Give me peace.
Reprieve.
Give me back the woman I needed to fuckingsave me.
The one from the park who told me it was okay to sit with a strange boy. That after flying off the swing-set, he might need a friend.
The one who called me Emmy, before it was a ruined name.
The one who loved me. Needed me.Wanted me.
“Please!” I beg the heavens. The universe the gods that frown down on me. Anyone willing to fuckinglisten.
Except, no matter how much I cry, no one answers. Nothing changes.
My mom is still dead. Buried.
Without me.
Something hot and ugly blooms inside my chest, leaving a bitter taste on my tongue, and a growl ripping from my throat.
I have no idea what’s in my grip when I yank, but it rips with a satisfying shred. I grab another—chunks of blanket, the corner of the already torn sheet, the mattress. All of it falls victim to the war raging in me.
Not even Tristen is in the room when I stand on the destroyed bed and start yanking the drawers from the dresser.
“Piece ofshit,” I scream and slam it closed, “was alwaystoo fucking big.” Wood splinters and I do it again with another. My clothes pop out as I shake it, the minimal fabric falling to the floor.
I shred them, too.
There’s not a damn thing left that hasn’t been tainted in this room.
Not a thing that doesn’t hold some kind of nightmare woven into it. Left on it.Built by it.
I hear Tristen’s voice calling for me as I storm by, past the room my mother died in while I slept next to her, and out the door.
Two stomps onto the janky ass porch and I freeze.
“You better not be in there tearing up what’s mine,boy.”
My throat closes up, all the fight leaving me as the voice of my nightmares proves what my eyes are seeing.
“I-I-I—”
“Always were a stuttering little bitch. See that hasn’t changed one bit.”
I whimper, shrinking back, and suddenly I’m a little kid all over again. Too young to know what to do in the face of his words. Too small to fight back as he steps up onto the porch.
Too weak to be myself.
Too gay to be normal.
Too queer to not take back the urges I cause in him.
“Excuse the fuck outta you.”
The growled words accompany a thunderous step and a strong back stepping into my view as Tristen puts himself between me and my stepdad.
“Who do you think you’re talking to? And why the fuck are you in my house?”
