Her Dark Heart

3. without order, nothing exists, without chaos nothing evolves

Trigger warning: contains brief talk about abortion and child abandonment

The drive to Rhode Island was long and border-line intolerable.

They made short conversation about what their lives had been like until now but neither were willing to give any more information than the basics. Athena learned that her father had owned a cat called Fred. Emilio had learned that Athena once baby-sat a snake.

The rest of the journey was made slightly easier when Athena plugged in her earphones to her battered iPod and listened to music she had never heard of. The streets zoomed past in blurs of grey and black and soon, the scenery turned to green and white.

She memorized exactly the route her father took toward his house. She watched the white picket fences and manicured lawns turn to blocks of well-worn houses with broken fences and shattered windows. Emilio pulled into an off-road street that was lined with a selection of blocks of houses and small, stand-alone houses.

Athena could just make out the beginnings of a beach through the gaps of the houses and she wondered where he got the money to be able to afford a house with a beach view. When she saw the 'beach' houses up close, she realized that these were not the typical 'beach' houses B-list celebrities would be seen swanning about in. No, these were the kind of beach houses criminals rented for next-to-nothing, most likely to hide from someone or to be close to the water in case they needed to make a quick escape across the ocean, away from extradition.

She had been used to criminals and gangs in Brooklyn; most didn't rent a beach house to hide out, but somehow this neighborhood sent a chill down her spine.

When she turned to look at Emilio, she noticed that he had become suspiciously quiet. Up until now, he had been humming tunelessly to a song she didn't recognize.

His silence made her feel even more on edge. His knuckles had turned white over his grip on the steering wheel and his eyes were laser focused onto the road ahead. He could feel Athena's wandering gaze but he refused to meet her eye, suddenly finding a spot on the road ahead very interesting.

"Dad, what -," She started before Emilio abruptly turned into a small driveway, throwing Athena harshly against the window.

"Ow," She complained, "Fine, I won't ask."

There was another car parked outside the house, a faded pink that reminded her of the color of bad sunburn. Emilio looked perplexed, the way his eyes zeroed in on the car, she could tell he was instantly on edge. She recognized that look in his eye, the raised eyebrows and wide, fearful eyes meant warning signs were flashing like the fourth of July in his head.

Before she could ask again, Emilio leapt out of the car and half-sprinted through the front door.

Athena watched him with a tired look. The man was definitely on something, he was more skittish than a horse in a thunderstorm. She decided to chalk it up to paranoia from him being around the cops for more than 5 minutes and got out of the car to survey the house she would call 'home' for the next few years.

From the outside, the house looks as though it should be a beautiful house with ivy climbing over the white walls and large windows absorbing every drop of the southern sun.

It wasn't. Instead, the walls looked to be crumbling away and the ivy had turned an ugly brown color which snaked over the large cracks in the wall like a botched patch-work quilt.

One side of the house was painted an obnoxious pink color, the kind a Barbie playhouse would be, and the rest was left the dirt stained white. The front lawn was littered with all sorts of trash and a large burn mark covered the left side of the grass. A broken stone path led to the front steps and Athena stepped over the splintered floorboards to eye the similarly splintered front door which had a large crack wide enough to see right into the house.