"Get out of my house. Get out…get out right now and don't come back. D-don't come back," she pleaded, he face contorted with desperation, a bottle of deep, umber liquid sloshing in her shaking fist. The rain beat down hard around her, soaking through her white nightie and sticking her mousey brown hair to her forehead.
"You…you asshole. You little son of a bitch. Get the fuck out of my house!" She shrieked at a balding man cowering beneath her reddened face. The leaves of the trees swooshed ferociously, sending grains of dirt flying into her face. She took no notice.
The man timidly picked up the luggage she threw down the wooden patio stairs, turned around and began walking under the pelting rain. He looked over his shoulder with a pained expression on his face before continuing the long walk ahead of him. There wasn't another person around for miles.
She, satisfied that he
was leaving, stormed back through the screen door while furiously
wiping the tears from her face with a shaking fist. She moved to sit
on the green velvet armchair. The faint blue glow from the television
illuminated her, but not in a good way. She looked sick.
Malnourished. Old. Her skin looked translucent against her now wet
hair.
Three young children peered from the top of the stairs,
scared to make a sound. One of them hiccupped.
The woman, although inebriated, turned to look with such speed that the children flinched. She glared.
"Go to your rooms. Go AWAY," she yelled at the young boys. They, altogether aware of what would happen if they didn't, disappeared within the blink of an eye. The woman carried on drinking until naught was left in the heavy glass bottle. She staggered up the stairs, stumbled past her children's bedrooms and collapsed into her bed without closing the curtains or door.
She snored.
Her three children, dressed in their matching pajamas, tiptoed into their mother's bedroom and stared from the foot of her bed. The youngest, only four, started to cry. Silently.
The three had learnt to never to make noise whenever possible for fear of incurring their mother's drunken wrath, out of which only pain and starvation could blossom.