I can feel my heart beat excel. I hold my breath and listen for his footsteps. The trees are so dense that not even the moonlight can find its way through. It's too quiet. Where is he? I wish I could see. Just as I begin to think it's safe, a ball of fire flies towards my face, and in that second, the fire illuminates his triumphant face as I lose consciousness…
How can I still be alive? After he threw that fireball at me, I was sure I would die. I slowly open my eyes. It's almost pitch black; the only light is what sneaks past my blinds and onto my ceiling from the street light outside. Another nightmare? This is the third one this week! It's always the same one, but I don't know what it means. Who is the man? How is he throwing fire at me? Why? I check my clock. Four thirty? Damn! I'm too scared to go back to sleep, so I might as well get up.
I sneak down the thirty year old stairs trying to make as little noise as possible. This house has been in our family since the nineteen hundreds. Most of the ugly floral wallpaper is still intact. My great-grandparents added the second storey after my mother was born. She was the youngest of six, so they really needed the extra space.
When I get downstairs, I turn the television on and put the audio so low that you can barely hear it. Dad is bitchy enough in the mornings as it is without being woken up at four thirty. I start my usual routine; shower, brush my teeth and hair, get dressed, and finish last night’s homework. I finish by six thirty and watch reruns of The Simpsons until it’s time to leave for school.
“Cindy Abbot? Cindy? CINDY!” Mr. Westover, my homeroom teacher, seems annoyed.
“Sorry, what?” I’m so distracted this morning, why do I keep having these dreams? All I can think about is his face, just before the fireball hit me.
“Pay attention! I’m calling the roll.” Now he is just pissed off. Today will be fun; I have him for three classes. Suddenly, something hits me in the back of the head. I turn around and James McLavey and his ‘posse’ have bits of scrunched up paper on their desk and are throwing them at my face.
“Grow up! You’re so immature!” I hate them so much, and they’re only a fraction of the people at this school that bully me. He just laughs and throws another one. I glare at him, just wishing that karma would get back at him for everything he’s done to me. Then a loud snap erupts from under the table and he falls to the ground, his nose slamming against the edge of the table as he falls. He jumps up, swaying as he tries to gain balance. With one hand he clutches his nose, which is now dripping with blood, and pointing at me with the other, he screams
“YOU BITCH! YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR THAT!” and he storms out of the classroom. That wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened today. When I go to my locker to grab my bag before afternoon homeroom, there is an envelope on the top shelf that has my name on it. It looks important, and I don’t want to read it at school, so I shove it in my bag and left.
“Dad, I’m home.” I quietly shut the door behind me as I step into the front hallway.
“In here, sweetie poo.” He moaned. It came from the lounge room. I walk through the archway and notice the strong smell of alcohol all through the room. Dad is lying on the couch with cans and bottles of beer on the floor. He is watching some show about killer whales on the discovery channel, but he’s too drunk to understand what the narrator is saying.
He has been drinking since mum disappeared. Ten years ago. All I remember of her is flashbacks I have every now and again of us playing with my dolls or going to the park. I have a necklace of hers. It’s silver, rather old, and is in the shape of a heart. I never take it off. It has a keyhole in the middle, but it doesn’t have use. I leave dad to lie in his drunken mess and go upstairs to start my homework.
