Chapter 1: The Vulture Flies Home
Music is resonating through the suffocating air around me as I sit at my computer desk. I’m waiting for the moment they would walk through the front door, announcing their arrival and bringing forth a nightmare I believed would never come back while I lived under this roof. My mouth is dry like sandpaper and my palms are sweaty, clammy, and constantly shaking while my heart pulses like a bird’s wing in flight.
Closing my eyes I take a shaky breath and lean forward in my chair. Opening my eyes to stare at the midnight blue walls of my sanctuary which are pretty much bare save for a full-length mirror hanging by the closet and bedroom door. By my closet on the right wall from the doorway sits my dresser and a book shelf. The left wall from the doorway beside me houses my bed while the back wall by the window is my bedside table and my desk.
Everything’s basic right down to the black sheets and the black comforter that sits on my bed and the gray carpet that rests between the floor boards and the furniture. The only extras I have is a laptop and a television resting on top of a small stand. It’s addition to my room happening after mom’s arrest when I wanted to be alone and heal from the trauma she inflicted on me. I don’t think I watched it then either.
My heart wants to leap out of my chest thinking about her coming through the front door. She wasn't supposed to come back. There were still two years left on her sentence when I finally left Karrington Heights to start my life in another place. But no, my mother--the Vulture--was released early on good behavior despite being charged with child abuse, endangering a minor, and assault. In my opinion, she manipulated the system and the people around her to believe she's changed. I know her too well. She hasn't changed, and whatever she promised the judge will never stick. Won't be the first time.
Sighing, I grabbed my iPod and stopped the music. Music isn't helping me calm down. Reading hasn't helped either. A walk might work, but dad said I should be here when he brings home the vulture. So I'm stuck. Tears fight to the surface and I blink to keep them back. I haven't cried in three years so why should I cry now? All my tears dried up when she tried to kill me.
The silence is broken as two car doors close half a minute before the front door opens and closes with a bang that makes my heart stop. The tears force themselves past the dam I made and stream down my face before I hear my name called. My heart skips a beat... two beats... three beats before it pounds, once again, like bird's wings fluttering in flight.
"Koda! We're home and your mother wants to go out for dinner." My father's voice sounds into my ears like nails and my heart falters for a moment. A cold sweat breaks out on my forehead and the back of my neck as my eyes dart to my window. The only escape route I have when she’s in the house.
I clench my teeth together. I don't want to go out there knowing she'll stare at me with those emerald eyes full of fury and vengeance. I don't want to be in the same room with her as she thinks up new ways to torture me. I don't to go anywhere with her. The vulture can starve for all I care. I wish my father could understand and realize that i want to be as far away from her as I can.
“Come on. Let’s go.” Dad said as my bedroom door swings open. I don’t turn to face him when my head shakes a “no” automatically.
“No isn’t an option. Get your shoes on and meet us outside.” He turned and walked away, leaving the door open to let the arctic air in the living room seep into the warm air inside my room—or is it me that thinks my room doubles as a sauna?—and leaving me with no choice. I gulp air as I shakily get up out of my computer chair and slide my feet into a pair of Walmart brand shoes. I grab my iPod, flip phone, ear buds, and wallet before leaving my room into the frigid air of the living room where the vulture waits for me.
~*~*~*~
The vulture has ignored my existence as far as I can tell save for her daggers boring into me once in a while when I take a bite of food. They’re deep in conversation and every move I make brings her gaze towards me like it acknowledges that I’m alive and in her presence. It feels like she’s keeping an eye on me to see when I’m rotten enough to devour; just like a vulture. Dad hasn’t looked at me once since we got here, his undivided attention on mom. Striking up a conversation the second we hopped into the car and got to this local diner for dinner. This is the longest he’s talked in three years with anybody. I don’t count. I haven’t spoken in three years.
“And Leiah, Koda here is in the top five percent of his class!” He chirps, the only time I pull in what he’s saying because he speaks of me in his conversation with mom. “Can you believe that! I was shocked when I got this news, but I shouldn’t be; he’s been studying his ass off every day for the last three years. To the point he sleeps at his desk almost every night.”
My heart skips another beat and I force myself not to flinch at the pain that resonates through my whole body from that skip. Shut up! Stop talking about me. She doesn’t want to hear about me!
“That’s wonderful to hear Ayden!” Mom said, her voice slick like honey and makes my hands tremble and turn cold.
I no longer have an appetite. Not like I had one anyway, so I push my still full plate away from me and silently excuse myself from the table to hide in the bathroom where I can center myself again so I can survive the ride home.
