The Wildest Ride

Prologue

           "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! YOU GET YOUR ASS OUT OF MY HOUSE! I'M TIRED OF WORKING ALL DAY TO COME HOME TO A DRUNK WHO HASN'T HAD A JOB SINCE I MET HIM! I'M TIRED OF THE PROSTITUTES, THE GAMBLING, THE CONSTANT MONEY DRAIN, AND YOUR INABILITY TO STAY SOBER!"

           "SHUT UP BITCH! i DARE YOU TO TRY TO GET ME OUT OF THIS HOUSE! ALL YOU WORRY ABOUT IS MAKING SURE THAT I HAVE A MEAL AT THE END OF MY DAY. YOU BRING YOUR CHECK IN HERE ON FRIDAY, SO I KNOW I'M NOT BEING CHEATED!"

          "SO YOU KNOW YOUR NOT BEING CHEATED?! HOW THE HELL CAN YOU BE CHEATED OUT OF SOMETHING YOU NEVER HAVE?!"

I'm cuddled into bed as I listened to the couple next door fight about his drunkenness and her inability to please him in bed. This happens most nights, but I have never gotten used to it. I've lived in the room, slept in this bed, lived next door to these people for 10 years and it has always been like this. There were several times where it got much worse, times where she'll tell him how her lover takes better care of her then he ever could, or that her check will be put into her 'get away from the stupid prick I married' fund. Times like today, I can already hear her telling him about her adventures with her lover during her lunch break at the hospital. How they didn't sleep during their break, how he lasted for hours, and how they were going to run away together. I also heard the slap before the sound of something falling. I heard her screams as he didn't stop at just one slap, as he beat her and knocked her around the house, breaking anything he could hit her with. I pulled the cover over my head as I heard the screams become louder and the cursing he was doing becoming even more profane. I flicked the covers back as her screams turned into cries, and the cries turned into whimpers, and whimpers turned into silence. I rushed to my door and put my ear to it. Was he coming for me now?

One of my favorite games a child was to distance myself from my family. My mother who worked too hard at the hospital and forgot she had a child, my father who drank himself into stupors on the daily, the sad bare room with a small mattress on the floor that was mine. I made up stories about my life, how I lived next door to the fighting couple, how my REAL parents were horrified about living next to them, how I never had the bruises I had to constantly cover in this life. 

How my life was never about keeping my head down.

I held my breathe as I listened to my father coming up the stairs, mumbling about how that 'bitch' was going to pay, how he was a real man.  I wanted to jump out and scream "You were never a real man!", but I knew if I did, I'd be right next to mom downstairs.

I listened as my dad's mumbles got louder, how he was shuffling in the closet for something, how he found what he was looking for and his slurred words went from agitated and angry to angry and triumphant. I heard a click and the pull back of a hammer. I heard how he mumbled that when he was finished down there he was coming back for that whore of a daughter who would leave him too. I kept my ear to the door as he walked downstairs and taunted my mothers, by now, bruised and bloody body. I listened as the taunts got louder, as he got more crude, and my mothers cries went from silent to terrified. 

My ear jerked back from the door as I heard the shot that made everything silent once more. I scrambled back to the window and pulled it open to escape. My head turned back to the door that was slowly opening, as if not to wake me. My breathing stopped as I saw the tips of his feet peaking out of his holey socks. My legs started pulling me over the sill and to the ground as I saw the pistol come around the cracked door, as if waiting for the perfect moment to take my life. As my head disappeared below the sill, I saw the nasty smirk on my fathers face as he came fully into my room, looking for my life to steal it. I felt the bullets hit as he fired at the bed that housed my body not even 30 minutes ago.

I ran that night, and I never looked back. I was 14 when that happened, the night where I heard my mother take her last  breathe. The night where all I could do was listen. The night where I disappeared into the silence.