Words That Cut Too Deep

Chapter 6

The booming holler of my name vibrated from the master bedroom. By this time, my father would be out of alcohol. Instant headaches and nausea would overcome him, ravaging what little was left of his wasting body. He screamed again, desperate for the care he knew I would provide. At this point, his first dose of pain meds had worn off, and he would be asking me to bring him an ice pack or some pills or an extra pillow or something.

However, I was especially numb today, my nightmare having iced me out from my own emotions, so I swallowed my anger and sadness. I snatched the pills automatically from the spice cabinet. Why I hid them in such an obvious place, I don't know. I guess I assumed that my father would never become desperate enough to actually leave his bed as long as I was his personal slave.

I crept up the stairs, cautious not to make a sound that only I would be able to hear. My father's pounding hangover would drown out any sound I made,  but still I tiptoed silently, as if to avoid awakening a monster.

He lay sprawled on the king sized bed that he had not shared with his wife in three years. The shades were drawn tight, darkness pooling in my vision as I walked over and put a handful of pills in his outstretched hand. He swallowed the lot of them and reached for his empty Jack Daniels.

"Damn it, Natalie. Go get me another Daniels. Why can't you do anything around here?" He said, glaring at me. Something snapped deep within me. The anger suddenly boiled in my heart, rage threatening to overflow.

"I do everything around here. Mom works all day, and I clean and make meals and feed your addictions and nurse your neverending hangovers. You sit around all day and drink and pop pills. How dare you say that to me." I spat out, glaring down at his cloudy eyes as he struggled to comprehend what I just said. Suddenly, he jumped out of the bed like he had been electrocuted and ran me into a wall, empty bottle in his hand.

"You don't know anything, you stupid brat. You were never the favorite child, and you know as well as I do that you should have been the one to die. How dare you be alive when your brother isn't. You don't deserve life." Every word was a punch in the face, a kick in the stomach,  a slit on the wrist.

"I hate you" I said to him, mustering every loathsome fiber in my being. I looked into the eyes of my father, the man who used to make me pancakes and take me to dance class and tuck me in every night, and felt nothing more than repulsion. I didn't know this man now, with his bitter alcohol breath, his disheveled hair and angry face. He reached up and I flinched away, sure he would slap my face. Instead, he smashed the bottle on the wall above my head, shattered pieces of razor sharp glass sliding down my skin as it fell to the ground. I looked down at my body. Every inch of my skin not covered by clothes was now covered in tiny slits that seared painfully.

My father's face was wiped blank, and he stared off into the distance as he staggered back to bed and swallowed half of the pills in the bottle. I tip toed out of the shower of glass that scattered on the floor, and ran downstairs. I found my mother in the kitchen, in the middle of the day, coughing violently.

"They sent me home early" She explained. "Can't have a sick nurse around patients." Her eyes grazed over the cuts that covered my exposed skin. "You're a bit scratched, did you cut yourselff?"

"Yes, mother." I replied, looking her dead in the eye. "I cut myself." The meaning of the worlds weighed down on me heavily, but mom just nodded, not taking in the double meaning.