Page 14 of Cruel Cravings

I burned with anger and resentment at what had been done to me. But what other choice did I have? This was my life now.

I had to learn to breathe through the daily pain. My leg throbbed constantly, a dull ache that spiked with every step. Screws were drilled into my spine but did little to relieve the sharp pricks that stabbed away.

The only thing that sustained me were the pain meds prescribed by my father. They muted the constant agony as much as possible and kept me functioning.

On the rare chance I encountered him in the halls, he didn’t acknowledge me. He wouldn’t even look at me. My mother had stopped visiting a long time ago. I was a ghost in my own family, a disfigured and shameful reminder of what I had done.

They once believed I would be the heir to the family they had created. Now that that wasn’t the case, I served no use to them.

I hated them for it. I hated the world.

And then I saw her.

She wasn’t like the others. She didn’t belong here. The crinkly blue gown hung on her tall frame and her thick afro haloed her face like a cloud. Her eyes were large and round but not vacant or dead like the others.

They were dark and shining with life.

She carried herself differently, like she knew she didn’t fit in but was comfortable with such a reality.

Where the others were hollow husks wandering the halls like zombies, she was hope. She never gave up despite the bleakness around her.

She didn’t know it, but I became her shadow. I learned her routines. I tracked her movements through the hospital.

Late at night when I was able to prowl the halls, I slipped inside her room and watched her sleep. The dark shadow lurking that she’d peer at between dreams.

For the first time in years, I felt something other than anger. I wasn’t consumed by hate.

She became my purpose. My reason. My anchor.

I decided then that I’d never leave her side. I’d be her shadow, her guardian, her everything.

Because she was the only thing in this world that still made me feel human.

And I’d follow her to the ends of the earth if I had to.

5.Jael

All the Good Girls Go to Hell - Billie Eilish

When I was six, I told my mother I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. She glanced down at me, her top lip curling, and told me not to be silly.

I had to be realistic.

I wasn’t smart enough to be a doctor.

“You think you’re going to be some surgeon?” she sneered. “You can barely remember your ABCs.”

I was playing with a doctor’s kit and my Barbies as we waited out my sister’s piano lesson. The Barbie I was operating on had broken her arm and leg falling down the stairs. If she didn’t receive medical attention in time, she would die. I would have to bury her outside under the dirt like the others and that was the last thing I wanted.

My face fell. I looked down at the syringe in my stubby fingers and the sticker Band-Aids I had spread out on the carpet. They had little red hearts on them.

I didn’t have the words to describe the crushing sensation pressing down on my chest. Just that it hurt a lot.

Sighing as if irritated by my reaction, my mother stroked my curly hair. She waited ’til I met her eyes again and put on a smile that somehow still left me hollow. “Jael, baby, you’re playing pretend. That doctor’s kit is a toy. It’s not real. You hear that?”

How could I not? It was coming from down the hall, loud enough to fill up the huge house we were in. My sister was on hour three of piano practice, playing the same song over and over again until she was perfect. Our mother and her piano instructor wouldn’t have it any other way.

“That’s talent,” she told me after a second passed. “Your sister’s a prodigy. Be quiet and behave yourself. Androski will have your sister on the world stage.”

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