The Darkest Places You Never Knew

Chapter 1

                            The Black Door

Today is annoyingly grey. The sky is dark-grey, the grass is wolf-grey, even my parents are dead-grey swishing grey oatmeal around their mouths. The only thing that dodges the greyness of today is the chunky black cat purring outside.

He doesn't act like the neighbor's cats. He stands like a drill sergeant until he has something to eat in front of him like one of the mice that run around our building or warm milk that spoils in a few days. I've also seen him here and there pooping in Mom's daisy garden or her "daisy chain" like she calls it. She shoos him away and shovels his poop into our well but he only returns to do it all over again.

I'm starting to get the idea they don't like each other.

I swing open the door with the little breeze we do get every now and then and crouch down in front of him. He stretches, lets out a feeble "meow" and strolls over to Mom's daisy garden.

"Mila, is that fat cat pooping in my daisy chain again?"

"Doesn't stop him from coming back to poop in it if I said yes, does it?"

My mom grunts, slaps her newspaper on the table and power walks to the cat.

"Get out of here! Scat!"

I chuckle while the cat springs out of the garden and sprints away from the house. I can't help but feel like Mom is glaring at me though; glaring like she's trying to burn a hole into my face.

"I hope you still find it funny when you have to drop this poop into the well. Grab the shovel and mask from beneath the stoop."

I frown and stomp to the stoop to throw the mask on and drag the shovel back with me to the scene of the crime; a large pile of chunky black cat poop in the center of the garden. I gag.

"This stinks to high heaven!"

Mom is half outside and half inside the house when she hears me.

"You should have thought of that before you laughed."

Once the screen door shuts, I whine, scoop the poop and carefully waddle to the well to dump it whole.

Plop.

My stomach churned and I would have vomited if I had breakfast. I guess that's the upside of not having any sometimes. You don't know when you'll be shoveling poop for laughing at your mother.

I drag the shovel back with me to the stoop, toss it underneath and whip the mask to the ground. I hesitate to open the door until I do and Mom and Dad are snickering, covering their noses.

"Sweetheart, for the sake of your mother and I, please take a shower."

When I march up the stairs, they cackle over the loud creaks in the steps. I hate when they cackle. It makes me want to hide away sometimes because it's like they're laughing at me and not the situation I'm in.

I curl myself into a ball in the shower and cry. I think I cry more than I speak at times. Mom used to call me "weeping girl" because of it.

"You've got enough tears to fill the well up halfway."

I call her Mom because Dad tells me to but in reality, she's only my halfway mom: she halfway drops me off at school, she halfway makes me dinner, she halfway cares about whether I scrape my knee, bang my elbow or twist my ankle. Even the rickety wooden stairs know how halfway she is since she only kind of fixed the shaky banister and somewhat got the stairs to creak less.

My true mom died in a plane that crashed and exploded on a runway and I never wanted her back more than I do now.

If I'm really being honest though, I wish this mom would disappear all the way.