Useless

A Broken Beginning

Blaring beeps cut through the still air, disturbing the natural quiet of the afternoon. The digital alarm clock read 1:00PM in large, blue numbers. "BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!" The beeping was becoming unbearably loud now, but the girl beneath the covers was too worn out and in too much pain to care, she could feel every bruise and battered muscle aching and throbbing. This continued on for a small while, eventually the alarm clock stopped it's infernal beeping as the blue numbers changed to 1:05PM.

The girl's pale blue eyes fluttered open, they were gentle and attentive as she tried to sort out what happened that night. A few memories flooded back as she bit the inside of her lip, trying to recall them. She remembered her uncle came home late on Saturday, drunk, as he always is at that time of night. His words were slurred and he kept dropping and breaking things, which made him visibly frustrated. She remembered she was in the kitchen trying to do her homework. The lights were dimmed and her head was down. She tried to ignore her uncle, tried to avoid him, tried to hide from him. Not like that ever worked. Next thing she knew he was yelling at her, screaming more like. He was screaming about many things, about how her education isn't necessary because she won't amount to anything anyways, about how no one loved her and that she was the reason her mother left, that he wished she was never born, that she was a burden, that she was useless.

After that things got bad but she knew better than to fight back, then he left. Leaving her at the bottom of the stairs in a puddle of her own blood. She remembered the painful climb of the stairs and stumbling through the hallway, then entering the bathroom to examine the damage her uncle left. The girl barely remembered leaving the bathroom and falling into her bed, unaware of her now blood smeared sheets. Her memories were foggy and ill-defined, the only thing that rung clear in her mind was the itching pain in between her shoulder blades. Her gentle eyes were pained as she grit her teeth. The letters, she remembered the letters. The bleeding word on her back, the seven letter word that caused more pain than all her uncle's beatings combined. The word USELESS would be forever marked in her skin, and would always burn hot in her mind. She would bear a mental scar to match the one on her back for the rest of her life.

The alarm clock created a clicking noise as the blue letters changed to 1:06PM. The click caught the girl's attention, tearing her from her thoughts and forcing her to turn her head to face the clock. She had slept through most of Sunday, only woken by her alarm reminder to finish her homework before school on Monday. The girl sighed loudly, hoping that if she sighed loud enough her problems would go away. But wishes don't always come true, so instead she decided to get up. Hunger gnawed at her as she pulled herself up out of bed, but she couldn't eat now, she had work to do. The girl straightened out and gripped onto her bed post to steady herself, taking a quick glance around her room.

The color of her room was long since forgotten, the walls were draped with posters, sketches, and paintings, making it so her walls were no longer visible. Clothes lines were strung across the room, connecting the walls to one another, some lines were strung in front of her closet, some just below the ceiling, some in front of her door, some above her desk, and some hanging so low that she would have to duck beneath them to cross the room. Attached to the clothes lines were sketches, countless detailed sketches strung across her space. She smiled at them as a small gust of wind entered through the open window, shuffling them on their strings. Most of the drawings were memories, prominent events in her life that she brought to life on paper. Some of the memories were good, while others hurt to look at. Although some of the drawings were things she remembered, a small portion were sketched out hopes, wishes and things she longed to have, like dreams that would never come true. The girl liked to hang them with her memories to remind her that "maybe someday" they would come true, that "maybe someday" things would get better. Maybe.

Curious pale eyes peeked at her desk, she had work to do. The girl slid into her chair and grabbed a blank peice of paper and a few pencils from the wooden desk drawer. A spark lit in her eyes as pencil met paper, recreating the image in her head. Her pencil glided across the paper, each line was careful and precise, adding onto one another to create the bigger picture. After an hour or so of sketching, erasing and sketching again, her drawing was finished, The paper was no longer blank and dull, but filled with shadows, shades and pencil marks. The image resembled the bottom half of a towering shillouette of a man holding a broken glass bottle. His outline was tall and looming, you could almost feel anger radiating from his shaded body. A shadow could not have been drawn more menacing. The girl sighed and flipped the paper over, taking her now dull pencil and scribbling her name in the bottom corner. "Nani Moore"

Nani pulled open the wooden desk drawer and grabbed a clothes pin, placing her memory onto one of the strings. She frowned and turned away, the painful cuts on her back had begun to itch and her hunger pangs had grown more intense. Her stomach complained but Nani knew there wouldn't be any food in the house because her uncle hadn't shopped for supplies in weeks and she didn't have the money to buy some herself. It seemed like she would have to wait for school lunch tomorrow. The girl sighed again .and continued on with her next orders of business. Nani went to her bathroom and cleaned up and dressed her wounds, dressed herself, brushed her hair and teeth, rid the walls and floors of blood, cleaned up the broken glass, washed her clothes, soaked her bed sheets and finished her homework from the night before. It was only 5:00PM when everything was finished, but that didn't stop Nani from falling into bed fully dressed. She wasn't even able to kick off her shoes before nodding off to the sound of her memories swaying in the wind.