Page 84 of Offside Devil

Around the sunken-in couch.

Past the foldable TV tray covered in cigarette butts.

Into the carpeted kitchen.

I move robotically to the sink, turning on the tap and letting the air crackle through the line until it runs smoothly. Years’ worth of dishes are piled in a teetering stack next to the overflowing sink.

I haven’t been back here in so long. I don’t know what I’m doing here now, but I have to work. I have to do these dishes before someone comes home and they start to?—

The front door bangs off the wall, and I jump.

Faster. I have to wash faster.

But oily dishes slip out of my hands. I fumble for the soap, but it sprays out like a firehose, dousing the walls and the countertop in neon blue suds.

“Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.” My father’s voice slithers through the house like a snake, shivering down my spine. He’s drunk. He only calls me ‘Kitty’ when he’s drunk.

I work harder and faster while his voice gets louder behind me. “This is my house, Kitty! You do the dishes in my house! You scrub the floors in my house!”

My arms ache, but I can’t work fast enough. I can’t wash a single dish.

“How did you manage to fuck this up, Kitty?”

Tears pour down my face and I can’t breathe. I’m choking on my own sobs and the stench of mildew and terror.

“This was your last chance,” he roars. “I told you if you fucked up again, I’d kill you!”

The house shakes, and I turn around, and he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s…

I lurch out of bed and crack my knees hard on the floor. There’s no time to get back upright, so I scramble on all fours into the bathroom, just in time to empty my stomach in the toilet.

It’s becoming routine, at this point. Days of nightmares and throwing up. I thought I was hundreds of miles away from this trauma, but it found me.

It fucking found me.

I have no idea what time it is, but I turn the shower on and shiver under the spray. I breathe in the clean steam and let the hot water burn over my skin.

“I’m safe. I’m far away,” I whisper to myself. “I’m free.”

But then I close my eyes and I see my childhood home like no time at all has passed. I can hear my father’s voice—a violent rasp made raspier by a lifetime of smoking and screaming—like I never left.

Zane didn’t know.

I have no clue what Hanna told him because I was too terrified to ask, but he didn’t know what would happen when he backed me against the door. If he’d known the horrible place my brain went when he screamed, he never would have done it.

Because Zane isn’t my father.

Knowing that doesn’t do a damn thing to fix the fucked-up tangle of neural pathways in my head. It’s simple math: screaming leads to anger. Anger leads to hitting. Hitting leads to blood. Those are facts of life as far as my body is concerned, and now, I can’t even look at Zane without tears collecting in my eyes.

My instincts are waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I don’t know how much longer I can live like this.

I also don’t know how much longer I can keep running.

I thought, if I put enough miles between me and that fucked-up house—those fucked-up people—that my fear would disappear. But it doesn’t matter how far I run. I'm the problem. The call is coming from inside the house.

My knees wobble and I slide down the glass shower wall before my legs can give out.

Water swirls around the drain, and I drop my forehead to my knees.

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