Frozen Dairy Dessert

Adia, eight years old, baby-faced and scruffy. The eyes of an adult and the hands of a child, soft, stubby fingers clutching a rag. Her mother had vomited all over the floor, and the sight of it made the girl gag. The smell of it was even worse. No one had ever taught her to clean, so, although she was doing her best to scoop it into the small trashcan she had retrieved from the bathroom, she still ended up with some of it on those little baby hands.
It made her cringe, made her want to cry, if she was the sort of girl who cried, but she cleaned anyway.
When she had scooped up as much as she could, she dumped a cup of water onto the sticky residue and hoped for the best, wiping at it with the same dirty rag. They didn't have any cleaning spray, she had looked. The cabinet was empty save for some ant killer, and that was Dangerous Chemicals. She threw the rag in the trash when she was done. It still smelled bad in the room, but at least no one would step in the puke again. She threw her soiled sock out, too. Otherwise it would stink until Laundry Day. It had started as a little pink sock, adorned with kittens and rainbows. Now it was brown-stained and putrid at the bottom of the trash can.
No use in holding onto it.
There were more important matters, like getting her mother off of the floor and into her bed.
"Mom," she whispered from a distance, scared to get too close.
The woman didn't stir.
Hesitantly, Adia shook her mom's shoulder, "mom."
"Not now, Addy," groaned Mom, "bedtime."
It was probably bedtime for most kids. Adia knew exactly what time it was by the rerun playing on the tv, the same episode of Friends that had played four hours ago at 10pm.
"You're on the floor," Adia pointed out, "you should go lay in bed."
Mom's eyes opened a fraction of the way, enough to notice that she was, in fact, laying on the floor of her bathroom. "Stinks in here," she complained.
I hate you, thought Adia, but aloud she said,  "I'll clean it. You need to lay in bed."
Her mother had passed out on the floor plenty of times, and would always wake up stiff and grumpy. If Adia was lucky, she would move from the floor to the bed and sleep the stiffness and the grumpiness off. If Adia was unlucky, as she often was, she would spend the day as her mother's verbal punching bag. It would be better for them both if she could get Mom moved.
But the women had nodded off. Adia shook her again, more insistently this time, "bed."
Her mother made a choking noise, and for a moment it seemed like she might vomit again, but she didn't. "Help me up," she moaned.
Adia was a small girl, almost certainly malnourished, but her mother was a frail, bony, woman, and she was able to pull her up if she tried hard enough. Grunting with the effort, she dragged her mother to her feet. Together they stumbled out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, flopping over onto the floor mattress.
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, Adia chanted silently. She lay next to Mom, trying to catch her breath. It didn't take long for the woman to fall asleep beside her, Adia could tell by the way she was breathing. Her mother's breathing always seemed much calmer in sleep, when she was awake her breath was ragged and frantic. Now her chest rose and fell regularly. Adia watched it with a mixture of curiosity and anger. The TV in the living room was playing commercials, she could hear a cereal jingle playing.
It reminded her that she was hungry. That she had been about to pour a bowl of cereal before she heard the sound of puking and came to investigate. Carefully, she got out of the bed and walked to the kitchen. She didn't look back.
Adia was young, but she knew about drugs. She knew that Mom took them sometimes, or, really, a lot of the time. She knew that's why she was throwing up and sleeping on the floor. And she also knew that drugs could kill you.
She hoped they would kill Mom. She didn't even feel that bad for hoping it anymore. Not with the vomit still under her fingernails.
She washed her hands twice for good measure before thrusting them, still damp, into the box of cereal. There was no milk, so she didn't see the need for a bowl. The crumbs clung to her skin, but she didn't notice.
It was Captain Crunch and there was a third of a box left. For the record.
She took the box and settled down in front of the TV set. It was an old TV, one of the ones with a bubbled out screen and a big butt. The previous tenant had left it there and Mom had actually decided to get cable at this place. It was a pretty sweet setup, as far as Adia was concerned.
Still, she had seen this episode earlier, and she didn't much like Friends. She could have changed the channel, but instead she decided to get out of the apartment for a bit. She stashed a pocketknife in her waistband and, gently so as not to wake her mother, she slipped out the front door.
