would get me in trouble too but I did anyway. I saw him, his large masculine hand on my mother's delicate neck. My mother had marks all over her face and body but he had never tried to strangle her. I ran to him and started punching him on his back. "Fucking sluts!" He had said before throwing me across the room. I stumbled upon the dinner table then fell on my back to the floor. The glass vase that sat on the table tumbled and fell on my face. I still have scars left from the cuts the broken glasses caused on my face. I was very angry and hurt, physically and emotionally, I looked at him and he was kicking my mum's stomach repeatedly, in a similar manner he did mine. I got a glimpse of the pregnancy test kit that sat on the couch just next to them. My mind had shot back to the pain I went through that day and I felt it in my veins. I was angry, very angry. I could literally feel my anger boil. Who did he think he was, that he could do anything and get away with it. That he could hurt us, rob us of the relationship we had with my mother, rob us of our foetuses and still get away with it. The uncontrollable loath that I felt at the time led me to pick up a piece of the broken glass and I walked towards him. Without thinking I scratched his back, hard. I remember the cold dead look in his eyes when he turned to face me. I was scared and immediately realized what a bad idea that was. The piece of glass fell to the ground and he almost immediately picked it up. My first instinct was to run, so I did. I could not run to the front door so I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. I remember begging him to leave me the hell alone, but he kept shouting insults and saying that he would kill the both of us plus that illegitimate child that my mother conceived. I remember him calling us a charity case, that my father's death had been due to the tire that came with living with the both of us. He had called my mother a harlot who had no other choice but to marry him in order to feed another 'ungrateful bitch'. I had heard enough. I ran towards him screaming at the top of my lungs and stabbed him hard on his stomach. It felt nice as I watched him weaken, for the first time ever he was inferior he had no power and I did. My mother wasn't there to ask me not to fight back and he had less energy to overpower me, so I stabbed him again. I watched him fall on his knees. I had this big satisfying smile on, I even stopped crying. To see the fear of death in his eyes made me feel a certain serenity I had never felt before and so I stabbed him again and again and again. I stabbed him on his leg his arms his throat. Over and over, each stab felt like a dose of Xanax. This is what I needed, so I kept doing it. Over and over and over. It must have been an hour or two, I can't quite remember how long I kept stabbing, when my mom had dragged herself to the kitchen, probably concerned about the prolonged silence. The ear piercing scream she let out is what had brought me back to my senses_ to the realization of what I had done. Fear had filled my eyes and my mom's too. She didn't call the cops on me, I still try to figure out why she hadn't to date. I could have gone to jail but I didn't. She had covered up the murder and made up a story about a robery with violence. My step dad had tried to fight him and he had a knife which he used to stab him severally. Turns out a certain house not very far from us reported a similar incident that very night, which was extremely weird. But it had helped our story seem concrete and the cops had bought it. They never caught the alleged killer and the story pretty much faded in three weeks time. I still get nightmares of me stabbing him, the first month had been extreme and I would wake up several times in the night. I tried so hard to forget but I couldn't. Then one day I had woken up to a text message from my mom. She had left for New York. Apparently, she needed to start a new life, a life of peace and I was part of her past mistakes. She said I was worthless and she needed to find something to keep her going. I had cried that day so hard. I had cursed myself over and over. At the end of the day I realized I had two options, to either pity my situation and die from severe depression or work my way through life and show the world I'm worth something. I chose the latter.