Burned at Both Ends

Prologue

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The girl laid on her bed, facing the night sky painted on her ceiling. Her father used to tell her that every single star was a guardian angel that was assigned to a human. That angels would fall down to their human in a time of need. She held onto that thought throughout her childhood, knowing that even in times that seemed scary and hopeless, even when her mother was on her death bed, her guardian angel would come to her when she really needed it.

Now, as a girl of sixteen, she wasn't so ignorant.

The once faithful man had turned to sin after his wife passed away. His grief had taken away the faith that he once held so dear. Yet the congregation couldn't bear to replace him, or at least they couldn't find another man to do the job. He spent each day preaching hypocrisy. Her pastor father had come home drunk the past three nights. She was counting on a fourth, but for now, she could revel in the emptiness of the house.

She could blast her death metal and her father wouldn’t tell her to turn her “music from hell” off. She could feel the thump of the base guitar shaking her room lightly.

She closed her eyes slowly, the night sky on her ceiling shrinking until there was just blackness. She let her inhibitions flow away from her just as the deep red blood flowed from the thin marks on her forearms. One for the boy who tripped her in the hallway, one for the failed grade in chemistry, two for the last time she looked in the mirror…

She hadn’t done this in a long time. She’d let it build up, like water behind a dam, but eventually the dam had to give. She knew it wasn’t a healthy way of coping, but she wasn’t going to lie and say that she didn’t like it. Cutting filled her with a certain angst and sorrow that she thrived on. Her body was already far from perfect, what difference would it make if there were a few scars on her arms and legs?

The girl opened her eyes reluctantly and turned them towards the window above her bed. The late summer day had now turned dark, the temperature dropping so that a light fog formed on the glass window panes. The lyrics of the song were pounding in her ears. I’m holding on to a life I’ll never get back, it’s too hard to get back. I’m on the right train but the wrong tracks, trying not to derail.

The fog on her window was turning into small beads of condensation. They slowly dripped down the glass pane until they collided with another drop, morphing together to form a master water droplet, terminating anything in its path, only to leave a string of small droplets behind to repeat the process.

The girl was brought to her senses by the sound of her bedroom door hitting the wall. She jolted up and looked at her father’s furious face.

“Turn that Satanist music off,” he ordered gruffly. The girl was frozen in fear at the state of her father. His clerical collar was undone, his black shirt unbuttoned messily. The fingers on his left hand were loosely wrapped around a handgun, which he now aimed at her.

“Daddy,” she choked out, her voice hoarse with fear.

“Shut up, Lucy,” he said and turned his arm, shooting the stereo, turning off the music permanently. He sighed, “Thank God for silence.”

Lucy’s mouth was agape. She’d never seen her father resort to such violence. He had always been such a good and holy man, except, of course, of late.

“It’s late, Dad, you should get some sleep.” She suggested. She knew how well it would go if she told her father that he was drunk. In this predicament she might even end up with a bullet in her brain. The thought of her own father doing that to her sent an ethereal shiver through her body. “Come on, I’ll make you some tea.”