Orphan

Chapter 2

Memories were always an intense and violent action film that held onto its actors like live theatre. She let them devour on her like the remnants of a useless carcass and a scavenger, and so the movie began, with her inability to fight back.

It was a Sunday; Easter to be exact. The house bathed in the scent of a variety of foods, and the working stove gave life and warmth to its inhabitants. The mother and father of Jackson Perez had made an agreement: they would stop the constant bickering in the presence of any holidays. They had been honoring this agreement for most occasions, but for this particular day the room could not help but spin into the tornado of insults and curse words.

"What is taking you so long with that goddamn food, Margret? You should've been done hours ago." David Perez was an ungrateful and impatient individual with a controlling power in the household. His gaze towards one's direction could make unruly souls remain still in the quicksand of fear. His victims were always the ones he was supposed to love the most, but he always confused love with hurricanes and thunderstorms. He tried to contain his destructive ways in bottles, but his makeshift medicine quickly made the disease worse.

Her mother was a hardworking woman. She stayed at home making sure the order of everything stayed as it should. However, she was unhappy. She wove restless nights into all the home-made quilts of the house; she washed away her sins in the sink of the dishes. Everything she ever did was because of her love for her child, but she had never quite learned to love herself.

Margret responded with her usual shrug of the shoulders, and she continued her work. Mr. Perez had the smell of beer spilling from his body, and a look of violence in his eyes. Their child's innocence had left at that moment, as she witnessed her father put his deathly grip around her mother's neck. The fires of the stove rose unattended and unforgivably. It melted the aggressiveness of the father of the house, and life returned back to the wife's eyes. It painted the walls with a bright orange, and it scorched all the memories imprinted on paper. The
house bathed in the scent of a variety of foods, and the working stove gave life and warmth to its inhabitants. The mother and father of Jackson Perez had made an agreement: they would stop the constant bickering in the presence of any holidays. They had been honoring this agreement for most occasions, but for this particular day the room could not help but spin into the tornado of insults and curse words.

"What is taking you so long with that goddamn food, Margret? You should've been done hours ago." David Perez was an ungrateful and impatient individual with a controlling power in the household. His gaze towards one's direction could make unruly souls remain still in the quicksand of fear. His victims were always the ones he was supposed to love the most, but he always confused love with hurricanes and thunderstorms. He tried to contain his destructive ways in bottles, but his makeshift medicine quickly made the disease worse.

Her mother was a hardworking woman. She stayed at home making sure the order of everything stayed as it should. However, she was unhappy. She wove restless nights into all the home-made quilts of the house; she washed away her sins in the sink of the dishes. Everything she ever did was because of her love for her child, but she had never quite learned to love herself.

Margret responded with her usual shrug of the shoulders, and she continued her work. Mr. Perez had the smell of beer spilling from his body, and a look of violence in his eyes. Their child's innocence had left at that moment, as she witnessed her father put his deathly grip around her mother's neck. The fires of the stove rose unattended and unforgivably. It melted the aggressiveness of the father of the house, and life returned back to the wife's eyes. It painted the walls with a bright orange, and it scorched all the memories imprinted on paper. The lock of the house had disintegrated into ashes. Jackson Perez was small, and her body was pliable. Her parents had told her to leave through the dog's door and to return with help. Jackson's incapable ten-year-old mind forced her body to rush through the emptiness of the streets to find assistance, but by the time she had returned with the fire department it was too late. Most of the body of each forced lover was turned into ashes with the keys, the phone, and the pictures. Jackson had always felt guiltier about the loss of the pictures. Her parents were long gone to the hatred they had for each other, but those pictures, they were the only truth and life that Jackson had from her family.