Wicked Runs In The Family

Chapter one: Pig Snoring Beauty Queen.

POV: Nicole

I stare up at the ceiling while I listen to the roar of the early morning traffic jam and the loud piggish snore of Beauty Queen next to me. I love days like this, the weather is calm, everybody is out doing their day to day activities. But it also the most frightening days, because your guard is down and you think nothing is going to go wrong. That's always the big mistake.

I decided that I'm not going to fall back to sleep anytime soon, with my sister snoring and angry drivers late for something. I sit up feeling groggy from staying up late from last night.

Both Vanessa and I couldn't fall asleep again until around four. Mom and Dad had one of their loudest and most violent fights last night. The yelling and breaking things. Just another one of their midnight aurguments, when they think Vanessa and I are asleep, hit a new record. This might sound scary and we should call family services, but we know all of this has another reason. Vanessa and I have made predictions that it's about the bills and not having enough money, or just releasing stress from the day. Either way it's normal for us and doesn't bug. What bugs us is the sudden calm after the arguing last night.

I look over to the alarm clock on the bedside table separating our two sides, 9:00am. A surge of panic goes through my nerves, I'm late for school. Then it struck me, it's the first day of summer vacation. I got up from my bed quietly, though I doubt that it would wake Vanessa over her snoring. Walk over to my dresser, feeling the cold apartment floor under my bare feet I tripped over a stack of mythology books on the way there, earning some cruses from me.

Then finally I made it to my old dresser covered with books, notepads, pencils, pens and a few makeup things. I don't bother looking in the mirror in front of me, I grab a graphic tee, an old ratty jeans and my favorite sweater. A faded old orange hoodie, with fraying drawstrings around the hood and a hole on the bottom. I get changed and leave the snoring Sleeping Beauty in the dark. I get half way down the hallway and then I turn around back to my bedroom to get my glasses. I'm not suppose to wear them all the time, their only meant for reading, but I'm pretty much reading more than anything else so whets the difference. Their big black hipster glasses and I love them.

I walk into the kitchen, feeling dazed in happiness as if I've just looked up from my book after reading a happy point in a book. Then I saw my mother and reality crash into me breaking all shreds of hope.

She stares out of the kitchen window which is the only light in the small apartment kitchen. Her long blonde hair is tangle into a bun that is barley staying in the hair tie. I look down at my plain brown hair that I tied up into a hair tie. Vanessa looks like a perfect clone of my mom and I looked like either of my parents. I'll get back to that later more important stuff in front of me, like my mom being a complete zombie sitting in my dad's kitchen chair.

Her eyes are red and puffy from the tears that gleamed down her red colored cheeks. There's a blank expression on her face, nether anger, sad or confusion, just blankness. Her right hand has shards of the blue vase that used to sit on top of the counter, and blood streaming down her hand that gripping the arm of the chair. She wears only her pajamas and her purple fuzzy bath robe that Vanessa gave to her when she was young.

I try to form words but I'm speechless on what is in front of me. My mother never just sits in a chair on a day like this. She would normally be doing something, she can't just sit still both her and my sister has high ADHD. She would be cooking, cleaning around the house, watering the planets on the fire escape, something. Not just sitting completely still like this, this would make her squirrely. This makes my blood colder then ice. Something happened last night and it's not good.

"M-m-mo-m," I say her name with such caution I feel as if it alien and new to me.

She doesn't respond to it at all. Not a sound, not a move, just sat there starring out the window. This made me wants to fall at her feet and scream at her to answer me, to tell me what wrong, but I can't. I don't know what to do. I'm not a people person, Vanessa is. I like books, facts and things that aren't alive and have a mind of their own. But she's still sound asleep. I'm going to have to figure it out and deal with this by myself.