HauntingAdeline {1}

C1

The Manipulator

Sometimes I have very dark thoughts about my mother—thoughts no sane
daughter should ever have.
Sometimes, I’m not always sane.
“Addie, you’re being ridiculous,” Mom says through the speaker on my phone.
I glare at it in response, refusing to argue with her. When I have nothing to say,
she sighs loudly. I wrinkle my nose. It blows my mind that this woman always
called Nana dramatic yet can’t see her own flair for the dramatics.
“Just because your grandparents gave you the house doesn’t mean you have to
actually live in it. It’s old and would be doing everyone in that city a favor if it
were torn down.”
I thump my head against the headrest, rolling my eyes upward and trying to
find patience weaved into the stained roof of my car.
How did I manage to get ketchup up there?
“And just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean I can’t live in it,” I retort
dryly.
My mother is a bitch. Plain and simple. She’s always had a chip on her
shoulder, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
“You’ll be living an hour from us! That will be incredibly inconvenient for you
to come visit us, won’t it?”
Oh, how will I ever survive?
Pretty sure my gynecologist is an hour away, too, but I still make an effort to
see her once a year. And those visits are far more painful.
“Nope,” I reply, popping the P. I’m over this conversation. My patience only
lasts an entire sixty seconds talking to my mother. After that, I’m running on
fumes and have no desire to put in any more effort to keep the conversation
moving along.
If it’s not one thing, it’s the other. She always manages to find something to
complain about. This time, it’s my choice to live in the house my grandparents
gave to me. I grew up in Parsons Manor, running alongside the ghosts in the halls
and baking cookies with Nana. I have fond memories here—memories I refuse to
let go of just because Mom didn’t get along with Nana.

I never understood the tension between them, but as I got older and started to
comprehend Mom’s snarkiness and underhanded insults for what they were, it
made sense.
Nana always had a positive, sunny outlook on life, viewing the world through
rose-colored glasses. She was always smiling and humming, while Mom is cursed
with a perpetual scowl on her face and looking at life like her glasses got smashed
when she was plunged out of Nana’s vagina. I don’t know why her personality
never developed past that of a porcupine—she was never raised to be a prickly
bitch.
Growing up, my mom and dad had a house only a mile away from Parsons
Manor. She could barely tolerate me, so I spent most of my childhood in this
house. It wasn’t until I left for college that Mom moved out of town an hour
away. When I quit college, I moved in with her until I got back on my feet and
my writing career took off.
And when it did, I decided to travel around the country, never really settling in
one place.
Nana died about a year ago, gifting me the house in her will, but my grief
hindered me from moving into Parsons Manor. Until now.
Mom sighs again through the phone. “I just wish you had more ambition in
life, instead of staying in the town you grew up in, sweetie. Do something more
with your life than waste away in that house like your grandmother did. I don’t
want you to become worthless like her.”
A snarl overtakes my face, fury tearing throughout my chest. “Hey, Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Fuck off.”
I hang up the phone, angrily smashing my finger into the screen until I hear the
telltale chime that the call has ended.
How dare she speak of her own mother that way when she was nothing but
loved and cherished? Nana certainly didn’t treat her the way she treats me, that’s
for damn sure.
I rip a page from Mom’s book and let loose a melodramatic sigh, turning to
look out my side window. Said house stands tall, the tip of the black roof spearing
through the gloomy clouds and looming over the vastly wooded area as if to say
you shall fear me. Peering over my shoulder, the dense thicket of trees are no
more inviting—their shadows crawling from the overgrowth with outstretched
claws.
I shiver, delighting in the ominous feeling radiating from this small portion of
the cliff. It looks exactly as it did from my childhood, and it gives me no less of a
thrill to peer into the infinite blackness.