Chapter 23 (i)

As quickly as the assault began, it ended. Mom let me go, a deceptive calm washing over her. She spared a brief glance at Lilia, but her attention was for me. A menacing smirk slowly crept its way onto her face., churning my insides painfully.

"Let's go home."

Home. It was the place that housed many knives, stores of poisons, thick belts of leather, and a sound-proof basement; the place that held my demise. I couldn’t think of a place more sinister. Going home with her wouldn’t bear too great a difference from any executively drawn decision I could make to take my own life; the difference was marginal at best.

“Come on. Your father came by first thing this morning; he’s waiting for you.”

…The son of a bitch.

Had he stayed in whatever cockroach’s hollow he’d crawled into when he got back to town, my mother’s mind would’ve remained far from me. Without his aggravating presence bearing down