Chapter One- On the Road to Brahams
The drive had been long. No, not long, she thought bitterly, but eternal. Her feet ached from pushing the driving pedals under her for days, with little rest. Her back ached from sleeping in her car, on a seat that never reclined fully. And most of all, her stomach ached, from all the junk she had eaten from gas stations and freeway-restaurants along the way. God this man had better be worth it.
The woman's name was Love, and she was going to visit her father. A father whom she had only seen pictures of, and faded ones at that. But the want for knowledge of her Indian roots had taken such a hold of her, she couldn't stop herself from cutting all ties in California to go soul-searching in West Virginia. She had been born here, in the Appalachian Mountains, on a dirty little reservation in the middle of nowhere. And she would have already been there, if it hadn't been for that damned redneck, sister-fucking, moonshine-drinking sonofabitch who had been too drunk to give her the correct directions off of the last highway. Her grip tightened on the wheel in anger as her eyes swept around the road, taking in the view of trees, rocks, and a 2000 foot drop. "Fucking hick." She mumbled.
The road had done nothing to change her temper. She was usually a quiet, well-mannered young woman, but there were factors in her life that changed her, and not for the better. She felt like a failure, every day, every waking minute she felt with every cell in her body that she would end up like her father, that toothless, drug-addicted thief who'd been just charming enough to hide his true self and attract her mother to him in marriage. He hadn't fooled her long, though, and after she had moved across the ocean, to an entirely new continent to a place where she couldn't even speak the language, she had had the courage to leave him, for both our sakes. But she had been no saint either, Love thought to herself in a solemn tone, She was a looney-tune just like him. It takes a freak to know one. She sighed deeply, a kind of exhale that rattled her whole being and gave a gloomy aura to the inside of the tattered old bug. She looked at herself in the rear-view mirror, though it was too dark to see herself properly. She saw her eyes, normally a honey-brown-green color, engulfed in a deep darkness. Rings sat around her eyes in deep, purple bags. Her mouth, usually so plump and bright, had been unconsciously pressed into slim lines that she found so unattractive she groaned. It's just depression, her mother had always told her, You'll get over it. She knew she couldn't. Part of her cross-country roadtrip had been inspired by the need to know her father, but it hadn't been all of it. She slowed the car down as her eyes began to close, and vowed just to make it to the next rest stop. She knew why she left. Her job sucked, and she had no way of getting into college without draining her already low finances. Her relationship, which she had been committed to since she was 15, had fallen apart, and she felt it was all her fault. Her mother had disowned her after she moved out of the house on her own, and she had absolutely no family in the United States, except for the one she was about to go and meet. Her outlook was not positive. As a child, her mother had told her about her father. His name was Jason, he was posted on a military post in Germany, and he was handsome. My mother fell in love, they married, she conceived, and he promised her the world. Except for when they moved from Germany to the great USA, she ended up on a dirty Indian reservation, where food stamps were used instead of money as currency. She left after a year.
Her eyes were steadily drooping now, and more than once she felt the vibration under her tires when she strayed too far to the right, right towards that huge drop-off. Things hadn't gotten better after that, not at all. Then Mama met another military man, and married, and had a child. But Mama didn't know what a nymphomaniac was, and was more than hurt to see her husband, my new daddy, fucking not only the babysitter but everything that came his way. Divorce came when I was 4 years old. But this time I had my baby brother with me, who looked so much like him. Then things got worse.
Love began to sleep.
She met another soldier, big and tall and oh-so-happy to have to children ready to call him daddy. But I didn't like him, no, I didn't like him. But Mama never listens. So when he they married and we moved to Nevada and he lost his job and he and he-
Love began to swerve.
-he thought that Mama was with another man he hit her, and he hit her hard, and he made sure she knew not to even think of such abominations. And when Love and her baby brother acted badly, when they couldn't eat their breakfast fast enough or they left their Legos on the carpet and DADDY stepped on them they too would know the quick, stabbing pain of a fist in their guts and on their faces and how far DADDY could throw you if he wanted to and it was worse when Daddy liked you because he would keep you in his room and-
Love fell, down that slope, into the midnight bliss. The darkness of the woods engulfed her, and a mist began to swallow the car. If a girl falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear, does she still scream?