Please, God. . .my silent words left my system but they didn’t escort my nerves. I had a bad feeling. The worst.
My father’s presence was getting bigger and bigger as we moved closer—his image and his invasion in my mind. I could hear his hate, words he’d previously said were blasting in my mind. Words he'd shouted when he found out I'd helped the deer he’d shot.
I felt the need to escape, but the smell of fresh daisies kept me grounded, kept me tied to my body. . . to Jolie. The scent was her—fresh and floral and beautiful.
Then, I saw her on the porch. . . pretty in that floral dress, hands moving to the hem as it tickled the thickness of her thighs. She was getting some air. Anyone around my mother for that long would need to do the same.
“I can't find her,” I told her, all my worry expressed through my louder tone. I had to adjust the smarting it caused with careful fingertips.
“Jolie,” my mother’s cold voice screeched, the sound making me shudder to the point I feared once my cringing stilled, someone else would be sitting on the surface.
“What is it?” Jolie’s voice echoed from the porch; both voices fuzzed by the wind that had picked up from nowhere.
My mother could be seen through the glass door, hobbling towards it, her bad makeup looking darker as she limped into the sunlight.
She'd glanced at me for only a moment, and I felt her lack of forgiveness.
For what, I wasn't sure. Stabbing her in the leg? Or, for being born? She hated me for both, equally.
“Sorry, the kitchen was a little stuffy. I needed a little air.” That was Jolie's polite way of saying, it smelled like shit, due to whatever my father had festering in the basement. Her eyes moved back to me. “I'm sure she'll pop up.”
“Who?” my mother quizzed. Her black-rimmed eyes met Jolie’s stare.
“Nessie.” I was the one to lie, saving Jolie thehassle. But I knew she’d have done the same.
“Don’t worry about Vanessa. She’s fine. She followed Ville into his shed; she likes to watch him work some days.” My mother's eyes were still on Jolie.
I watched for a minute as Jolie paced towards the house, her fast legs moving slowly, like she was walking to her death. It didn’t feel right—the slowness. So many mornings, I watched her whizz around the house like she was a damn DC character.
She was quick. . . so, why was she moving so slowly? Because she was walking hand in hand with trepidation. Her trust in both of my parents, gone.
She slipped through the smashed glass door that my mother’s impatient hand held open, the wooden one behind already open.
My mother followed her, leaving me with nothing but a hateful glare.
I barely heard Jolie’s voice as she gave words to my mother, slipping through the door. “Woodrow really is sorry.” Her tone told me she believed that.
“Oh, I’m sure he is.” I heard the sarcasm drip from my mother’s tongue and drop onto the floor that she’d probably have Jolie clean later. “Don’t believe all a man tells you, Jolie. Most of them lie. Continuously.”
The door squealed as it closed behind them, echoing the pain inside me. Pain for Jolie and all she’d gone through in these past few weeks. Including what I’d put her through. Pain for myself. I hated the self-pity I occasionally felt, but I couldn’t instantly dismiss it.
Noises blew through the wind as my mother's voice faded to nothing. I heard stress, I heard fear, I heard my name.
I took that as my cue to leave, shooting off in the direction of the red building to the rear of the house. A tatty, old shed, decorated in invisible stains of sweat from when my father built it 3 years ago.
The paintwork was peeling in the sun, looking even worse than it did only weeks ago. I pushed the closed door, this one silent, allowing my entry without being noticed.
Cigar smoke seeped into my lungs instantly. This place always stank of it. I ignored it. The screams ahead had my feet moving through the muddy ground quickly.
They weren’t Nessie’s, but I could hear her sadness as she pleaded to my father’s deaf ears.
“Daddy, please. Don’t, please.”
Cries of distress filled the air, replacing my recent memories ofherand her delicate squeak, abstracting them forever.
My pet.
She was suffering, and I fucking hated it.
