Aurora walked slowly down the sidewalk, slumping, with her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Sighing, she tilted her head back to look at the dark cloud covered sky. It would start raining soon. Shaking her head sadly, she looked at the ground, watching her sneaker sodden feet shuffle along the cold cement.
There was nothing left for her back there. The past was the past and she decided it was best to just forget about it. Steadily, drip by drip, rain filled the sky, playing kamikaze on its helpless victim below. She picked up her pace a bit. Seeing a shop's awning up ahead she ran under it and stood there wringing out the already soaked clothes she was wearing.
Aurora shook her head violently, in an effort to relieve her messy curls of the water droplets that clung helplessly to them. She sighed, heavily this time, then leaned against the shop window and muttered to herself about how stupid she was to have forgotten a jacket. Looking around her, she saw people emerging from houses and from around corners, dressed in their rain jackets and fleece vests, topped with outlandish hats and ridiculous umbrellas. Rain always brought the people out.
Just moments before the rain had started the street had been nigh empty. Now it was bustling with these oddly dressed people. All solitary calmness left the area as the din of voices grew louder with each passing minute. Pushing herself off the now steamy window she had been leaning against, she walked away and disappeared into the lively crowd, reminiscing about the past few days.
Life had always been hard for her. Her parents divorced when she was eight and she was forced to live with her mother. Her mother never allowed her to see her father, or her father to see her, claiming that he was an irresponsible drunkard and an abuser, completely unworthy of that privilege. But she hated her mother. She would rather be with a father she had only known for four years, who actually treated her with respect and dignity, instead of her mother. Sadly, she wasn't able to get away from her mother… until now that is. After nine long years of suffering under her mother's ever-watching eye, she was finally free.
The previous night her mom had been drinking again, but this time more so than the others. Her most recent boyfriend had just broke up with her earlier on that day, saying that she was a cheating whore going behind his back and sleeping with other men. Of course she refuted that fact and stomped off yelling obscenities at anyone who even looked at her as what she deemed wrong; and that was everybody. When she got home she went into a fit of rage, stalking around the small two roomed apartment, throwing everything to the floor: glass, dishes, pictures, and furniture. After her bout of rage was finished, she grabbed her purse and left the apartment, slamming the door off its hinges.
It had been a Friday, a nice sunny day with no clouds in the sky. Aurora thought that maybe, just maybe, it would be a good day and nothing would go wrong like it usually did. But of course it was her life, so what exactly could go right. Her whole life had been miserable. At least the part of her life she could remember, and that was only these last nine years; years that she liked to call Hell.
No one had been nice to her ever since she could remember which was after she turned eight. Kids always made fun of the way she looked, how she talked, or how her mom was a whore, and how she had no dad. She'd end up running home from school crying everyday. They drove her part of the way into her depression; the other part was her mother. Her mother had the audacity to tear down good, moral people for the little things that they did, and here she was a drunkard who traveled from boyfriend to boyfriend within a matter of days. It's a wonder they could even put up with her for those few days.
It was always the same routine. Marcia, Aurora's mom, would go out at night, probably out to a bar, find some poor bastard, drunk off his ass, she'd seduce him, bring him back to our apartment, then, to put it in nicer terms, sleep with him; though it didn't help Aurora to sleep at all. Then Marcia would take his wallet and all the money that he had, hide it and pretend like nothing happened. It was pathetic really, the frivolous things that that woman would go through just to get money, instead of going out, like any other normal person, and getting a job.
Aurora clomped up the stairs leading to her fifth story apartment she shared with her mother. She jingled the keys in her hand and reached for the door. Noticing something awry she approached the entry cautiously and pushed ever so gently on the door. It moaned as it swung open partially before falling on the floor with a 'thud!' She stepped into the once immaculate apartment appalled at what awaited her.
She looked around the room to see picture frames with broken glass, shattered cups, overturned furniture, a broken table, most of our dishes smashed on the kitchen floor and papers strewn across the entire room.
Groaning, she started cleaning up the mess, placing everything back where it used to be; cleaning up the glass, up righting the furniture, and putting the door back up on its hinges.
She was just dumping the rest of the fragmented glass into the garbage when her mom came home. She swaggered into the kitchen/living area, bottles in hand, and starts yelling at her, blaming her for everything that had gone wrong in her life. She began cursing and throwing things again as soon as she opened her mouth to retort. She shied away from the attacks, tossing her arms up around her face in defense. Backing herself into a corner just made her more vulnerable to the strikes, so she sank to her knees. The strikes slowly let up, and she doggedly brought her arms down from her head to look up at the woman she called mother. Her heart pounded out of her chest as she watched the glass bottle come down toward her face…