The door opened to a set of stairs that led up to the sidewalk. It was dark on their street, but never quiet. Even at this late hour, people were out talking and fighting and smoking on stoops. There was a chill in the air that night, but she payed it no mind.
She knew better than to talk to strangers, but she couldn't resist watching. The neighbor across the way had the curtains drawn, and she could see the same TV station playing the same show, could see the back of her neighbor's head slumped onto the arm of his couch. She thought his name might be Nick, but she wasn't sure. He had a fat orange cat that would nap on the windowsill during the day, soaking in sunrays. The cat was nowhere to be seen now. She liked to think that maybe the kitty was curled up in his owner's lap, the two of them snoozing the night away together. She liked to think that one day, she might have a cat.
She had brought several home, with varying levels of success. Once she managed to keep a little calico kitten in her room for a week before Mom found out. Mom had put the cat outside, saying that they weren't allowed pets. The cat stuck around for a few days, crying to come in, but Mom held firm and eventually the creature must have moved on. Adia never did, she thought about that cat, who she called Paintbrush, every day, well into her teenage years. Sometimes, even as an adult, the kitten would crawl through her mind. She didn't bring any more home after that even though she always wanted to.
A shift in the lighting turned Adia's head. It was the next door neighbor, quietly slipping out of her house with a cigarette between her lips. Adia felt the sudden urge to hide. There would be questions if she was caught out this late. She froze, hand in cereal box, willing the woman not to look at her.
But, of course she looked, taking the little girl in between puffs of smoke.
"Awfully late. Shouldn't you be in bed?" Asked the woman. Which is exactly what Adia knew and was hoping to not be asked.
She thought it over, before shrugging, "I like to stay up late."
"Aren't you going to be tired at school tomorrow?" The lady had turned her gaze from Adia and was staring down the street at nothing in particular. There was a figure walking in the distance, but neither of them noticed yet.
"I don't go to school," Adia admitted, uncomfortably. Mom got mad when she gave away too much information. She took a piece of cereal from the box and crushed it between her fingers. She focused on the sticky, dry texture, trying to appear nonchalant.
"Lucky you," muttered the woman, "I hated school. You know these girls used to..."
Adia stopped listening as she spotted the figure walking toward them. Its gait was strange, sort of wavering. Or... slithering? It stopped at the corner of the street. It's head turned, as though it were looking for something. A quiet terror washed over the girl, a knot of dread in her stomach. Sticky fingers weren't enough of a distraction to get her through this. This figure, the creature, locked eyes with her. Even at this distance, she could tell it wasn't human. She kept quiet as the neighbor went on about her school bullies, never breaking eye contact with whatever the thing down the road was.
The neighbor was a young woman, which is something that Adia didn't notice. To her, all adults were just that, adults. Besides that her mother was young, maybe even younger than this woman. What Adia did notice was that she seemed to live alone. She had no children, and there had never been anyone else coming or going from the  next door house.
So when a man's voice shouted from inside, Adia was surprised enough to look away from the creature. The neighbor sighed and put out her cigarette, giving a nod as she turned to go. "Stay away from boys," she suggested, "they're nothing but trouble."
The girl looked back over at the street corner, but the creature was gone. There was nothing now but pavement and dread. Adia chewed at the inside of her lip, biting down just hard enough to bring her back into her body. She was probably just imagining things, or, the darkness was playing tricks on her. The street corner was too far away to make out something's eyes, so she must have been making it up. With the resolution that it was nothing, she decided to go back inside.
She reached a sticky hand out, only to find the doorknob wouldn't turn. She jiggled it again, harder, but it remained stubbornly in place. She didn't remember locking it, but here she was, stuck outside with the monsters. Her pulse quickened as she twisted the knob back and forth, hoping for some kind of miracle. Mom would be in a deep sleep by now, not likely to wake up and help her. She didn't want to yell, or pound on the door, or make any loud noise that might bring attention to her. The monster was probably fake, but definitely still out there.
Adia pressed her back into the door and slunk down, keeping an eye out for any movement at the top of the stairs. She slid the knife out and kept it grasped firmly in her hand. It was only a small blade, and a small comfort, but it was something.
"Tuck in," she told herself, "it's going to be a long night."