Filed to story: Offered to the Lycan King Novel by Misha K (River & Hunter)
“H—how did she die?” I asked, my mind numb when he announced it to me.
“I don’t know,” he replied, staring at her cold body.
“I am calling the hospital!” I started dialing a number on my phone as my h*ands shook uncontrollably.
He snatched it from me. “And what will you tell them? How did she die? They will suspect me and send me to jail. What will happen to you? Do you want to go to foster care?”
“No!” I rasped.
“Then stay put!”
And so here I was, staring at the woman who birthed me, cursing the father who left me with her. Why did they have me when they didn’t love each other? Did they have a one-night stand? Why couldn’t I have a normal family like other kids in the town? I hated my mother but I hated my father more. A clank of spoons falling to the ground brought me back to the present.
Garry’s constant chatter on how lovely she was giving me a headache because Natalie was anything but lovely. She was the most bitter person who happened to be my biological mother. My biological father dumped her after she gave birth to me. He dumped us both.
Natalie used to say that we had to seek shelter in this small town, Blowing Rock because she was afraid of my father.
According to her, he was a goon who used to hit her every other day and she was hiding from him for her and mine safety over here.
He lived somewhere upstate north. And she came this far south some fourteen years back. Natalie and Garry had somehow managed to stay under the radar. She blamed him for not letting her finish her college. Natalie also had to leave her college because she couldn’t support her education because of me and because she was afraid that my father would attack her. She blamed me saying that she couldn’t finish it because she had to take care of me.
Yes, I called her Natalie and not mom. She gave me no reason to call her mom. She was always so distant, bitter and sarcastic with me that it was a wonder that she didn’t give me up for adoption. But then how could she? She was getting the money from the child support agency. Sometimes, I wondered if I was her biological daughter or not.
Honestly, she loved Garry more than me. Garry was a policeman who was once arrested for dealing with smugglers in narcotics. The charges were dropped after two years of rigorous imprisonment and since then he was free but he was never reinstated in his job. According to him it was my father who framed him in a fake case. Ever since Garry had taken to alcohol. There was not a day when he wasn’t drunk. I didn’t know why Natalie stuck with him when he was nothing but a burden and a sleazebag. Garry was mooching off her but she wouldn’t say anything rude to him. I also didn’t see a day when she wouldn’t say anything caustic to me.
I had so many problems but Natalie was never interested in them. For her I existed only because she saw me as a source of income.
She never once visited my school when I received medals and awards, rather she would compel me to leave studies. And the one friend that I had was chased away by her. I was all alone in the school. Intimate t*ouches scared the hell out of me. I was better off alone. The school kids called me weirdo, but that was fine.
She cooked food for herself as well as Garry and the leftovers were given to me. I mostly survived on food that was discarded in the back alley of the shady restaurants.
I used to lock myself up in my room when Natalie would go to work because I was scared of Garry. His eyes would roam around my b*ody in the sleaziest way whenever he talked to me and when Natalie wasn’t around. I would feel creepy. It was as if hundreds of spiders were crawling beneath my skin. He never physically hit me, but would often pass lewd and suggestive remarks at me when she wasn’t around. Once in a blue moon he would t*ouch me inappropriately.
When I complained about it to Natalie, she sneered at me, hit me h*ard and warned that I should stay away from him. God only knows how much I wanted to stay away from Garry. And her.
Once in his drunken stupor, he had grabbed my boobs and squeezed them so h*ard that I shrieked. That night I locked myself in my room and familiar dreams of me locked up in a basement haunted me again. In them, the little me was locked in a basement all the time. I would cry my heart out, but no one came for me. It smelled of piss and poop. I couldn’t sleep that night, waking up every now and then, sweat drenching me completely. However, I was happy that they were dreams and not the truth.
I couldn’t even complain to Natalie, afraid that she would hit me again. So many times, I contemplated going to the child support agency and complaining about it, but I was scared that they would send me to foster care. And I had to finish my high school because I had plans on leaving Natalie and Garry forever as soon as I graduated. Right now, standing in the small room of our shabby cottage, I couldn’t help thinking that Natalie chose the wrong time to leave this world. I had six months left in graduating high school and my eighteenth birthday was a month away.
I was studying in a public school that had more junkies than students. But I had won a few scholarships so that I could keep studying. The small amount that Natalie gave me went to the partial funding of my tuition fee.
I was wondering how to cover that partial amount of tuition fee rather than thinking of giving a eulogy. I glanced at Garry who was stroking his pot belly and belching and occasionally peering at me. Natalie had left me with the sleazy bastard. With her around, he never once made a move at me, but now that she was gone, the fear inside me rose like a serpent. Would he come after me?
Mentally, I listed my problems:
- I had to somehow stay in this house with Garry.
- How would I manage my tuition fee because the school principal had refused to give me more scholarships?
- Where would I get my money from?
- I had to plan my escape.
“Won’t you like to give the eulogy, sweetie?” Garry called me from the other side of the room, his eyes on my bust. I clenched my teeth as h*ard as I could at his sick endearment. I was thin but my bust and h*ips were unusually large. It was as if they would tear the fabric if I jiggled them. Slowly, I walked towards the casket where Natalie was lying.
I dug my pocket, took a small note out, removed a stray lock of my golden hair from my eye and read it. “Dear Natalie, I wish you were alive.” Because that would have solved all my problems. Despite her hitting me for every small issue, I wished she was alive for a few more months. I needed to graduate.
That’s it. The five people present for her funeral stared and stared at me if I had to say more, but I bit my bottom l*ip and walked back to where I was standing-near the food table. This was the most food I had ever seen in our house.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?