Demons

Chapter 1

"Lacey! Get the hell up, you slut!" I heard my sweet and loving mother's voice call to me gently. Note the sarcasm.

It was best if I ignored her, or else she'd accuse me of talking back to her. Apparently, Sandra, my mother, assumed that I was fast asleep, when, in reality, I couldn't sleep a wink. Not after what happened last night.

But of course, she wouldn't remember anything. She never does. Every night was just a blur to her. I would blame the alcohol. It's not her fault; she's addicted. Liquor owned her, as if she had no other choice but to drown herself in it every single day.

"That little witch wants to play hide-n-seek? I am coming up, and you're in so much trouble!" Sandra screamed, and I heard loud footsteps slowly becoming louder and louder. By the way her speech was slurred, I knew she was still drunk or hungover, or both.

Before I knew it, she had already made it to the tiny attic, my room. Trying my absolute best to fake sleep, I fooled Sandra, but that only made her angrier.

"Oh, what a sweet little angel enjoying her beauty-sleep. I thought I told you to wake up, you worthless piece of trash!" She crept up to me, shouting in my ear.

Immediately, my eyes shot open with my biological mother's face in mine, as her alcohol-streaked breath tortured my nostrils. With a fistful of my messy hair, Sandra pulled me up face-to-face and smirked, noticing the bruises and tear-stained cheeks that I sported thanks to her.

"You're such a little bitch." She shook her head at me, and I winced from her words. She doesn't mean it, she doesn't mean it.

With the force of a lion, she shoved me off the bed and snatched To Kill a Mockingbird off of my desk, slamming it against my already red cheek. I let out a cry while my hand instinctively shot for my wounded face.

"Next time, answer me when I call your disgusting name, you ungrateful whore. You have twenty minutes to get your ass ready for school and get the hell out of my house." Sandra grumbled as she slowly wobbled out of my room.

Once I no longer heard any of her drunken footsteps, I slammed the door and slid down against it, crunching it a fetus position. Then, I cried.

Of course, it never came as a shock to me that my mother hated me, being that Sandra never missed the chance to call me a "mistake." After all, she was only eighteen when I was born, six months before my father died of a drug overdose.

After his death came the drinking and the excessive parties that Sandra started to enjoy. As an unorthodox fifth birthday present, she beat me with a belt for the first time, and, over ten years later, I still have the scar on my hip to prove it. The pain never ended, just as the alcohol never satiated her.

Reaching for my phone, I saw over twenty messages from some of my friends at school, wishing me a happy 17th birthday. Some of these people have only talked to me once before, but my heart still fluttered. Someone's a popular girl, my subconscious teased me, and I begged her to shut up.

I tried to hold myself together well, climbing the high school hierarchy, but vowed never to be that type of Queen Bee: the one with the popular and completely unnecessary boyfriend, and the one who inflicted terror to everyone else. But no one found out about Sandra, not even my two best friends. I made sure of that.

Having replied to all the sweet birthday messages, I stared at the time on my lock screen: half past 6 AM. There was still two hours before I had to leave for school. Maybe Sandra said twenty minutes, but she should've been passed out on the couch by now, as usual. Every single morning was the same; neither of us could escape this harmful loop.