Aug
24th
Push - Chapter Three - By Lauren & Hattie
By GreenyDoodleChapter 3
On the bus ride home, someone tapped my shoulder. I'd ignored it, but then the tapping continued. I turned in my seat to face whoever was tapping my shoulder, but, like most days, I was still all alone in the back of the bus. I heard a cackle of laughter, but I brushed it off as one of the boy's in the front of the bus and didn't think about it as much. Maybe someone was under my seat messing with me, trying to see what would happen, but no, I'd swung my bag around under the seat and didn't feel it hit anything, but I heard the cackle again, so I decided it was just the kids in the front of the bus.
Once home, I thanked my lucky stars that my dad wasn't home. Mom was, like always. Dad told her he'd hit her harder if she got a job because he thought that staying at home was "woman's work" and that it wouldn't be right for a woman to get a job and try to fit in with the hardworking men. He'd despised women who had jobs, and I'm fairly certain he only married my mom because she was the only unemployed woman for miles. I locked myself in my room and didn't hesitate to turn on my stereo and turn up the music to full blast. My mom knocked on my door loud enough so that I could hear it, and I turned down the radio and opened the door for her. She gave me a basket of clothes, trying to smile and hide the deep melancholy in her green eyes. "I washed some clothes for you, Honey. Make sure to put all of your clothes away in the right drawers and clean up your desk. This room looks a fright."
When she left the room, the resolution of the radio slowly went down, and static washed over the room thickly. I tried tuning the radio back to the station it was on originally, turning the dial back and fourth, but it just got worse. Then I realized something.
The noise I was hearing wasn't static.
It was... whispers.
I could make out some words, but only a few as I tried turning the dial left and right, the volume going up and down, when my mom came in. "Ooh, I love this song," she claimed happily, dancing to the tune that only her ears could hear, singing along softly to herself the song that was playing. She twirled away, a look on her face of pure joy. But I couldn't get the voices to shut up. I tried and tried to re-tune it, although I never could quite get it back to where it was before-- away from the static.
"You're.......ng........oo......" I picked up from the whispers.
"You're.....ing....oo....hay...." and they stopped dead. The static cut off, the voices cut out, and so did the music. I curled up in a little ball on my bed and waited on I wasn't sure what. I guess I fell asleep at some point, because I woke up around two A.M. to the static on my radio. I rolled over to face it, and out of desperation I pulled the plug on it. The static whispers continued to spill from the speakers and tumbled through the air angrily. I was tempted to cover my ears, but I wanted to know what the whispers were saying, so I refrained from doing so.
"You're.........ng......oo.............." I heard again. I strained my ears.
"You're.....ing.....oo...." Nothing new from what I heard earlier. The whispers started to jumble together, making it impossible to catch any parts of the words. I clamped my hands over my ears, waiting for the whispers to stop. They were making my mind swirl. I was unable to focus on one thought, and I squeezed my eyes shut and curled back up into my little fetal position. "Stop!"
I screamed at the top of my lungs through the house, my voice cracking in desperation. I heard feet hit the ground in the room a few doors down, and I felt my heart sink to my feet. If that was Dad, I was so dead for waking him up. I heard them stop at my door, but I couldn't tell if they were heavy footsteps or light ones. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I stared the doorknob down, daring it to turn, lying to myself that I wasn't scared. When it began to turn, I scrambled to turn the lamp beside my bed off, then to throw my thick, purple comforter over me in a fit of adrenaline. The door opened and I took a peek through the small opening between the mattress and the edge of my blanket to see who it was.
It was my dad. His face was noticeably purple even in the dark, his eyes and veins bulging out of his head with anger. He looked around my room, then his eyes stopped on my bed. He narrowed his eyes like he could see me through the thin opening, so I shut my eyes and prepared for him to walk toward me and throw my blanket off of me. I was still wearing my clothes, so he'd probably hit me for that. But if he caught my eyes open or figured I wasn't really asleep this late, he'd know that I hadn't just been talking --or in my case, yelling-- in my sleep, that I'd been awake and yelled that. Like I was trying to wake him up.
