Shattered

chapter two

Being in a house doesn't mean it's your home. I dread every day of entering that one familiar red door, and hearing the one familiar sound. It was a deafening symphony of voices and shattering things, though occasionally oddly quiet. Every single thing I notice seems to be a bad sign. All I think of in this unfamiliar house is when I will get out of it again. What is the point of existing in a dwelling if no connection is felt within those brick walls that's the only thing keeping it together. The only thing keeping my sanity together. No one told me growing up was so chaotic. I know I should feel fortunate to have somewhere to live but, it's too, too hard. Upon all the billions of people in the world, why has fate put me with him? He had promised to take the best care of me, but hadn't that been a lie like all the other things that came my way?

He had promised with his life to bring me up well, to give me the potential of the brightest future possible.

I wasn't sure he did.

My mother's still in bed when I walk into the door, my heart tattooing my ribs with every painstaking step I take. This is a place I would only beg to erase memories of. Leaving was easy, but what about the people that hate to see you step out of the door for the last time? I couldn't leave my mother here. Marrying my dad was the worst possible option of her life, and I couldn't let her suffer from her own actions alone. I know I should be grateful she brought me to this world but, I'm sorry I don't like me, and I'm sorry for hating you for having me witness the worst possible effects of life.

I want to walk into her room, tell her everything's okay, hold her close like I used to. But something pushes me away from that. It just doesn't feel like the right thing to do. Every time it strikes me to walk just an inch closer to the person that brought me to life, it had always backfired. It would end up a cacophony of distorted voices and words I cannot distinguish, smashing glass and that one word I hear among all the others spat out from their mouths - Damien. It's the one thing I can't bear. They speak of him so often yet act like they don't give a shit. After merely a week they've gone back to the person they've always been. Drinks, drugs, gambling, beating. I want to escape from this living hellhole of a place.

But I'm scared to.

I'm always scared, too afraid to leave what made me so shattered.

I'm always scared.

I'm always scared.

I'm scared of what he would do to get me back and torture me until I see nothing but cruelty in this merciless world.

You're a murderer.

You're a murderer.

Voices drown my head as the stairs and the floorboards start to swirl.

What tricks had he used to get a person like my mum?

Why had Cupid decided so poorly?

The truth sounds like a lie.

It's always been the distorted, messed-up thing this world is.

If the world ended, who would be there with me, hands together, eyes shut, waiting for everything to break? Waiting for this wretched world to burn.

No one.

My heart throbs, attacking me from the inside.

If you hadn't fussed over your heart someone might still be here with you.

It had always been him when I cried the loudest. But now he's gone. Lost among the millions of stars that compete to light up the darkest ends of this earth.

My head thumping with the weight of this damned world, I try to haul myself up the stairs to my only sanctuary: my bedroom, a world of seclusion and quiet, where I can sit for hours, marinating in monochromatic thoughts of blue. A place where all sound is blocked from the halycoonic dimension below me. In my bedroom, I have everything I need. I can live in the books and feel into the music. In this world, I'm pressured. Lost. Groping blindly in the dark of this broken wantonness. I'm only acutely aware of my existence, grappling onto a precarious sliver of sanity that could slip away any second. It would be so easy to let go, to break away from the corruption of this ticking hourglass.