Lust and anger, pride and sloth
We took her from the same cloth
All that envy, vanity
Gonna be the end of me
Pride before a fall
Dark before the dawn
Fall and fall and fall
Call into you all
~The Church, Pride Before A Fall~
Oh God … I feel like shit. Angela Shepard turned her head a little and wondered which bus had hit her when she wasn't looking. Her head felt like hundreds of tiny elves were beating out the William Tell Overture with steel mallets on her frontal lobes, her mouth was so dry it made her wonder if she had indulged in a buffet of Tulsa sand during her night of debauchery, and every muscle in her body was throbbing in counter beat to the thumping in her head.
Why did I drink that much? She kept the words of regret silent instead of verbalizing them, not trusting her mouth to open any further then necessary for her to breathe because her stomach felt like it was on the verge of a major rebellion. What the hell possessed me to do this to myself?
Something crackled softly when she turned her head again, and Angela cracked her eyes open a few millimeters to see where she had ended up crashing out. The sunlight streamed through the slits and seared into her skull like little pinpricks from a needle, but she acknowledged it with only a low moan of pain before lifting her head to stare at the run down, white house just a few feet away.
The lopsided bushes with one side of their leaves burnt off beside the crooked porch looked familiar to her alcohol-logged mind, and a picture of her brother, Curly, accidentally setting them on fire with their step-father's welding torch flickered through her mind. It was the partially dismantled Harley-Davidson motorcycle taking up half the sagging boards on the porch that brought the world into focus, and she finally comprehended exactly where she was.
Home … the bastard brought me home at least. She could vaguely remember meeting up with Bryon Douglas and that creepy boy with the gold eyes, but other than that … the rest of the evening was a total blank. It couldn't have been too bad of a night, though, since he'd brought her home instead of dumping her drunken ass on a street corner somewhere.
The grass she was laying on felt uncommonly cool and comfortable despite the heat of the Tulsa sun beating down on her, but she knew she had to make it inside or she would end up with a painful sunburn to go along with her hell-bent hangover. The sun wasn't fully up yet, but once it reached mid-point … gotta get up.
Staggering to her feet, Angela lurched toward the crooked front porch and managed to pull herself up the sagging steps using the rickety wooden handrail. One look at the empty driveway, and she knew her mom was at work slinging plates onto tables at the diner a few blocks away, and her step-father was at the garage where he worked on eighteen-wheelers for the local trucking company, but Tim and Curly … hopefully neither one was up this early to see her embarrassing condition.
That was all she needed to top off a perfectly horrendous hangover, her brothers jumping her for drinking herself into oblivion and coming home looking like something that had been dragged backwards through a bush of thorns. At least she won't have to worry about her mother or stepfather seeing her in this shape and making her sit through one of the long-winded lectures on how a young lady is supposed to act in public.
By the time Angela reached the door, her head was spinning and the beating mallets had changed to slamming hammers that seemed to make her eyeballs pulsing along with the rhythm. Everything would be alright if she could just pop a few aspirins and keep them down long enough for them to chase away the partying elves in her skull.
Luckily, no one else seemed to be stirring around on a day like this, and she made it inside without arousing any suspicions in the still sleeping occupants of the place she'd called home for most of her life. A wobble in her stomach matched the unsteadiness of her steps as Angela made her way into the quiet house and shuffled down the dim hallway to the bathroom with every intention of washing the remnants of her stupidity off her face and out of her mind.
Heat flooded her cheeks as the memory of her words to Bryon echoed through her head like a bad horror flick. How could I have said that to him of all people? Why? I'm never going to be able to face him again! I don't love him! I don't love a damn thing about him!
Flipping the bathroom light on with the palm of her hand, Angela grabbed a washcloth from the stack of clean ones in the linen closet behind her and turned to start the water running. The pipes were old, and it took a while for the water to warm up and for the rusty tinge to clear up, so she had a few moments to study her reflection and see what the damage was from her illicit drinking.
This was the part she had been dreading. No matter how many times she partied that hard, it shocked her to see the shape her looks were in. She knew she was beautiful by anyone's standards, but she also knew that heavy drinking took its toll on that beauty. She'd seen many of the beauties in her neighborhood growing old before their time while being dragged down by the partying and drinking that seemed to be the only outlet of fun around these parts.
Laying the washcloth on the counter top, she raised her head to peer at her reflection in the smudgy mirror, fully expecting to see her makeup smeared all over her face and her hair long, dark hair looking like the curls were matted together; maybe even a few blades of dried grass and some dirt mixed in from her nap on the lawn.
