That’s all my life was now. A constant shuffle between two monsters.
One I created, and the other…
I slipped inside and quickly darted across the marble floor to skitter into my room.
The other monster I lived with.
Not wanting to alert anyone to my presence, I carefully made my way around the various plants seated in front of the windows, past the blue velvet armchair Mom used to sit in to watch the sunrise, and ducked down the hall. So far so good. Mrs. Benson hadn’t popped out of the shadows to welcome me home.
She’d been in this house taking care of Sean and I for as long as I could remember. If she saw me, then she would know something was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time I came home distressed, but I couldn’t pass this off as bullying at school.
Besides, I felt horrible hiding things from her. She was the closest thing I had to a mother, and not even she knew what was happening under this roof.
Mason was right about one thing.
I was a good liar.
I had to be.
The light shining out from under my father’s office door caused me to freeze at the end of the hall. Was he in there? And if so, what kind of mood was he in? When I left he’d seemed to be happy, but that didn’t mean anything.
My father wasn’t a bad man. He did all the things a loving parent would. Took care of me when I was sick, tucked me in at night, and kissed away my boo-boos. He was a good dad, until something set him off and he became a different person. Someone mean and cruel.
Sometimes that switch would flip over the slightest thing. A look, or whispered comment. The last time the devil came out, it was because I got home five minutes late. The bruises from that incident were still healing. No way I was going to let him know that I wasn’t at Star’s house.
It’d be better just to avoid him completely.
I carefully tiptoed down the hall, pulse picking up speed the closer I got to his door. It beat at a furious rate that had me convinced he’d hear it and catch me sneaking past his office.
Holding my breath didn’t help. I kept glancing over my shoulder, watching the shadows move through the light cascading across the floor, as my father’s footsteps echoed in my ears like the thundering of a drum.
Every step I took caused my body to tense more and more. By the time I reached my door and slipped inside, my chest ached from holding my breath. Once safely tucked inside, I fell back and gasped in a deep breath.
Fear was something I was accustomed to. That sticky cloud of anxiety was my home. It followed me through the halls of Ashworth where torment lurked around every corner.
Honestly, I didn’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have a sense of dread to cling onto. What would it be like to close my eyes and not worry about what might be hiding in the corners? Would I still hate what I saw when I looked in the mirror?
I sighed and ran my hand over my bookshelf, filled with treasured stories. These written words were my only escape. No one in these tales destroyed the people they loved. Peter Pan didn’t drop Wendy. He held her tightly all the way to Neverland. The heroes in my stories didn’t create monsters.
They slayed them.
I flipped through a book lying on the top of the wooden shelf.
Alice In Wonderlandwas a children’s book, but it was still my favorite. When I was little and my father was in a bad mood, I hid in the corner and looked for a white rabbit that would lead me away. The only thing I ever found were the twisted shadows waiting to swallow me up.
They say a girl’s first love is her father. Perhaps they were right. Why else would I have done what I did? At the time I told myself it was to protect Mason, but he wasn’t a little boy unable to defend himself anymore. He was just as cruel as the thing possessing my father.
So which one was I trying to save now? The little boy with the green eyes? Or the man who tucked me in at night? Who would I choose when that dreaded day came? Because it would. Two monsters couldn’t occupy the same space without eventually trying to eat each other.
Maybe I was just trying to save myself?
Huffing out a sigh, I started digging through my dresser for my favorite pair of pajamas. I suppose it didn’t matter. Sooner or later, one of them would come for me, and I didn’t have a white rabbit to lead me away.
My eyes skimmed over the bunnies decorating a pair of blue flannel shorts. All I had were the lifeless eyes of fake animals.
Mason was right. I was pathetic. Standing here like a little girl putting all her hopes and dreams in imaginary beings. How sad was that?
Riley and Shelby didn’t have that problem. Then again, neither of them looked at their monster and thought how pretty he was. That was the really pathetic part. No matter what Mason Kessler did to me, or how much he made me cry, I couldn’t stop my stomach from fluttering when he walked in a room.
