It was a bright day, but the bitterness inside the house fumed the air with anger and hopelessness. The television was on, and yet the malevolence made everything silent and crude. I couldn’t wait until I was able to go outside; to get off all the hostility that was leeched to my skin. To be honest, it gave me an itch.

"Why did you have to ruin everything!" Mother’s words were slurred together and smoke kept coming out of her mutilated mouth. Her lips were a sickly lavender—an obtrude purple even. I felt goose bumps shriveling up my upper arms, and I tried hard to not make a single move.

I didn’t dare look into her eyes when she said that. I knew what would’ve happened if I did. "Mom, where were you today? Go get some rest, you look tired."

"Damn it! Don’t tell me what to ing do, you worthless piece of ." She incoherently insulted me in a jumble of words, but after years of listening to her go on and off, I knew her range of vocabulary. The smell of alcohol drilled out of every time she spoke and it made me dizzy. I figured that smelling all those drugs were bound to give myself cancer. The need to get out of here was stronger than ever.

It was ridiculous to let my disgust for the incompetent woman to get the best over me when I mumbled, "Stupid drunk." Of course with all that crap going on in mother’s life, she couldn’t have heard what I said. Even if I yelled at her, she wouldn’t have heard. For a second, I had forgotten that the slob in front of me was my mom. I immediately wished I hadn’t remembered.

The hangover drunk boozed her way toward me with her unstable legs, reaching my shoulder where I winced at the heavy touch. Her dirty hand stained me. I didn’t flinch though, but instead glanced at the wall clock. She drew her head near mine and whispered to my ear, "I wish you were never born."

A dark chuckle exhaled out of her intoxicating mouth and I felt my breakfast begging to purge out of me. The sight of her was too repulsive; making my body shiver with discontent. How did we come to this? She made this piercing sound between an animal and a human and it made me question her morals. "Because of you! You were the reason why he left us! It’s all your ing fault and here you are doing nothing!" Her blood shot eyes were wild, threatening me, and I knew that if I didn’t leave, it’d be the end.

I slapped her hand away from me in dread, and moved a few feet back. Today was different. The way her raw eyes stared at me made me scared, for her and for me. My mother’s skin was no longer that fair pale tone that used to glow especially when the light would hit her at the right direction. It was now tattered, an almost vomiting green. Her hair tangled to no ends, along with her clothes ripped and wrinkled. The woman looked like a mess, an unnatural, almost demonic beast that sprung tears to my eyes each time. I missed the mom that’d stop at no ends to make things right, that’d take a stand and act like a true parent. She used to be someone I wouldn’t hesitate to trust. Where was she now?

I realized father left; we were both heart-broken. But I never allowed his emptied departure to take me down. It took me more than half a year to recover, even now does the scar in my heart still open, yet I looked past it. Why was she still holding back? It’s bad to put salt on an old wound, but it’s worse to put salt on a fresh wound.

The instinct to bury her safely in my arms, to tell her that everything was going to turn out fine tempted me, but I knew better. She dug herself too far down the well, and now water was pouring down to drown her.

My feet kept backing further; my eyes were overcoming with sadness and regret that seared my vision.

I could never erase that last expression she gave me. The demeanor of hard insanity, rage, sickness, and especially how it was all tied together with pure hatred. It was all toward me.

A profound tension filled the atmosphere and I turned the other way. The desire to get out of here was by then driving me to a frenzy and I quickly went to the front door. I wiggled the key into the slit in impatience and widened my eyes when I felt heavy footsteps coming toward me.

"Oh no you don’t!" Mother yelled. Her face was of a monster.

I caught her snatching a broken glass of beer on the floor and whimpered. Hot tears were burning my cheeks and I choked them down. My hands were shaking profoundly and I jammed the damn keys and turned the doorknob for my life, cursed under my tongue, and slammed the door shut.

"." I scowled and noticed that there was now a large graze on my upper left arm caught from running against the now bloody door.

"Don’t even think about coming back!"

As I sprinted away, that was the last sentence I got from my mother before wandering off to a midst of nowhere.