Page 2 of Overcast

“I was on the phone when I found your daughter,” Hollis continues, stepping closer to press his stout stomach into my back. “We were about to catch up.”

I wait for it with bated breath.

I hang onto the belief that Dad will ask him why he’s so close to me. Why he’s probably looking at me like he discovered a piece of cake that he wants to devour in one bite.

I know he has to see it because Dad’s vision hasn’t diminished in his old age. This turning a blind eye to certain things has to end before Hollis, and the rest of Dad’s buddies start passing me around like a frisbee.

“We need more beer.” My next exhale is rickety as Dad fails me for the millionth time in my existence.

He’s back to his cards, the most important thing in the room beside his lack of beer.

I shouldn’t be surprised.

I read too many books, that’s the problem. I hold on to faith that is placed in the wrong people and situations. I’m on my own, have been for a long time. No six-year-old that I know of has balled their knees into their chest at night, believing that their father was beating and hurting the woman he brought home that night. I heard pleas of God and hard slaps that echoed from the walls. Things crashing to the floor and cries of what sounded to be pain. Little did I recognize at the time that they were having sex, but he didn’t bother to keep it quiet.

Why should he?

I was always something he easily discarded or ignored. And I’ve gotten used to it.

I watch my Dad’s brows knit, solely focused back on his cards. His buddies surrounding the rest of the table haven’t even stolen a look at me.

It’s because of him.

I’ve watched Hollis break a chair over a man’s head just for asking me if I wanted to go to the party store with him.

I may be naïve to a lot of stuff, but Hollis’s jealousy isn’t one of them.

“Let me catch up with Stormi,” Hollis vouches. “And then she’s all yours.”

And without a response from Dad, he wraps a meaty arm around my waist and begins to guide me into the dimly lit family room.

Passing the large sixty-inch TV that Dad randomly brought home last week, a lust-filled groan suddenly charges from it. My neck snaps to the screen, watching a brunette on all fours, positioned on a bed and getting fucked from behind.

All displayed in HD.

My feet freeze in mid-step. My body finally listening to my head as Hollis nudges me forward.

“C’mon,” he exhorts with another thrust towards our tattered couch. “Let’s do this where we will be comfortable.”

My socks drag along our dirty shagged carpet and in the furniture’s direction with reluctance, but they continue the journey to my utter frustration.

Pivoting around to sit, Hollis is already in my space, keeping me from running because I have before. Hence the dresser that is continuously placed in front of my bedroom door now.

My butt hits the metal springs before Hollis takes a close seat beside me. Leaned back with his legs spread apart, his stomach fills out his white tee underneath his brown flannel as he slowly chews on a straw.

He lets his dark eyes shamelessly fall over my body before his arm rests above my head.

I’m nothing to look at besides the fact that I’m accessible for Hollis’s filthy fantasies. At school, people bump into me all the time.

I’m so quiet, and out of the way, that half of my coworkers don’t even know who I am. I’ve been told over a dozen times that only employees are allowed in the back of the library until I show them my work badge. Then, they realize their mistake.

Fast forward a few weeks, the same people are doing it again.

I also work a second job when I can pick up a shift at the animal shelter, I just blend in with the animals. I prefer their company anyway.

Not the companionship that Dad keeps.

They’re all drunks and drug heads. Pills, cocaine, heroin, weed, and oxy, as long as they can get high, they’ll swallow, smoke, or inject it.

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