Rough and wet. My tongue slides over the swollen split of quivering lips.
Towering over me, salt and pepper hair coats the now aging corpse. My flesh and blood, my father. Possessed by liquor, carrying out its deeds. Sweet, liquid metal flows around my teeth to my throat. Concrete presses patterns into the soft skin of my elbows, hands and the side of my left knee as I lay sprawled upon the cool gray ground.
Blurred vision settles, curious, furious into the soulless pits of the giant's unfocused pupils. His meaty fists clench, ready, the left knuckles smother the thick, near empty whiskey bottle. Heavy, lazy feet shuffle to keep their hazy body above. The icy coal of his irises pour through the black, deepening the depths of the craters' yearn for destruction.
Anger, hatred, amusement. How many times does something have to happen before I decide to change it, a hundred, a thousand? There's no point in counting now. Since my mom's violent stripping from our world, this has been the corps's way of coping - not coping. Pounding his fury into my crumbling frame, drinking death. Each blow, driving the decaying soul an inch farther from it's ragged, fleshy body.
I was six when it stole her. Spreading it's plagued claim from her lungs, exploding throughout the rest of her wilting body. Diluting her health like bleach to water, stripping everything.
It's odd. All our troubles, all loss started with one cell. One genome out of place, one wrongly sequenced letter landed me on the floor. The holiest water, blood, seeping from my shredded, correctly coded skin. Draining my flawless, wide eyed mother, then me.
Scuffed heels and toes cling to the floor, raising to the place of a human. Fiery strength ignites within, a forest fire with nothing to lose. Opportunity settles into the dry forest shrubbery, so close. Thoughts of being contained, trapped lace my darkest nightmares. A wolf in a bird cage.
Fear of suffocated heat escapes my final moments, blown away and replaced by growing heat. Feet steadying, root themselves miles beneath the rough cement into glowing, molten core. Cowering isn't an option.
A last defiant tear streaks reddened skin as the inevitable approaches. One last flick of eyelids smothers the world's light as the glimmering brown glass closes the distance.
Shattering.
Flashing black, then white stain the back of my eyelids, and start to fade along with all sensations but warm comfort. Gold light deepens to auburn. Shapes focus.
Copper-brown waves. Mine, but darker.
Satin ivory skin.
Mom
