Page 234 of Obsession

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RETURNING TO KATHERINE WRISE

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While I waited to pay, people kept giving me cautious glances. One woman took her child by the hand and pulled it back when the child came a little too close to me.

I didn’t blame her.

I was wet, smelled like a burned engine and my makeup was probably smeared down to my chin. I avoided the cashier’s gaze and paid for my stuff, then went back to the car, which thankfully wasn’t smoking so badly anymore, but that’s where my luck ran out.

I could no longer start it, the engine was coughing as if it had suddenly contracted tuberculosis and started emitting fumes from under the dashboard and hood.

As I continued to struggle, I noticed an Uber driver finishing a ride in front of the store and I didn’t think twice, jumped out of my car and got in.

The driver looked at me through the rearview mirror, seemingly full of questions, but he didn’t voice any of them as I gave him the address.

I was tempted to ask him to drive me all the way to New York, but I knew that running away wasn’t an option.

I had entered this world of my own free will… his world, and it was time for me to fight back against the shadows that haunted me.

I was tired of being the frightened, hunted victim.

I’d had enough of the family drama, my father’s drama and his secrets.

The first thing I did when I got home was light a cigarette and shove a chocolate bar in my mouth. I threw myself onto a chair in the kitchen and let my head fall back, the thick smoke doing wonders for my poisoned mind. I managed to calm at least five percent of the disaster that was going on in my head and then remembered the hair dye.

With the cigarette between my teeth, I went up the stairs to the bathroom. I didn’t give myself a second to think about whether it was a good decision or just a stupid one.

My tears had dried, or I had finally run out, as I had found that crying was limited lately. My eyes were dry, but that didn’t mean my soul was healed. I poured the hair dye into the first plastic bowl I found and took a few minutes to read the instructions. My life was interesting enough without risking baldness.

Still smoking cigarette after cigarette, I put on my gloves and took a whole fistful of color and slapped it directly onto my hair. Who had time for using a brush and applying in sections? I spread it like shampoo, all much easier than the transition from black to blonde, which had taken me five separate salon sessions.

In less than 10 minutes, all my blonde hair had turned black.

I put it all up in a bun and tried to clean up the mess I had made in the bathroom.

My father hadn’t come home yet, and he probably wouldn’t for a while as he had an ex-wife and a secret daughter to comfort.

The toxic smell burned my nostrils after inhaling an excessive amount of smoke. I went downstairs and smoked another cigarette, but that wasn’t enough.

I wanted drugs.

I wanted to get so high that I would forget about everything bad in my life. I was back to square one, back to where I’d been three months earlier after getting busted at Decepticon fast food.

Fuck, compared to now, my life back then seemed simple and boring.

Back then, I wasn’t in love, nor was I being stalked by psychopaths who wanted revenge through me.

I wasn’t afraid that the boy who had stolen my mind was a professional criminal.

I was the perfect example of how when you think it can’t get any worse, everything can blow up in your face, proving that it can indeed get worse. Everything that is bad can eventually take a turn for the worse.

I returned to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.

I looked like her again.

Female perfection.

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