Tw: Child abuse
Reader is Frisk. I had sad thoughts and needed to share them.
You walk home, having fallen asleep in the library and missing your bus once again. The cars on the freeway fly past, and you feel like the people inside are watching you, judging you, wondering why a kid is walking along the side of the road alone at sundown. In your head, you glare at the prying eyes until they leave. In reality, you keep your gaze fixed on the ground and hike your bookbag up your shoulders.
The moon is high in the sky when you reach home. There's no car in the driveway, and the door still unlocked because you forgot to secure it when you left for school in a rush. You're always a forgetful idiot like that.
The food in the cabinets is lackluster, but you manage to scavenge up some saltines with a glass of tap water. The school lunch seems so far away right now, and you want to eat all the crackers and their tiny remaining crumbs because you're hungry. But you don't know when she'll be home, and it's Thursday so you might have to use these to get through the weekend so you carefully eat three crackers and lick your fingers to make sure you get every last bit of salt and carbs.
You crawl into bed, setting the alarm to go off at seven. Most kids have parents to wake them up in the morning but not you. Never you.
You don't know how long she's been leaving you on your own. It can't have been when you were really little, because you would've died (sometimes you wish you had) but you know it's been a long time. You can remember missing school because she wasn't home for hours at an end and you sat on the floor and stared at the door and cried and cried because you were scared to be alone and you were hungry and the house was making weird noises and the teacher would be mad. (But nobody came.)
She came back reeking of smoke and alcohol to find you in a sniveling pile in front of the door. You grabbed her leg and the next thing you remember was a sting across your cheek and a lecture about responsibility and big kids and stupid crybabies. You made sure to never cry in front of her again.
Her disappearances got longer and longer the older you got. You're starting to get nervous because it's been almost an entire week, and this is the longest she's ever been gone and oh god what if she's dead or left for good? You know it's your fault that she's gone, because if you weren't such a bad kid she'd stay home with you.
Friday and Saturday go by, and you've finished the crackers but you were able to steal some apples from the cafeteria, so you think (hope) you'll be fine until she gets back. A tiny voice in the back of your head tells you she's not coming back because you're bad-bad-bad-bad.
The phone rings on Sunday morning with her cell number flashing across it, and you answer it with shaking hands. You hear the sounds of what of what you think is a bar in the background as she slurs her words. "It's real hard, y'know, takin' care of a kid?"
"Mom?" You ask tentatively. "When are you coming home?" She continues as if you didn't speak.
"I mean, I was jus' a kid when I had you. I couldn't even support m'self, an' daycare's real fuckin' expensive. I didn' even want you, you know? But the hos'pital wouldn't let me get an abortion. Somethin' about murdering innocent lives. Buncha fuckwits. Woulda saved you and I a hell of a lot of trouble." She pauses, giving a low laugh that sounds almost like a sob.
"Mom?" your voice squeaks, and you're so, so scared as to what she's going to say next.
"I dunno shit about kids. I mean, look how you turned out. Lazy, stupid kid. I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to do with you though, so it's no wonder you're such a piece of shit. Like mother, like daughter, eh?"
Your hands are shaking and you're too scared to correct her on your gender. "Please come home?" you ask in a voice that feels too small and too loud all at the same time. "Please."
You think she's crying, but you can't really tell. "I can't fucking take this anymore. A kid's too much responsibility. I can't-" You're certain now that she's crying as she chokes back a sob. "'M sorry kid."
The call ends, and the phone slips out of your hand to break o the floor. You feel all the empty space in the house wrap around you to constrict your heart and lungs and you can't breath. You're such a piece of shit that she left for good.
You don't know what to do, so you run into the backyard and through the woods. Away from the empty house and broken phone and squeezing space. You run, and run, and run, until you come to a dirt road and finally stop at a bus stop with a cracked rain shelter. There's scrapes on your knees and you fish a used band-aid out out of your pocket to stick to one of the injuries.
You think you know where you are.
Mount Ebott, so close to your house and city yet so far away because the people who live near it don't go up it. Too many children gone missing.
You want to go missing. You want to leave and disappear forever.
You go up the path coming off the dirt road. You find a decent walking stick to use on the overgrown trail. You trip and stumble your way into a cave where you find a deep black hole that you know you wouldn't be able to see the bottom of even if the sun weren't setting. Your body is crashing, the adrenaline exiting your system and leaving you tired.
You step into the emptiness.