Page 23 of Cursed to Be Mine
“Please don’t –”
“You want to stay here, then you’ll do as I say.”
Her eyes plead with me as she clutches the black bag in her trembling hands. Perhaps all the shaking will make her lose weight.
At five foot five and two hundred and thirty pounds, she’s at a high risk of developing type two diabetes. That’s what the doctors say. I watched my ma die from it; I’m not going to lose my daughter to it too.
All the sick children at the hospital assault me. All the parents hopeless to fix them. My voice trembling, I order, “Eat, Scarlett Jo.”
My patience wearing thin, I take a step towards her.
She flinches back. “I’m not hungry right now,” she whispers.
Yanking the bag off her, I reach in and pull something out. It’s a paper bag of cookies now stained with some sticky sauce. I thrust it in her face. She tries to step back, but I drop the bag and grab her by the hair. “Eat them, Scarlett Jo. All of them.”
Tears burn her eyes as she reluctantly takes the bag of cookies from me. When she just stares at it after opening it, I grab her mouth and pinch apart her lips. A soft cry leaves her as I release her hair to grab a cookie. I shove it into her mouth, and she chokes as she pulls away. Spittle and crumbs fall down her double chin.
“Eat it! Or I swear to God I will make you finish the whole fucking trash bag.” Anything to get through to her that she can’t keep doing this to herself.
She cries silently as she starts to chew. Her eyes on the floor, she finally swallows. I tremble with disgust and rage and fear, wondering what the fuck happened to my lovely daughter. I don’t recognize the woman infront of me anymore. The lack of drive. The quiet. She doesn’t get up in the morning. She doesn’t come down to eat. And then she sits up here, killing herself in my own home.
Memories of walking in on Ma, of finding her having a heart attack caused by her diabetes when I was nineteen. I dropped to my knees to cradle her as I screamed for our neighbors to call for an ambulance. Someone had come in, telling me help was only ten minutes away.
But it was eight minutes too late as I held her dying in my arms.
I step back, a tornado of emotions hitting me from all directions. Too volatile to be in the same room with her right now, I head for the hallway.
“Take another shower, Gen,” I say as I pass her. “You smell like trash.”
Seven
HER
Stepping out of my ensuite half an hour later, my own shower having calmed me down somewhat, I dry myself, but I can’t rub the guilt from my skin. The memory of Scarlett’s tears eats at me, her choked sobs. I just want to help her. I want there to be a monster I can slay for her.
I want…
I want my daughter back.
The one who used to laugh.
The one who used to run around, asking a million questions an hour as she tried to understand every piece of the universe. The one who didn’t hide upstairs, eating her weight in snacks, passively killing herself as if she doesn’t care about living.
My chest tight, I wipe at my cheeks, tears and water coming off onto the towel. I cannot take back what I did, but I can work on fixing it.
Send her to a weight loss boot camp or something.
She needs help I can’t give her.Resolved, I face the mirror to dry my hair.
I jump, a scream erupting as a twisted figure moves beneath the glass. I backpedal quickly, my ass hitting the shower door, my heart stuck in my throat, strangling the thoughts that ducked down to hide there.
That same twisted figure from the hospital shoves an arm through the rippling mirror. My heart thuds wildly as a deformed face pushes against the surface, a black mouth stretched over with taunt charred skin gaping open as it screams in silence. Flecks of flesh fall from its arm, hitting the sink as its fingers claw for me. Its bald, earless head is full of holes filled with maggots. They wiggle around its bleeding eye sockets, curling to go into its cavernous nose.
Pushed by pure adrenaline, I grab a bottle of coconut shampoo – the only ‘weapon’ around. To hell if I’m going to die without a fight. But just as I take a step forward, the mirror goes back to normal.
The monster gone.
My heartbeat stays at a strong beat, remembering how the creature came back a second time at the hospital. Not wanting to be caught off guard again, I lunge forward and rip open a top drawer beneath the basin. A pair of nail scissors in my hand, I stand back with my ass against the shower, waiting.
