Page 2 of Creep
“Stay the fuck awake. I want you to feel this because this is what you fucking get for teasing me all these years.” I can sense him moving over me, his breath crawling across the skin of my neck like a cockroach. I turn my head and look up at the stars, disconnecting myself from my body and the pain.
Save me please, stars. Please send someone to save me. Please. I’m begging you.I repeat in my head over and over again while I struggle to breathe. Pleading to the stars to save me. This can’t be happening. I don’t want to be here. It hurts so much. Why would my daddy hurt me like this? What did I do wrong? What’s wrong with me?
After lying underneath him for what feels like forever, more pieces of me dying by the second, I hear my father grunt and then the absence of his body over mine. He stands up, zips his pants, then reaches down to touch me. I flinch and cower away when I feel his fingertips graze my cheek in an endearing manner.
“You were so fucking perfect sweetheart, just like I knew you’d be. You’re such a little spitfire. It’s going to make our time together much more fun.” I can’t help the vomit that shoots up my throat at his words. I manage to spit the blanket out of my mouth and roll my head to the side just as I throw up everything in my stomach, which isn’t much, so I end up puking stomach bile. My throat now burns even more than it already did. Disgusted, my father yanks himself away and stands, hovering over me.
“Get the fuck up and get inside. I don’t want anyone finding you out here.” He turns and walks back toward the neighbors as if nothing happened, without a care in the world.
Not wanting to be outside alone ever again, I barely manage to shift to my knees before crying out, but I bite my lip to stifle the noise. Everything hurts. My body, my heart, my soul. A crushing weight refuses to let me up. Pain radiates throughout my entire body, making it impossible for me to move. I stare at the stars, wondering why. Why me?
And that’s when I realize the truth.
The stars aren’t going to save me.
No one will save me.
I'm all alone.
My body finally succumbs to everything I have endured and everything goes black.
Essa
Present Day
“Getthe fuck out of my house, you piece of shit! I hate you!”
I can hear my mom and dad screaming back and forth, like they have been for the past twenty minutes. Actually, it’s probably been longer, but I’m used to it by now so I lose track of how long it goes on.
Their screams echo through the thin walls surrounding me. Same shit, different day.Happy birthday to me, I guess. You’d think since it was my birthday, my eighteenth to be exact, my parents would get their heads out of their asses and actually be parents for a day, but I don’t have those parents. Well, I would never expect it from Ben. I was pathetically hopeful my mother would, but that day will never come. She’s never been a mother to me before, so why would she start now?
It’s been this way all my life, but it still hurts, nonetheless. My parents prefer their little magic baggie full of dope. For as long as I can remember they have always been high out of their fucking minds. Or when they’re not high, they’re sleeping it off until they regain the energy to go out again. What else is there to do when you run out of drugs?
Whenever Holley and I get frustrated with them, they always feel it’s appropriate to throw it in our faces that at least we have a roof over our heads and water to drink and bathe in. Saying we should be grateful because there are kids out there who have it far worse than we do, as if their struggle somehow makes ours okay.
Like, gee, thanks Mom and Dad. We have the bare minimum of basic necessities—not including fucking food—and you want to try and make it appear okay by saying we should be grateful we’re not on the streets?
But what can I do to fix it? Absolutely nothing because my “father” makes sure I can’t. He knows just the trick to keep my mouth shut, so we’re fucking stuck here, and it makes me feel more and more useless every single day that goes by living in this hell on earth.
Sinking further into the deepest pits of my depression, I sit here contemplating my shitty life and the lack of options I have to change any of it. I hear the front door slam and my mom starts crying. I don’t particularly care she’s crying, but I should go see if she’s doing anything stupid. I’ll take every opportunity I get to make sure she doesn’t get high, even though it never works in my favor. She just happens to be the lesser of two evils, though not by much. Ninety percent of the time, she’s the one starting the damn fights between them and blames everyone but herself, especially me. I swear she thrives on the drama of it.
I creak open my bedroom door, which I made myself out of plywood. It was that—so I could have some semblance of privacy—or nothing at all. I chose the plywood even though my room is the size of a large closet. I can’t complain too much about the size though, because at least I have my own space—space away from everyone and everything. A space where I can drop the mask I wear every day and finally be my fucking self.
I step out into the hallway and quietly make my way toward my parents’ bedroom. I know my mom is in there without having to look anywhere else because she’s always in her room. We rarely ever see her outside of it when she decides she wants to be home for a change. The door is cracked so I decide to peek through the gap and be nosey because I have the right to be. I need to be aware of everything going on in this house so I can take the necessary measures to protect Holley.
My nose scrunches in disgust but I already knew she’d be getting high.What a shocker.She’s sitting on the side of her bed halfway covered up with her ratty ass pale purple blanket.That fucking blanket.The all too familiar feeling of panic begins to set in. My ears begin to ring and blood rushes to my head, causing me to sway on my feet.
I rest my hand against the wall to steady myself and take a deep breath, over and over.
Fight it. Fight through it. You’re not there, you’re here—inside. You’re okay.
I scoff, but manage to bring myself back to the now. I’m most definitely not okay, but that’s beside the point. I’m alive and I’m no longer there. That’s what matters in this moment.
I’m going to light the fucking blanket on fire. Preferably with it wrapped around her body as the flames devour them both.
Steeling my spine and taking another deep breath, I peer back through the door. She grips a glass pipe in her right hand while holding a silver mini blow torch in the other. She sits with her eyes fixated on the objects in her hands. I look over to her fixated gaze and for a second, I imagine I can see regret in them. Maybe even indecision. It gives me hope, but that hope lasts only for a split second, because in the next, it shatters into a million fucking pieces when she brings the fucking pipe to her lips and lights it, seemingly, without a care in the world. She takes a massive hit, then slowly sets the pipe back down and closes her eyes with a big, fat fucking smile on her face.
Disgusting, pathetic excuse of a fucking mother.
