Page 1 of The Threads Of Fate
I sit down, rubbing my hands over the 6-month-old baby bump. James is somewhere, probably off drinking and smoking with the others. What always makes me feel conflicted, I hate it when he’s drunk, but at least I’ll have a little bit of peace from him right now. He can be rude sometimes, and today is no different.
“Oh, Jenny, it’s time to open all the gifts!” Sarah squeals out. We all gather our chairs so we're all sitting in a circle together.
“Okay, so who wants to go first?” There are giggles and shouting from everyone wanting to go first, making me smile at everyone. I love these girls, well, some of them. If I’m being honest, I’m a bit worried about the whole baby thing, but my mother assured me that a baby would make James stay with me. So I ensured I’d get pregnant, and he’d have no other choice but to marry me. Let's say he’s a bit moody about it all, but he’ll get used to it.
The party is almost over, and everyone laughs and chats while opening the presents together. Sometimes, I’d feel the baby kick, like she’s excited too. That’s a good sign,right?It means all of this was meant to happen.
“Jenny! I think we forgot one present.” I frown, looking at the strange package. The present is wrapped in a box with a ribbon over it. It’s giving me the chills. I get up and grab the package off the floor. There’s no nametag from who gave it or anything on it, either.
“Who is it from?” I ask, there are curious glances, and everyone is looking around, but no one has an answer to my question. I’m feeling a bit uneasy about all of this, yet I pull off the ribbon anyway; maybe it’s from someone who left early.Yeah, that’s it!That sounds like the only logical explanation.
The moment the ribbon slides off, I drop it to the floor and slowly open the box. There’s black tissue paper inside that I move away, until the two bright blue eyes of a creepy porcelain doll greet me. I grab the small note with the doll's name,‘Seraphine’written on it, and place it back inside the box.
The doll looks off, and just holding her in my hands feels wrong – she has pale, almost fully white skin, long curly black hair, her plump lips are painted in a bright red colour, and she’s wearing a white lacy dress. It’s giving me shivers just looking at it.What a dumb present. I close the box and put it on the pile of presents I’ve gotten. Maybe I should just get rid of it later on.
“Well, whoever it was, thank you for thisuh…gift. It’s very–something,” I say out loud. All the girls start to laugh, and I go to grab a bag to put all the gifts inside, but then Lina walks over to me with a bitchy smile plastered on her face. Making me groan inwardly, she’s one of those people who pretend to be your friend just so she can screw you over, but she’s got connections, so I keep her in my inner circle,for now. With the number of times I have wanted to just tell her off, she’s lucky she was bornin a good environment, else no one would be putting up with her crap.
“What an ugly thing that is.” She giggles falsely.
“Yeah, I think it would just give the baby nightmares,” I joke with her, while stuffing the bag full and hoping she’ll just walk away. Unfortunately for me, she bends down, her fake ass up in the air, and picks up the box where the doll is inside, and then proceeds to piss me off by shaking it like she’s making a cocktail.
“Well, if you’re lucky, the doll might break on the way home.” I snort at her. Of course, that’s her solution. It was a gift, so I feel like it might be rude to throw this gift away since I don’t even know who gave it.I’ll just put the doll on top of the closet in the baby's room in case someone comes and asks about it.
“What will break on the way home?” Lina and I turn to James, who’s standing behind us. His hair is dishevelled, and his shirt is slightly open.Is he drunk and had a fight, or what?
Back in college, he was on the football team and the hottest guy I’ve ever seen, which is why I started dating him in the first place. But I know that Lina has always been kind of jealous of it, since, well, who wouldn’t want my man?
“I got this weird doll as a gift, but no one knows who gave it to me, wanna see?” I take the box from Lina’s hands and show it to him. He snorts and grabs the doll from my hand, throwing it in the bag.
“I’ll see it later on, it’s late, and I don’t want to get home too late, so go get your shit,” he tells me before walking away.
“Well, I’ll text you later,” I tell Lina and grab my jacket and the bags. Walking over to James and his car, I am slightly annoyed,okay, more than slightly. He could’ve at least helped carry all of these presents, not to mention how rude he was to me in front of Lina.
He'd better start doing more to help me once the baby comes.
Madelyn, 10 Years Old
The loud shouting of my parents fighting wakes me up way too early,like usual. It’s always the same thing. Dad cheats, Mom screams about it like a crazy person, forgives him, and then it just happens all over again. At first, I didn’t understand it all, but during a family party, my cousin explained what my dad was doing right after my uncle caught him strongly hugging my auntie Anna during Christmas dinner. When I asked my mom about it, she told me we’re not good enough for him, that it’s my fault. I don’t think it is, but maybe if I’m older, I might understand it better, since it’s what my cousin always tells me.
Sighing, I get up, since I know they won’t stop anytime soon, and I have school in a couple of hours too.
“I AM DONE! DO YOU HEAR ME?! DONE!” The slamming from the front door shakes the house, giving me the sign I needto walk downstairs. My mom is standing at the kitchen counter with her head in her hands, her shoulders slightly shaking.
“Is he going back to his new family?” I ask while opening the fridge for some milk.
“Doesn’t matter, he’ll be back,” she says angrily and walks away, closing the kitchen door in one hard pull. I walk over to the kitchen cabinet and grab a glass to pour the milk.
I don’t like my parents like I should, like the way my other classmates do. My mother always cusses at me, telling me all the bad things I do and that I should be more like her. But I don’t want to be like her. Sometimes I envy my cousin Jessica.Her parents died in a car accident, and now she has her own place where she can do whatever she wants to do.
I grab my mom's phone from the counter and open her video app. There’s an account on it for me only, and it’s filled with funny videos, which I always love to watch while I have breakfast. Though I’m not sure I can call it that, my classmates always say that they eat during breakfast. I have never done that before, and when I asked my mom about it, she told me I’ll get fat if I do so and should only drink milk.
Soft sobs are coming from the hallway. My mom has been crying a lot these last few days, and I used to try to cheer her up, but she always gets mad at me and blames me for her unhappiness, which isn’t something new. I feel like I’d be better off without my parents, and I think they would also be better off divorced, like my friend Mason’s parents. He cries a lot over the divorce in school, but I don’t think I would mind it. Maybe my dad leaving my mom would make her nicer to me, since it’s my fault he cheats, and if he’s gone, it won’t be cheating anymore.Right?
She always tells me he started to cheat when she got pregnant with me, but I never asked to be born. And if I did, I wouldn’tpick them as my parents. I’d get someone who’d care about me since they don’t – not really, not like the other parents do.
I wait until my mom’s crying turns into soft sobs until there is no more sound coming from her room. She always does this when she’s upset– she cries and then takes these little flat TicTacs that make her very sleepy. Sometimes I hope she never wakes up. I know I shouldn’t think that, but I’m tired, and it’s always her yelling at me or ignoring the fact that I am here.
Once it’s completely quiet, I grab my lunchbox from the table and place it back into the fridge. With no one here to drive me to school, it’s impossible for me to get there.
