Cat has long since been home. This is no new development – she was admitted and discharged in the same night. She drinks tea and eats saltine crackers, while her mother flips through soap operas on cable TV. The radio in the kitchen is spewing out words – "perpetrator" "teenage girl" "caught" "sexual assault". Cat waddles to it, yanks down the volume, returns to her spot in the La-Z-Boy chair. Cat's mother is not paying attention to the TV anymore; she is doing puzzles from a crossword book with a number two pencil. A man on TV smacks a woman's butt. The woman turns to him, chagrined, then scared as he reaches for her and covers her mouth and drags her away. Cat is horrified – memories of a face flash across her mind and she closes her eyes and covers her ears and screams. Audrina pounds her tiny feet against the walls of Cat's womb, but Cat pretends she can't feel. Cat's mother grabs her hands, tries to cover her mouth, but Cat just sobs and wrenches herself away. The memories don't go away for hours.
YOU ARE READING
Twelve.
Short StoryCat, a naive teenage girl navigates the last twelve weeks of her pregnancy, struggling to overcome trauma and uncertainty as the clock counts down to the arrival of her child.