She could even handle seeing her mascara ringing her eyes like a raccoon and her lipstick smeared around her mouth like the makeup of a clown after his circus performance was finished for the night. What she saw instead, though, was enough to shock her to the core.
A small shriek escaped Angela's lips as her eyes focused on the image in the mirror staring back at her, the blue eyes filled with horror and disbelief. It took a few long moments for the reality of what she was looking at to sink into her recovering brain, but once it did …
"No! No fucking way!" Angela whispered hoarsely, her hands shaking as she raised them up to run her fingers through the short curls that framed her mascara and dirt streaked face. "What the fuck?"
She knew her mother would have a fit if she could hear her daughter speaking like that, but she was beyond caring and Mom wasn't here anyway. "Gone … all gone."
Shock slowly turned to self-pity, and then it turned to rage as Angela continued to stare at the damage Bryon Douglas had done to her image. And to my dignity, she told herself angrily as the pity hit its peak and warred with the rage at his callousness in depriving her of the one thing she had to be proud of in her life.
Her hair was her pride and joy, and it fell down almost to her waist in thick waves of curls that were the envy of every girl in her school. No other girl in her school had hair as glossy and healthy looking as her hair was, and she had been the target of many jealous rumors from Social and greaser alike because of her glorious mane; many claiming spitefully that it was a wig and not her natural hair.
No one is gonna envy this mess, Angela told herself bitterly as she pulled the short curls out and studied the ragged edges with narrowed eyes. Overnight she had gone from a full, luxurious mane to a short, cropped head of curls that barely reached her shoulders. My beautiful hair whacked off without a care. That bastard.
"What the hell didja cut your hair for, Angie?" a gruff voice asked from the doorway as her oldest brother, Tim, appeared in the mirror behind her, his darker blue eyes riveted to her head. "That was a stupid thing to do."
He leaned back against the shelves of the linen closet and crossed his arms over his chest nonchalantly. "Your hair was beautiful just as it was."
"I-I didn't c-cut it," she admitted in a low tone, hot tears welling up in her eyes as she met his in the mirror. Holding his amused gaze and reading the disappointment in his eyes was her undoing. Turning from the mirror she threw herself against Tim's chest as the sobs escaped unchecked despite her wanting to remain tough and deal with it on her own.
Feeling his arms come around her gently only made the feelings worse. "H-He cut m-my hair, Tim! I w-was drinking and d-didn't know what h-he was doing!"
Angela's chest hitched as she tried to control the emotions that were coursing through her, and she wailed, "H-He cut it a-all off!"
The arms around her tightened a little and she felt her brother's whole body stiffen against her. Tim swore softly under his breath before asking harshly, "Who?"
There was a wealth of anger and menace in that one word as it rumbled in the ear she had pressed to Tim's chest, and she knew he had gotten an idea of what had happened to her the night before. He had to smell the liquor on her. That alone would give him a vivid picture of what had gone on.
"B-Bryon Douglas," she answered in almost a whisper. "He m-must have done it a-after I passed out."
"He … " Tim hesitated a few seconds as if trying to find the right words to express what he was thinking. "He didn't do anything else, did he?"
Angela's stomach knotted up painfully at the concern in his tone, and she shook her head quickly before pushing back from him to meet his stony eyes. "No."
She shivered a little at the gleam of relief in her brother's gaze before the anger glazed them over once again. "I would know if he did that."
She felt naked enough with her head shorn like a sheep without him bringing up that subject. Bryon may be an arrogant bastard, but he would never do anything like that to a helplessly drunken girl. No, he would just chop her hair off and dump her in her front yard. Anger surged up inside her again and lodged in her throat. Bryon would regret what he had done when her brother was finished with him.
"Get cleaned up, Angie," Tim ordered softly, tousling her now shorter curls affectionately. "Curly and me will handle Douglas. Doncha worry 'bout a thing."
He smiled grimly and squeezed her shoulder, causing another shiver to run through her. "He'll pay for what he's done."
A satisfied smirk spread across Angela's face as Tim strode out of the bathroom, and she heard the thump of his boots on the hall floor. Bryon would definitely know he had messed with the wrong girl after Tim and Curly were done with him. He would learn the hard way that the Shepards always stuck together and protected their own.
Always.
This is a rewrite of a one-shot I posted quite a few years ago. I hope you enjoy it.