Unlocking the grubby door to what I am forced to call “home,” I walk in, yet again, to the smell of burnt food. Pots and pans lay unwashed on the counter that hasn’t been cleaned off in... who knows how long. The trash reeks with what I can only assume is the remnants of the fried chicken I was forced to buy; paper plates appear to have been tossed towards the trashcan in attempt of making it, but missed and never placed into it.
Hearing the sound of the washing machine actually working is a miracle to me, seeing as it never seems to run quite right: always getting clogged or water pipes just don’t operate as they should. Dirty clothes are strewn left and right, over the backs of the rundown kitchen chairs to the sofa, where it’s so torn up you can see the stuffing, with nowhere to sit but on top of the clothes.
I notice empty beer bottles and cans strewn across the coffee table and I realize that dad is home for the first time in a week or so. This can only mean I will hear fighting until one of my parents decide to leave me alone with the other, in which the outcome isn’t always positive.
Dreading for my mom to come out from wherever she is burrowing, I quickly scamper up the creaky, wooden stairs. Locking myself in my room, I smile, satisfied, to myself. I try to keep this one room where I can escape to when I know there is no escape. Decked out in blue themed walls, I look around at the simple things I’ve accommodated over the years: a wooden dresser with a bedside table that are almost the same style, a wooden bed with a polka-dotted bedspread on it, and a small desk in which my deepest secrets hide. In one of the banged-up drawers, I keep a journal covert with some school works. When I write in this journal, all of my thoughts simply flow out of my pen and onto the paper.
I grab my journal and quickly hear steps coming up the creaky stairs, slowly as if to surprise me. Knowing it could only be my mom, I shove my journal back into it’s place and slam the drawer shut before I even had the chance to open my evasion from life, all while preparing for the worst.
BANG! BANG! BANG! “Open up the door!” yells the woman I call a mother from the other side of my dingy, white door.
I do as she asks even though I know that I will come face to face with Medusa herself. Blonde hair up in a perfect bun to disguise the hollowness under her eyes that show the depression she’s been going through since it happened. Pencil skirt and button up shirt with heels and a blazer to match, she continues on like a zombie, just going through the motions of everyday life. Acting like the mom you always wanted around my few friends and then becoming my worst nightmare once at home.
“It’s all your fault!” she slurs. It is only then I realize that dad isn’t home. She drank all of those beers. “It’s all your fault he is dead! Why would you do something like that? How could you ever do that to him, your own flesh and blood?!”
Fueled by blind rage, I fight right back, seeing as I take this without comment everyday.
“You seriously think that I wanted that to happen?! You really believe that I murdered my own brother?! You really think that?” I scream right back at her. “Just because we were siblings that fought like every other pair of siblings?! This is outrageous! We did everything together, me and him, and I trusted him more than I could ever trust you in my entire life! After everything we went through together, you seriously think that I killed him? Who do you think I am? What do you think I am? A monster? Because I think you’re just looking in a mirror.”
I did it. I finally lost my level-head after six months of suffering through the monstrosity that is my mother blaming me for my twin brother’s death. I didn’t want anything bad to happen that night... I just wanted to escape the fights my parents used to have nightly... just to talk it over with my brother...