I heard him coming toward me with a lot of time before I heard each step. He was either taking his time or trying to get over faster by taking advantage of his long legs and taking long strides. They stopped just a few seconds later at the side of my bed. I felt him close a corner of my blanket into his fist, and he ripped it off a moment later, releasing all the warm heat that had been circling my body and replacing it with cold, fresh air that made me have to try hard not to shiver when the first blast of it came down on me.
His mouth was right by my ear, his breath hissing down to my nose. It stank and smelled strongly of beer. When he's drunk he hurts me more than usual, and I had to work harder to keep calm.
"Cadence!" He suddenly bellowed, scaring me out of my wits more than it would have if I'd been asleep.
"What?" I yelled.
"Why were you yelling a few minutes ago? It's almost 3 am! Why weren't you asleep?"
I instantly thought of a thousand comebacks that would have left him silent, but I didn't use any of them. I was smart enough to know that one comeback equaled five kicks to the face. "I don't remember yelling anything...I was asleep...I'm sorry...Did I wake you...?"
"That's bull. And of course you woke me! I wouldn't be in here telling you to shut up if you hadn't, dumbass!"
"I'm sorry. I, uh, don't mean to be so stupid."
"Haha, yeah, right. You do this to test me, don't you?" I shook my head vigorously, knowing it wouldn't do any good. "You make me sick. You're useless, pathetic, and everything that goes with that." He tugged me to my knees by my thick brown hair. I held in my cries so that my mom wouldn't wake up. If she came in here, then she'd start to cry or whimper. If she did that, my dad would push her into the hallway's wall so hard there would be another hole there to join the hole that my dad made when he had tried to punch me, I ducked, and his fist broke through the wall.
"Dad. Dad, stop." I pleaded. He grinned, releasing another wave of beer-breath at me. I turned my head -- or tried to. He wrenched my head back to facing him using my hair. He towed me to the edge of the bed, hand still holding my hair firmly, and kneed me in the stomach. I let out a soft cry and tried to bend over, he knew, of course, it would be a reflex. When I did, my head went down toward the ground but he kept a good, strong grip on my hair. He chuckled to himself when I cried out. I heard feet hit the ground in the next room, but I didn't register any worry for my mother. I was busy battling my own battles.
"Danny!" My mother exclaimed when she saw what was happening to me. "Let go of her ...Please..." My mom's voice had been firm and steady before, but I figured my dad had glared at her. I couldn't tell because I was holding my head down. A moment later my hair fell down past my face again, and I rubbed the top of my head. It pounded with pain, but I ignored it. I looked up at the scene before me. My dad had my mom in what could have been a hug if she hadn't been coughing and gasping for air.
I stood up, suddenly angry. "Let go of her!" I yelled, tugging on his thick, muscular arm. "You're suffocating her!" I looked down at my feet and listened to my mom gasp for air. My eyes wandered around the ground, only to find the vase that had spilled the night before. I looked up again at my father's back, watching as he strangled my mother in a too-tight bear hug. I looked next to my foot again, grabbed the vase that used to hold a rose, and held it up over his head. My mom's eyes widened as if to say, "No, don't," but I did anyway. I brought it down on the top of his shaved head, and watched the cascade of black and white glass as it clattered to the floor in a deadly waterfall, with my father who collapsed to the floor numbly. I saw a large cut in the back of his bald head, and hoped to God it was fatal.
My mom leaned with her back against the wall, breathing heavily while my heart thumped strongly in my head. The room began to spin as my adrenaline again pumped faster and faster through my veins. I watched as his head bled out onto the hard wood floor of my room. I looked up at my mother, who was still gasping for breath, and she looked back at me and nodded, her eyes wide and pleading. She ran out of the bedroom, and I wondered if I was going to get in trouble with the law for this as she dialed 9-1-1.
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