Blind Beauty (Preview)

Chapter 2

Brett

Laying there in bed and nearly passing back out again, I heard the three stomps that I dreaded hearing every morning. Thump! Thump! Thump! I groaned in dissatisfaction but still wasn't motivated enough to roll myself out of bed. Hoping that it would just pass I continued to lay there as what I only knew was inevitable happened. Another three stomps echoed from the floor above. This time more aggressive then the first as the spackling on the roof broke free and covered the majority of my body along with the sheets beside me.

To me, it felt like the whole house shook whenever my mother stomped, but that might have been the fact that I was still groggy after the nightmare that I had just experienced. I debated whether this was reality or just a hallucination as I sat up and tried to get all the white dust off of myself when I suddenly heard my mother's all so pleasant voice echo down from above.

"Son! It's time to get up! You're going to be late for school!" Her tone was shrill and dug into my brain.

The words were a cold reminder of how I assumed my day would go. Although I didn't have time to think as I respected the drill sergeant, or my mother as she was sometimes referred to. In her mind she expected me to be up there that second, if I took three, then that was two seconds too long. She ran a tight ship, but at the end of the day, it didn't mean I wouldn't attempt to put up a fight.

"I don't wanna go to school." I reluctantly muttered to myself as I accepted my fate.

Putting my legs over the side of the bed while even more of the white spackling fell off me, and I couldn't be bothered to deal with it as I sat there for another second and contemplated my upcoming day. Overthinking the majority of it, I knew I was just wasting my time, and any second now my mother would be coming down the stairs at full tilt, ready to give me an ear full for making her wait, then likely dragging me up the stairs on her way back up.

With no other choice, I pushed myself off the bed and headed for the stairs. Managing to get up the first set of steps to the other part of the basement. I spun around the corner to go up to the next floor, only to be cut off abruptly by my mother who was standing at the threshold of the door.

Tori, was like any other mom that I had met in my short life, she was pushing fifty and still had the determination and ambition to go to work every day without question. Even if it wasn't the most fantastic job, or she hated the people around her. She just always seemed to have a smile on in the morning even though the sun hadn't even come up yet.

That being said as I turned the corner to go up the next set of stairs. She had been coming down them as quiet as an elephant, which in turn caused us to look at each other for half a second before staggering backward in surprise of one another.

"Shit, you scared the hell out of me, son." She cried out as she placed a hand on her chest to feel her heartbeat.

"Yeah, I could say the same to you, but I almost died. If I took another step back and stumbled down the stairs." I retorted as she turned around and started walking back up.

"Well, you didn't." She snarked as we continued and a part of me couldn't help but think I wish I had.

Now entering the kitchen, I watched as she went back to her usual spot at the table, while our cat sat next to her on a folded up portion of the newspaper, eyeing up a yogurt cup. Picking it back up, she finished it off since that was all she ever had for breakfast then offered what remained to the cat. In the meantime I paced around the kitchen, making myself a bowl of cereal. This was our morning routine for a countless number of years, and it wasn't going to change anytime soon.

"So are you ready for school today? Maybe you'll find a girl to spend the holidays with this year." Tori asked, smiling from her spot, as I took a deep breath and picked up the bowl of cereal\ before taking it over to the table.