SHARDS OF SILENCE

Even after a whole month of the grand birthday party at Aurelia, it was still the talk of the town. Especially within Warmaukey’s high school. Almost none of the students had been allowed access into the ballroom without invites, expect some high profile hotel worker kids and relatives so the school gist never surpassed how great the party was, how hot Grayson looked, how “drool worthy”. In attendance had been Olivia, the most popular kid at school. Her parents weren’t too wealthy or important but they were comfortably rich and had gotten her an invite from a staff at the hotel who had willingly sold it to them at about five hundred dollars. The peppy blonde girl wouldn’t stop chirping about Grayson, his facial description, how he looked way better than he did on social media.

She had used dirty words like; “Slut me out kinda fine! Spit on my face while you fuck me kinda handsome!” And her girl clique were sure to laugh and giggle like it was a new information every time she mentioned it.

Laura didn’t like this news. She didn’t like Olivia either. In fact, it made her cringe listening to people talk endlessly about this boy like he was some sort of demigod. It was just a new school session and Laura was in her senior year. She had no plans to go to college after high school, she just wanted the days to roll into months and then years while she worked some trivial works and lived with her mother till the day she died.

Life was already boring as it was, and if she wasn’t too scared of what the aftermath of death could be, she could have resorted into some speedy way of ending her life. As she had breakfast that morning, pushing the boiled potatoes in the plate about with the tip of her fork, her mother stared at her from across the dining. Laura could feel the woman wanted desperately to start up a conversation, but she just wasn’t up for any of that. She wanted to left alone, to her thoughts, and focusing on the soothing sound the television audio in the background. The news was on again, Laura despised having to listen to the same recycled news over and over again.

Her life had seemed to be on a reshuffle for as long as she could remember.

She went to school every morning, same boring classes, same faces, same recycled gist about her ex boyfriend. And then, went to the supermarkets at five for her evening shift. Got two days off during the weekends. Spent her Saturday morning doing laundry and house cleaning. The afternoon at her anger management class downtown with Madame Louis. Her mother had enrolled her in when she was twelve and would always flare up at the littlest discomfort and destroy anything within arm’s reach. She had been improving, lately, and just hoped she wouldn’t get triggered and relapse like she had been doing in the past five years.

If she did, Madame Louis certainly wouldn’t mind starting all over with her again. Beginners class was even more infuriating than having anger issues.

Her Sundays were always spent at her volunteer job at the orphanage.

Laura shoved a mouthful of potato into her mouth and swallowed slowly. Her eyes were focused on the window above the kitchen sink overlooking the small garden in their backyard where they grew vegetables. The kitchen was small, almost too compact, but at least it contained a dining table of four and was much better than the one at the house they lived before. This house had a two bedroom, separated by a thin wall that you could quite literally hear the sound of others breathing from the other side. And there was no privacy. The locks were not quite working and no matter how much she complained to her mother about how she wanted her door locked while she slept at night, there was nothing done about it. Jacob, her mother’s husband, always enjoyed barging into her room at the most inconvenient time such as when she was in her underwear, or when she had a towel wrapped around herself to ask the most trivial questions.

“Did Coco come in here?”

“Can you find my shaving cream?”

“Did you have dinner last night?”

“Have you seen the new avengers movies that’s out?”

She’d warned him about it a lot of times but that changed nothing so she stopped giving warnings. And one day he’d barged in on her naked, while she was in the process of waxing her legs, and she had spotted his immediate erection in the faded knee length khaki pants he always wore to the farm he owned a few miles from her mother’s house. She’d screamed at him for never listening and yelled till her throat burned, only to get hit so hard across the face, she could have sworn she saw actual stars. Belle, her mother, had rushed to the scene to find out what had transpired only to find her daughter slumped unto the floor, naked, with a nose bleed and bruised eyes.

