Page 58 of My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me
“Worthless, ugly fuck! No one wants you here!”
“Murdering scum.”
“No wonder you had to force yourself on your little sister!”
“Why don’t you just fucking end it all.”
Three voices linger in my head, maybe by choice or chance, who knows. Another two boys were present. One of those fucker’s spat on me, and I’m sure I can still smell his breath on my face.
I’d only landed one punch, and that sounds kinda pathetic, I think to myself, before reminding myself that it was five against one. Of course, that isn’t why I only hit once. Fighting back is harder to do when you hate touching people.
And now, because of that, five masked hooligans who don’t want me in this town and will likely strike again at some point probably think I’m fucking weak. Five hooligans who wouldn’t have stopped, if not for a random police car cruising into a drive-through diner just down the road. These thugs didn’t want to get into trouble. They just wanted to give me trouble.
And that one punch I landed would be enough to put me back behind bars. Especially because when the guy’s mask broke away from his face in two pieces, it showed a youthful, privileged face—the face of a teenager who’d likely never known stress in his life. Until now, when one piece of the cheap plastic clown mask had to be pulled from his cheek by one of his friends.
I forget those boys and how to breathe as I pass by the remains of a playground on the right.
The playground.
Subconsciously, I can’t help but look in and picture a boy with a limp trying to outdo his little sister on the swing set.
“I’m winning.”
“Yeah, well, I helped you cheat.”
Dollie’s laugh fills my head. She was such a free-spirited child. Careless, I thought back then. She, unlike me, never saw the danger around her. I saw it everywhere.
In the sinister promise behind a pink balloon that resembled a dog.
“Don’t take that.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
I make my way into the trees, sticking close to the edge to avoid the anxiety I can feel lurking beyond each shadow, just waiting to attack.
A cold sweat sticks to me as I walk a path that, until tonight, I haven’t walked since I was eight.
Slipping out from the trees, the black monument sits ahead in the distance, blending in with the dark sky and telling me home isn’t too far away.
I can make it there before my weak leg gives out.
One of those little bastards who jumped me took a lucky shot there.
Despite my knee screaming out for a rest, I continue until I see a fork in the road. One route leads to the cave below my home, the other to a hill that will take me to the backyard.
Choosing to avoid the cave and my car, parked there mocking me, I begin my climb.
All I have to do is avoid the overgrown weeds, broken gnomes, and knocked-over gray stones that resemble gravestones, and I’ll be fine.
Pulling myself up, I climb the fence and land on my good leg.
Blood drips from my hair into my eyes and across my nose. A blur crosses my vision as I tread on dead flowers on the way to the back door.
The kitchen light highlights Dollie in a pink dress and her boyfriend behind her with his slimy dick in his hand.
I stop dead, crushing an ancient gnome and his big button nose beneath my boot.
Him leering behind her, trying to line up, is an image I want burned from my fucking brain. But unfortunately, I know that’s a dream that is never going to fucking come true.
