Page 1 of Demon Rejected

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My dreams are made of flames that set my body and soul ablaze. I can set the World on fire with the power of my mind! My mother calls me Demon. My dreams are made of heat and ash. My hatred and fear turn everything into wisps of smoke and empty dreams. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am a Demon.”

The dreams I have turn into a flaming inferno.

My eyes opened to the darkness of the surroundings. This nap left me shaking, feeling weak and hungry. Long hours passed since I nibbled on the stale bread that I found in the cupboard. My mother never kept food around, just booze, and not even that lasted long.

The trailer I called home stank of alcohol and vomit, a sign that my beloved mother found her way back home from the bar in her usual style, someone dumped her at the entrance of the trailer park and she stumbled back. She was famous at the bar where she drank and found a new volunteer to drive her home each night.

Was there someone else with her?

Holding my breath, I tried to listen. It was silent, which meant she was too drunk to bring back company. Male company turned into wild tumbles on the floor, moaning and yelling. Sometimes her voice was joined by one or two male voices. Hearing the concert of fucking made me close my eyes and push my palms over my ears while humming a tune. At least tonight, there was just one reason to be afraid in the form of my mother and not some stranger too.

My seven-year-old self opened her eyes, adjusting to the darkness. I blinked. The darkness in the closet was feeling safe and warm—a cocoon that gave me the illusion of something I never had, safety. I’ll be fine as long as she can’t see me. When she’s drunk, she’s angry, and when she’s angry, I’ll get hurt. She didn’t have enough to drink in the house this afternoon and started slapping me around and calling me Demon.

It was too late to run to Miss Nichols from across the lot. She would take pity on me and allow me to sleep at her place. I tried to become a small ball and let my mother hit me repeatedly, hoping that my lack of response would make her stop. There was nothing I could do. It was not as if I had a choice. I was over pleading with her to let me be. My cries and screams worked like fuel for her anger. When she became like this, and her eyes lit up with furry, her fingers turned into claws and her mouth would foam, then there was no escape for me anymore.

My left eye hurt. I touched it with the tip of my dirty finger. It stung and burned, tears running from it in its attempt to heal itself. The blood on my temple dried and was a crust that stuck to the eyebrow. With my short, chewed nails, I started scratching it off. My left eye feels swollen from her slaps, the same as my belly and back. Only the eye hurts the most.

I passed out after her last demonstration of motherly love and didn’t make it to the bathroom to check the results in the mirror. After she beat me and I woke up, I crawled inside the closet. I know the drill. When she’s like that, it’s best to hide. Now I wished that I would have woken up earlier and had a glass of water. My throat and mouth felt parched.

A loud noise scared me again and made me flinch. Pressing both of my dirty hands over my mouth, I tried to stop myself from crying. It’s just a chair. She stumbled. Mom started an entire line of curse words that would make a sailor blush.

She’s moving around the trailer, pulling random things out of drawers and throwing them down while calling out my name.

“Scarlet, you little bitch, where are you?"

I am shaking and holding a sob back that is making my small, skinny body shake. The kids in school call me bones, but I don’t mind. Their words don’t hurt the way her hands and feet do.

She’s going to feel guilty in the morning or whenever she wakeup.

A moan reaches me inside my hiding spot. The moan turns into a scream. I hear her frustration as she roars through the room. Why isn’t she passed out the way she should be?

“Demon, come out, come out, wherever you are!"

My feet shuffle. I push towards the wall, wishing that I could be invisible. Wishing that she would go away, pass out, and let me be. And I am so hungry. My stomach is churning and burning, a stab of pain going through me.

The back of our crowded closet is my bedroom, my safe space, old winter jackets that smell rancid serve as my mattress and a soft sweater that I picked up from Goodwill once is my pillow. Sometimes I smell the sweater and imagine that it belongs to my real mom and that this woman who beats me daily is not my mother. It’s just a dream that makes room for reality as soon as I hear the few pots in the kitchen corner falling and crashing against the sink.

I close my eyes again, ignoring the drunken slur that floats from my mother to me. I can’t deal with this now. I’m too afraid.

“Demon. Where are you?"

She calls me Demon when she hits me. I looked that word up online, and it doesn’t make sense to me. Why would my mother call me a Demon? I’m only a little girl.

My heart is inside my throat. I cower when I hear her scraping footsteps on the dirty old linoleum. I can picture it. She’s wearing one of her sexy dresses and her heels. She lost a shoe somewhere, and now she’s stumbling. Her other foot got stuck where the linoleum has a hole from a fire she said I made. I never played with matches.

“Hey, don’t be scared."

That voice is calm and suiting in a way nothing else ever was or will be. She is not an imaginary friend. I know it. Warmth and love surround me.

“Sparky, is that you?"

I inhale deeply and try to stop myself from shaking. My mom will hear me and, when she’s like this, she will hit me again and again. I want to love her. She’s my mother, but each time she hits me, and I feel the hatred flowing from her, a piece of myself breaks. In school, I watched other moms. None of them behaved like mine. Even the kids being beaten in the trailer park are being abused by their fathers. My mother is the only one calling me a Demon. She’s the one making sure bruises and scars always cover my body.

As I close my eyes, I call on Sparky. I know she’ll be here when I need her. I feel a soft nudge against my arm.

Warmth.

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