Unfathomable

Old Habits Die Hard

About a month of living in a hotel after her husband commited suicide in their living room they came back to that old victorian house with new disturbing memories.

Riley's father was gone and the living room showed no sign that a horrid event had taken place here. The blood spatter that was on the walls was gone. The fragments of bone and flesh were nowhere to be found. The endless nights of screaming and yelling and tears were finally over. 

Venessa became severely depressed but never showed any sign of that to Riley. She suffered in silence and sheltered herself from the nightmares and dreamscapes that took place in that godforsaken house. She hardly ever talked and couldn't stand to be in the living room for more than a few minutes at a time. A little while after they got back home Venessa had to go on a business trip for work leaving Riley alone with the babysitter Cori. After Cori's visit Venessa wasn't the same. After finding those little pills Vanessa found an outlet for her anger and a way to get away from her pain. But after a while, the opiates were not enough Venessa got into heroin and cocaine.

She had been using hard those few months that they had been home until she had to go to rehab for Rileys safety. After getting out of rehab she was okay for a few years, until Riley went to Taylorsville. With Riley being gone and Venessa being alone in that rotten house she couldn't resist her sweet release anymore. She gave in one night and sat in the bathtub with her stash box in her hand. She pulled out the rubber cord and tied it above her arm. Getting ready to ascend into Nirvana she took a deep breath and pushed the liquid death into her arm. Wincing at the pain her muscles slowly relaxed as the drug consumed her.

After her father died Riley no longer laughed or dreamed the same. Her dreams consisted of her father's dead eyes staring back at her. Haunting her waking thoughts. A few years went by and Riley had developed the same characteristics her father had left with her. Fear, depression, anxiety, the feeling of never being good enough for her mother, who is trying to make ends meet. She had gotten to the point of numbness that the only way to feel anything was by cutting her skin. Her mother had caught her once and sent her to the Taylorsville Psychiatric hospital. After a few years in  and out of the  psych ward she was finally convince her mother that she was fine and was ready to come home. Her mother reluctantly agreed and brough her home a few days before her 15th birthday. When Riley got into the car she realized her mother looked different. She was so skinny and pale she could basically see through her skin and watch the blood flwo to her cold hands. There were dark circles under her eyes indicating that there had been many restless nights. She worried about her mother for a long time as she slowly got worse and worse. 

Riley eventually realized that her mother was using. She was devastated at first and then it became normal and routine. 
A couple years past and Venessa was still using and Riley was ore depressed then she had ever been before. The scars on her wrists had faded by the time she was seventeen, as did her will to live. She had been deprived of sensation. Numbness had consumed her waking thoughts and her constant sleeping didn't make her feel any less exhausted. 
Her mother had been in and out of rehab but she had begun using again. She had kept it from Riley after she got back from Taylorsville. She didn't want her daughter to see her like that again. 
Not again. 
After a drunken night her mother had passed out in the bathroom with the needle in her  arm slumped up between the bloodstained tub and unclean sink. Venessa didn't think that Riley would be home for hours so she pierced that needle into her blown out vein of her forearm and sighed as she pushed that liquid escape into her thirsty system. 
What she didn't know was that Riley got home from school early. The moment she stepped up the rotting discolored steps to her house she felt that the aura of her house had changed. It felt like the night her father had...
She opened the unlocked door and left it ajar as she walked up the steps into her mother's room.
"Mom?" 
Silence called back to her.
Mom!?"
She began crying as she saw her mother's limp body crumpled in the corner with the rubber band around her forearm and that disgusting needle sticking out of her twitching limb. Rileys stomach flipped and she got down on her knees and shook her mother back and forth trying to get her to come to. She grabbed her phone and pressed 911 her finger hovered over the call button.

Does she deserve it? Does she deserve to live?

Riley was taken back by this new voice in her head. She had heard this voice before. It was the voice she feared. The voice that convinced her she wasn't good enough, and now it's telling her to let this woman suffer and perish in the bathroom that has already seen bloodshed from Riley herself.

You know she deserves it. Besides she won't die and you know that. An addict like her knows exactly how much to get her right on that razor edge just to come back down to earth with the rest of us. Leave her there. Let her rot in her filth and disgrace. She'll be back in an hour or so.

Let her find you instead. 

Riley's mind stopped dead in its tracks. Her wrists began to itch for that blade that has been hidden in her subconscious for three years. The sharp satisfying slice into her aching wrists the blood landing in the water turning it into a pink hue. The drip stains along the porcelain sides of the tub that got left and forgotten. Unable to be scrubbed away it left a mark on the tub sending her to the hospital in the first place.

Show her the pain she's showing you know. You deserve it anyways, it's your fault that she's like this anyways. You're just like your father. 

A disappointment. A failure who only pushes your mother to put a needle in her arm and get away from you, only to come back down and fall back into the world with your soulless face around every corner. Haunting her because all she can see is your father. You should just take yourself away from her, maybe then she wouldn't have to shoot up anymore and could find some happiness.

Without you.

She considered this and looked at her selfish, sad, disposable mother who would be better off without her. She took the syringe out of her mother's arm and set it on the tabletop. She made the decision and left her mother there. Then walked upstairs into her room and lifted up the book her father gave her.