When she launched at Jacob, screaming and fighting back, she had gotten her own share of being beaten up. Much worse than her daughter’s. Laura could remember clearly screaming her mother be let go, all the while, she was naked still. And so she hated her step father, and her mother as well, because there had been no relationship built up between them as she grew. She had spent her time having numerous boyfriends, getting drunk on Friday nights, and having loud sex like she didn’t have a child in her home. Ever since that day Jacob had barged in on her naked, Laura had taken more preventive measures. Her room was already really tiny and the space between the door and the bed barely existing. So every night before she slept, she’d used her bed against the door.

“You look tired, have you been sleeping at all?”

Laura shot her head up and looked at her mother across the table. Look who’s asking, she thought, looks like you haven’t slept in ages. Belle did look like she hadn’t slept in forever. She looked sickly even and her eyes were sunken into her skull. Acne spread all over her forehead and temple, dark circles below her eyes and reddened nose. The round neck she had on was sagging at her left shoulders, revealing a bruised mark which stood out angry and purplish on her bone. Laura hadn’t been home too often to know if she and Jacob had been fighting or arguing, but that looked like a recent bruise, perhaps two to three days. She looked away, not because she didn’t care but because she could cry if she looked just a little longer.

Laura grumbled. “The sounds. Can’t sleep. Too loud.” There was no way in the world she was going into details about her mother’s sex life, even though she knew most of their fetish and kinks now by just being in the next room, and she didn’t like it one bit. Before she left for school, she gave her mom a much needed advise. “You should consider taking a break from that man. His addict doesn’t look good on you.”

And when she left, and Belle was all alone in the house, she cried. Her body slumped onto the floor in their living room, her face buried in the palms of her hands. Her shoulders quaked and her heart hurt like it was physically being ripped out of her chest. Stabbed over and over again. Because life had always been unfair to her, and maybe if her baby daddy hadn’t left before the child was even born, her life would have been so much better. Coco, the small puppy they owned, skipped around her scrawny body, nuzzling her with its moist nose while he whimpered like to console her. The dog ought to be used to her daily onslaught of tears already, but it hadn’t, everyday when she cried, it’d repeat the cycle still.

Belle usually spent the day cleaning the house and fixing things that needed repair. Today she had brought home an handy man to fix the lock on her daughter’s door. She didn’t like the thoughts that had been crossing her head lately, of Jacob having a forceful sexual relationship with Laura. And to further back up her suspicion, she had caught him in her room a few days back, jerking off to her panties against his nose. She’d had enough of his sexual addictions and urges, and would do anything in her power to stop him from doing things to Laura.

After she paid the handyman, and made sure the new dead bolt door lock worked just right, she sighed in satisfaction and glanced around the small room from the door. Laura’s clothes were loosely hanging out of her closet, some discarded on the floor carelessly. The drapes over the windows were dusty and old, the purple hibiscus flower prints had faded into a navy blue color, either by the dust or by hanging at the window for over three years without replacement. Even the bed spread needed a change, the pillows as well. There were two lines etched into the wooden floor, right from one end of the room to the other and Belle could tell it was from using the bed to barricade the door.

Proceeding further into the room, Coco scampered behind her while tugging and chewing at a rubber ducky which gave endless squeaky sounds like a cry out for help. The puppy barked in excitement, dropped the toy and retreated to a distance as if it had an opponent. Its small legs stretched and the tail wagged in delight, barking intimidatingly, as if to ask the toy; “What’s your name? What do you want? Why are you here? No response? I’m Coco! I’ll get it out of ya!”

With a bounce, the puppy began an endless attack on the toy once again. The toy squeaked endlessly in response as if to say; “I’m ducky! I’m innocent!” Belle spared the puppy and the toy a few minutes glance, a silly smile backing up her look. She had found the ducky only a few days back, it was once Laura’s favorite as a child but recently, she had gotten a pup to fill her boredom and loneliness of being at the house all day, alone, by herself while her daughter was at school and her husband at the farm. She was happy she got Coco, raising the pup felt like she were raising her own child from toddler once again but Laura hadn’t quite been in approval to the pup and had strictly prohibited it from getting into her room because it was still being potty trained.

