A/N: Oh, God, I really hated writing this chapter, but it's for the sake of the story. I hope my readers can forgive me. Hell, I hope Matt can forgive me too; I really hate putting him through this…
But maybe I should start at the beginning. See, it wasn't all bad when Dad was around. Sometimes, even before the day he left, I felt like my mother hated me, like she didn't think I should have existed. She never showed it until he left though.
It was February 2nd, the day after my second birthday; I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday though. I woke up, and noticed the house was quiet, too quiet. I got up and went to the living room, expecting Dad to be in his recliner, reading the newspaper like he always was. But he wasn't. Curious as to where he could be I went to their room. I saw my mother sitting on the side of their bed, smoking a cigarette. They usually didn't smoke around me, so I immediately started coughing when I smelled it, which caught her attention instantly.
Her eyes shifted to look at me. "It's your fault, you know," she said emotionlessly.
"My…fault?" I repeated in confusion.
"It's your fault he left," she went on. "He would have stayed with me if you'd never been born."
"It's my fault," I said, agreeing with her, hoping it would make her happy enough.
It didn't.
She scowled, smashing her cigarette against the bedpost before smacking me hard across the face. "You should have never been born, you useless little sonuva bitch!" she snapped.
I hit the floor hard, trying not to cry. She'd only beaten me once before Dad left, and when I'd cried, she'd just beaten me more.
Now, Dad wasn't here to protect me.
She snatched me up by the front of my shirt. "You're just a useless little shit," she spat, before throwing me to the floor again and kicking me down the hall. "Cook me breakfast. It better be ready in twenty minutes," she snapped, before slamming the door.
I whimpered, clutching my head from where it had slammed against the wall. "Daddy, why'd you leave?" I whispered quietly. "Did you stop loving me?" I managed to crawl painfully to my feet and stumbled to the kitchen. I didn't want to get beat anymore.
Life went on like that for two years straight. Every day, I was expected to get up and cook and clean. If I didn't do it, I got beat. If I did do it, I got beat, but I got beat less, so it was little incentive. Every night, she'd go out and party and then bring back some random guy and I'd have to put up with their 'love making' until they passed out. God, it made me sick.
When she was gone though, I had the house to myself and I immersed myself in a world outside the reality I lived in. Zelda, Link, Ganondorf, Peach, Mario, and Bowser helped me forget, if only for a few hours. But, I couldn't escape her the rest of the time. I wore long sleeves and jeans, even in the summer, because I knew if someone asked about the bruises, she'd beat me even more, whether I lied or told the truth made no difference. I was allowed outside, but only for chores, which was rare.
Because I never got to play with the other neighborhood kids, or got to play at all, aside from sneaking the occasional video game at night, I never really found out that what she was doing to me was illegal. True, her sleeping with the random male sluts she brought home couldn't legally be stopped, but that I could deal with. There were some days though, when she'd beat me so badly that I couldn't walk for almost a week. Well, I should correct myself. I could walk, it was just excruciating to do so.
The day after my third birthday, I was cleaning the bathroom and, not realizing it was on the floor, accidentally stepped on her razor. Normally, I would have just picked it up and kept on cleaning, but something stopped me. Every day, my heart ached with a pain I could never really fully explain, but this, this pain in my foot…somehow, it pushed the heartache away just a little. Biting my lip,(I always did that when I couldn't decide what to do) I looked at the razor and the drops of blood on the tile. What if…? I pocketed the razor and put a new one in the shower. Not that she would notice, really. She'd probably just think I was trying to think ahead, and beat me for doing something she didn't tell me to. I was supposed to do only what she told me to and if I did anymore than that, she beat me. Of course, she always beat me at least once in a day, so it really made no difference.
Sure enough, when she went to take a shower that night when she got up, she found the new razor.
I was in the kitchen, cooking, when I heard her scream.
She stormed into the room and snatched me away from the stove and flung me to the floor. "What do you call this, you little bastard?" she snarled, waving the razor in my face. She was dripping water all over the floor. Great, more for me to do.
"I gave you a new razor, Mother," I said quietly, biting my lip(I also did it when I was scared).
"Why? I didn't ask for it, you little bitch. What have I told you about doing more than what I tell you to?"
"Not to." My voice was quieter then, but I knew she heard it. She always did. I could already taste the blood from my lip.
"So why did you do it?" She practically screamed the words and, with how shrill she got, I was surprised my bladder hadn't already turned traitor on me. I really didn't need that to happen because she would only beat me more.
"I'm sorry, Mother," I managed weakly. "I was only trying to be helpful."
"Helpful? HELPFUL?" she screamed.
I nodded, frightened. I knew what was coming, but I was never prepared for it.
She pulled back and slapped me across the room. "What the FUCK have I told you about being helpful? If you want to be helpful, then do what I say, you little whore. Otherwise, suck it up. Or, you could be even more helpful," she mused, "if you were never born!" She kicked me hard in the stomach and I hit the wall with a groan.
