Perfectly Imperfect

Prologue

~5 years ago~
I slowly opened my eyes and wiped away any remnants of sleep from them. I sat up and stretched, my muscles protesting as I heard my bones creak, much like the floorboards they were forced to lay against each night. The floorboards were particularly unforgiving for my small, skinny frame and they were freezing to the touch. The thin itchy wool blanket did nothing to erase that. We couldn't afford heating and beds were a luxury I was unfamiliar with.

In fact, there wasn't a bed in this whole apartment. I glanced outside, it was getting light. I had probably slept in a little later than I should have, it was hard to tell with no watch or phone to tell the time. I snook into the living room, as I did most mornings, and began my mission. I glanced around, ensuring it was just my parents home this time. It seemed so. It didn't matter that I did this every day, that it was routine, my heart pounded and fear clogged my throat. Was I going to find them dead this time?

I saw my mother splayed across one sofa, looking gaunt and terrifying. Needles littered the floor. I flitted my gaze back to her. I had grown used to calling the monster, my mother. And that's just what she looked like; a monster. Had I been any other child I would have been running for the hills screaming. Her gums swollen, her teeth yellow. Her skin pulled across the bones. From my research, I concluded it wasn't even the drug, necessarily, that was holy responsible for these things although I'm sure it exacerbated them. It was the fact that she prioritised her next hit over eating. Why spend money on food when it can go to your next fix instead. Why waste money on a toothbrush and toothpaste and waste time brushing your teeth when you could be getting high.

Of course, the drug only contributed more to these things. Her body was covered in abscesses from the overuse of needles. When I was slightly younger, maybe 6-7 I would hope with a childlike naivety that she would run out of skin to use. But it seemed an area would heal by the time she ran out, like some delusional game of snake -- always chasing its tail. There was no winner in this game. She turned over in her sleep, lazily scratching at one of the scabs. Despite everything I still let out a sigh of relief; she was alive.

The apartment was cold and damp. Mould clung to the recesses of the ceiling. The apartment looked exactly like what it was: a drug den. Paint flaked from every surface, tiles were cracked. The sofas had large parts torn out with the stuffing either visible or missing. There wasn't really much else to it, everything other than the table and sofa had been sold to fund their habits.

I shook my head and began my cleanup, sterilising the needles. I had learnt how to do this at school, I used the computer and the incognito tab. I couldn't allow anybody to find out, they weren't parents and I wouldn't go so far as to say they kept a roof over my head. But their presence did. I was 11 now and while I found myself more than capable of looking after myself I couldn't legally do so for another 7 years. This was the better evil, I had heard rumours about the care system, I had read the statistics, I liked statistics but I was not going to become one of them.

I had to sterilise them because they reused them, and they wouldn't take the time to clean them themselves, too much effort. They were mindless zombies at this point, they had no personality, it was 'fix, fix, fix' and nothing else. I cleared away the spoons tarred with the substance, I knew better than to scrape the remnants away though and piled them onto the carrier bag abandoned on the table. The heroine made their memory hazy, they forgot things easily like the fact that rent was due, or to put money on the gas and electric, or that I existed. But they never forgot where, or the amount, of heroin they had. I wasn't entirely sure the burnt bits could be reused, but it didn't matter in their eyes. I had learned from the mistake of cleaning that spoon, for 'wasting the product'. I had paid for it dearly, I thought sadly, I had the scars to prove it.

They had a one-track mindset. And that track was heading in one direction only.

I knew it, they probably knew it. They didn't care, or couldn't care. I didn't know which but I guess the particulars didn't matter it had the same result in the end: death. I finished cleaning up and opened a window, despite the chill, to allow the smell to dissipate. I didn't even know if the drug had a smell, it could just be the smell of my parent's decay. They were one and the same. I glanced at my father and he looked no better. He was wheezing as he slept, his breathing irregular. I 'reckon he'll be the first to go. And it will be a miracle if my mother stopped two seconds to even notice.