On remembering this, Belle was quick to shoo the puppy out and shut the door behind it. Then she headed to her daughter’s closet and pulled the doors completely open, they gave screechy whines as they both gave way. Laura’s clothes began spewing out at a faster rate, looked like they had been pushed to fit into the small space lazily. Belle stared down at her feet, quite hearing the sound of Coco scratching and whimpering at the door and very much ignoring the puppy, crouched and began to pack the clothes onto the bed. She was going to sort them out and hang them onto the hangers, fold the ones that need to be folded. And just as she was packing up the last of the clothes, a book slipped out and the edge had fallen against Belle’s toe before it remained opened and face first against the floor.

The impact had been so painful that Belle sucked in the pain with a wince. And then she went after the book, it seemed to have been a diary or a journal, she couldn’t tell at the first glance. But as she picked it up, she recognized the book as one she had gotten Laura when she turned thirteen, to keep journals and diary of moments she needed to talk or share some deep secrets. She knew this was wrong, but she did the snooping around anyway. Laura never shared anything with her and if she were to find out the littlest hint of what was going on in her baby’s life, that was only shot she had. The first few pages turned were filled with child-like writing and reminisce of what days had felt like when she had first gotten the diary, five years back. And then there had been a pause, about two to five pages had not been used. Belle flipped faster until she came across the next page that had writings again.

It stated; SUMMER 2021, I MADE A NEW FRIEND. HE’S JUST SIXTEEN BUT HE ACTS LIKE A FATHER I NEVER HAD.

Without reading through the content yet, she flipped to the next page and even before she could read the title, the sound of glass breaking somewhere in the house had gotten her immediate attention. Belle head shot up and she instantly snapped the book shut, and held her breath. It hadn’t occurred to her that she hadn’t heard Coco’s whimpering or scratching against the door in about a few minutes. She couldn’t hear ducky as well, and for whatever reasons, fear had shuffled into the cramped space of her daughter’s room with her and threatened to terrorize her.

Beneath the door, she saw a shadow go by, almost too hastily that she concluded someone else was in the house with her. She hadn’t heard footsteps but she could feel the presence of a human and that human certainly wasn’t Jacob. Her husband was boisterous, and loud, and vulgar. He always announced his presence right from the door the moment he was in the vicinity. Frozen in a spot, her mind raced with the possibility that a burglar had gotten in, but what could they have come for? She had no money at all. Quickly thinking, she searched the small space for anything that could be used as weapon. There was an umbrella behind the bed, what damage could that do? Nevertheless, she picked the umbrella and clutched at it tightly. She opened the door into the hallways, half expecting someone to jump at her, and when nobody did she felt stupid for having braced herself for that impact.

“I’ve got a gun!” she called out, in a small, shaky voice. “I’m not afraid to use it.”

No response came. In fact, the silence in the house was too deafening, too sickening, she wondered what happened to Coco. Her steps slow and precautious, she entered the living room and expected to see her pup’s body laying in a pool of it’s own blood, but nothing. Exhaling a loud breath of relief, she finally let her guard down. She found the shattered glass at the foot of her three seat couch, it was her wedding picture frame with Jacob, a very long way from where it was formerly hung above the television.

The frame had been broken into hundreds of shards, spreading all over wooden floor. The main door to the house was locked, as well as the kitchen door but Belle could tell someone had been inside. A sweet strong scent wafted through the air and the living room window had been propped open enough to fit a human. Belle was careful not to get the soles of her feet cut through so she headed straight to the kitchen to grab her a broom. She had heard Coco’s petrified whimpers before she saw it. The puppy was hidden beneath the dining table, cowering in fear, its tail sagging, paws over eyes. Ducky however was right beside the dog, untouched as well.

Belle was certain an intruder was just in her house.