I coughed once and then threw up. I closed my eyes tightly, dreading the impact…but it never came. Instead, when I opened my eyes, she was no longer even in the room.
"You're not worth my time," she said bitterly as she walked past me again to leave. "You weren't even worth bringing home."
Somehow, those words hurt more than any punch or kick ever had.
An hour or two after she had left, I climbed to my feet and cleaned up the mess. After that, I curled up on the couch, with my knees pulled tight against my chest. I felt my throat tightening, but I knew no tears would come. Even my own body wouldn't shed a tear for my circumstances. My heart felt as if it were about to explode.
Or, you could be more helpful if you were never born!
You weren't even worth bringing home.
Her harsh , biting words echoed through my head as the clock over the mantle ticked. Running in a circle, they were driving me insane. I gripped my hair near the roots, it was too much. Everything she'd told me since Dad left echoed in my head.
It's your fault.
He would have stayed with me if you'd never been born.
You should have never been born, you useless little sonuva bitch!
You're just a useless little shit!
I screamed. It was too much. Too much! I flung myself to the floor and scrambled across the living room to my toy box. I flung the lid off to the side where it banged against the wall and I dug through my things, chucking things out of the way. I'd clean it up later. Finally, I found the razor and I sprinted to the kitchen. I took the rolling pin that was on the counter and smashed the plastic on the razor, taking the blades and sweeping the broken plastic into the trash.
I stood there, holding the one of the blades in my left hand, biting my lip. Should I really go through with it? But I remembered, the brief numbing the accidental cut had given me. What if an intentional one was even better? I slid the blade across my skin, just barely breaking the surface and nicking the vein.
I sighed as relief washed over me as the blood trickled down my wrist. Yes, video games were great, but they didn't actually numb the pain as well as a blade did.
For the next year, that became my new escape. I already wore long sleeves, so I didn't have to worry about hiding the marks from her. And if she ever found them, she'd no doubt assume that she'd inflicted them (though, indirectly, she did) and beat me some more.
I didn't cut often, only when she abused me worse than usual, or she added a new insult to the already kilometre-long list she had. Even still, by my fourth birthday, my forearms were littered with pale scars. If Dad were around, he would have probably been concerned about my arms, but he wasn't, so it didn't matter.
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood as I pushed my goggles up onto my head so I could see properly, or at least, without an orange tint covering everything. The house had to be perfect today, because tonight, she was bringing home a special guest. She needed the "good" china out, flowers in the vase on the center of the table(with ice water, of course, because they simply could not be wilted when he got here), and there had to be twelve, not eleven or thirteen because they were odd numbers and he couldn't stand odd numbers, and they had to all be different kinds of flowers. Just great. That alone took an hour out of my day because I had to hike down into the valley behind the house.
Which was were I was then. There was only one problem. ALL THE FLOWERS WERE THE FUCKIN' SAME! They were all frickin' daisies! Great, just great. I thought maybe it was just my goggles fucking with my brain, but no. All these flowers were daisies. Wonderful. That meant it'd be another couple hours gone, because I'd have to hike the three kilometeres down to Eping Forest. Fuck. I absolutely hated living in High Beach.
I sighed. There was no fighting it. I had to have the flowers, or she'd beat me worse than usual. She'd specifically said that I had to have everything on the list. Sadistic fucking bitch.
I nearly collapsed when I reached the forest. The only exercise I'd gotten all my life was cleaning. It wasn't that I was overweight, I only weighed about thirteen kilograms; I just didn't have much endurance. I might have had more if I stood anything to gain from running from mother but that wasn't possible. Still struggling to catch my breath, I walked a little into the forest on an only vaguely familiar path that Dad had taken me on when he was still around.
It wasn't long before I found a small clearing full of about a million different kinds of flowers. Yes! Score 1 for me. I picked twelve and started my long hike home.
I set out the china, put the ice water and flowers in the vase and put it in the center of the table. I was cleaning her red dress while cooking the food on the stove when it happened. It was about six in the afternoon if I remembered correctly. I was standing on top of the washing machine trying to get to the detergent I was supposed to use on her dress when I smelled something burning. I jumped down off of the machine and ran into the kitchen.
The Yorkshire pudding had caught on fire in the time I left the room.
I was scared. What was I going to do?
I tried to put the fire out, but only succeeded in making it bigger. I was getting ready to wake Mother up and admit that I failed at such a simple task, but something stopped me.
She'd smell it eventually; we didn't have smoke alarms, because the noise annoyed her. But…
I bit my lip. I really was abusing it today.
Something kept telling me to run; the same thing that told me something was wrong the day Dad left. I stopped thinking and bolted.
I ended up at the police station in Loughton three hours later.
The only report was that a four-year old boy showed up on the 23rd of March at 9:00 p.m. wearing a long-sleeved striped shirt, a torn pair of jeans, and no shoes or socks, mumbling something about a fire.
They searched out the area and found out that a house on the outskirts of High Beach had burned down recently, no earlier than around six in the evening.
The exact time I ran like a dog out of hell with a burning coat.