Man of the House

Chapter 3: Sickening Nights

When they get home from dinner, everything is silent as Hayley, Mike, and Caren walk into the trailer, drenched from the rain. The events of the day weigh heavily on their minds, more so on the mind of little Hayley.

"If she only knew what was going on..." Hayley starts to think, "but I can't tell her, she probably won't believe me anyway and God knows what Mike would do to me if I told, or what he would do to mom." Hayley tries to break the haze of her own thoughts as she trudges to her room and closes the door. "If only I could lock this thing." she ponders while she starts to dress in her pajamas. She walks back to the kitchen for a glass of water as Caren stops her in the hallway.

"How was your day sweetie?" Caren inquires without much curiosity as she walks with Hayley to the kitchen. She's tired from her long twelve hour day, even Hayley can see that.

"It was..." Hayley pauses, wishing she could just let herself fall apart right there in front of her mother and come out with the truth, "fine." she mumbles as a tear falls down her adolescent face, she turns away so as to keep her pain to herself.

"That's good baby, you need to go ahead and go to bed so you can rest up for another fine day tomorrow. I love you." Caren proposes as she takes Hayley in for a hug.

Caren loves her daughter. She has worked so hard the past ten years so that Hayley would never have to go hungry or worry about housing, clothing, or any other necessity. She got pregnant when she was sixteen and dropped out of high school. Now she's working on getting her GED. It's easy to see how she could feel held back by her responsibilities as a mother. Her parents were alcoholics, always fighting. Her father had actually shot her mother in the head with a shotgun (she had survived after her face was reconstructed with metal plates, only to have another surgery done on her head for the resulting aneurysm) and she was left with an abusive, alcoholic father for five years when her mother had run away. So it's safe to say that she hadn't had the greatest childhood herself, nor did she have a good example of parenthood to look up to.

"Goodnight mom, love you too." Hayley says as the hug releases and she wanders back to her room. She lays in bed and listens. She can hear her mother walking through the trailer, turning off the lights and locking the doors. She knows that there won't be much sleep for her tonight. She tries to remember a time when things were simpler, but she can't recall any. Every man that her mother has clung to has only been a huge let down in the fatherhood department, and Mike, Mike is the worst. Hayley tries to block her mind from going down that track of thought, she's had enough of him for the day. She closes her eyes in an attempt to find sleep, but it's not too long before the sounds bring her back to reality. Caren has gone to her room now, and from her bed on the other side of a thin drywall slab, Hayley can hear the sound of sex. It makes her blood boil and she begins to cry. In a feeble attempt to block all of it out and return to her slumber Hayley picks up her iPod and pushes the earbuds far into her ear, turning the sound all the way up, and pretends that she can just ignore her pain. The sounds are gone, but now she can feel her bed rocking, and her stomach turns, causing her to be sick. She runs to the bathroom between Caren's room and hers and the sounds are louder now, even over the sounds of her own vomit, she can only hear one thing and it makes her long for death. She decides she can't be in that bathroom anymore, so close to those sounds, so she grabs the small trash can from the corner and she vomits her way back to her room where she sits, pressed up against the wall, in tears and covered with her own insides. She grabs a dirty towel from the laundry pile in the corner and wipes herself off, no way she's going to that bathroom to wash off. The noise and movement stops and she hurries to her bed to hide herself under the blankets. She knows he's coming. Just as soon as she positions herself under the blankets, Mike walks in. He's not wearing any clothes on his lower half but on his face is a widespread smile. He stands there, staring at the outline of Hayley under her blankets, for a few minutes until he walks over to her bed and reaches his hand down to caress her frozen body. Hayley holds her breath under those blankets, praying to God that he would just leave her be. Mike runs his hands over the shape of Hayley's rear and squeezes. He then turns around, with a small, evil laugh, and walks out. As soon as Hayley hears the door she runs for the trash can she stashed in the closet and begins to vomit all over again.