Once I’ve locked myself in a handicap stall I collapse onto the toilet seat, knees weak and shaking. I feel like I’ve ran a marathon without stopping and my pounding heart provides support for that hypothesis. With enough effort, I try to regulate my breathing by inhaling through my nose and out my mouth in slow, controlled breaths until it’s somewhat normal. I didn’t bring my valium with me tonight. And with the stress I was in I completely forgot to grab my medicine I’m supposed to take with dinner. Now I have to find a way to take it without the vulture finding out about them.
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my iPod and ear buds. Until I’m home I plan on listening to music so I can ignore their conversation. I don’t want to know how else he “praises me” to a woman who doesn’t want to hear any sort of conversation that isn’t about her and her alone. With all the years dad’s been married to her, I wonder why he hadn’t picked up on that. I guess he hasn’t paid much attention to her like I have.
Taking a deep breath, my music playing into my left ear, I exit the stall and wash my hands. The raw skin on the backs of my hands, my knuckles, and wrists burning from the constant washing but I’m able to ignore the pain by the time they’re dry and I’m leaving the bathroom. When I have a view of the table, I can see mom and her sandy blonde, mid back length hair reaching over one of her shoulders. A hand combing through the thick, wavy tresses with nails painted blood red. Her lips painted the same color and in a wide smile, the color contrasting with her slightly pale skin. And the way her slightly square shoulders are slouching as those blood red lips move with each word she squawks makes my skin crawl. And the way dad is leaning onto his elbows, broad shoulders hunched up and head low to get near her level because he’s six foot two and mom’s five foot six. His gray eyes shining in a way I haven’t seen before and I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable.
My vanished presence isn’t ignored for long, and I’m noticed a few moments later when mom’s eyes dart towards my direction and fall on me. Daggers leaving that gaze and embedding themselves in my heart when it skips another beat and I rush to my seat. The table in front of me no longer home to a plate of unfinished cheese burger and fries but a set of boxes already bagged and ready to go home. I must have spent too much time in the bathroom and she’s mad because I’m keeping them here longer than she wants to be.
“Koda, you were in there so long I thought you drowned.” Dad said and I scoff at him silently. “I was about to go looking for you but it looks like we can go home now.”
Don’t lie to yourself; you weren’t getting up any time soon from what I saw.
“It was a long drive to finally make it home and I’m tired. Could you carry our food out to the car Koda?” Mom asked with a small yawn as the two of them stood.
I nodded once as I stood with them, grabbing said bag and made it out the door before they even left the table. The only thing running through my mind was 'the faster I get home the faster I can lock myself in my room, then maybe see if I can talk dad into getting me a pack of cigarettes on the way home' because sometimes I need a little more than valium to calm myself down. Found this out when I learned the vulture was coming home earlier this week on Monday during one of my weekly appointments with my psychiatrist, Dr. Amayo. She wanted to break the news to me instead of dad, fearing that my reaction would cause a relapse and do something stupid if I were home.
Dr. Amayo was right, though, and I did something stupid. I ended up having a slight mental break down. Almost breaking one of her picture frames so I could have something to cut myself with and die. In the frazzled state my mind was in, I couldn’t miss the way she said those words to me. Said beforehand that she tried to get my mom court ordered to several miles away from me, but the judge letting mom leave prison on parole wanted to hear nothing from her. There was no time to find another judge to be sympathetic with us. Mom made it home today, a Friday evening, leaving me to deal with her and her hatred towards my existence while she lived just down the street from us.
In the car ride home, I had both ear buds in and Bullet For My Valentine blasting into my ears to drown out their conversation if they had one going. Listening to my mother’s voice, the way it drips in honey during conversations about me and melodic when dad’s talking about something else—especially about how much he missed her—made me sick to my stomach. It was almost like hearing a parent-teacher conference; my dad the teacher and my mother the ungrateful parent. The ride doesn’t last long and when the car’s parked in the garage next to mom’s red, two-door Pontiac. I climb out of the black Kia and head inside before the engine’s off. I put the food away, checking to see if mine was brought home, and leave it out. When the door to the garage opens again, I’m closing the fridge and grabbing my left overs. I’m in my room before the door closes and dad can say good night. I leave those two to have time to themselves, just like mom wants, before either dad carts her off to the condo down the street or mom takes hers that's sat in the garage for three years with routine check ups to make sure it works properly by the time she got released.
I go into routine from here. The door clicking closed and the lock sounding into place, I put my food on the right corner of my desk and plant myself in my chair, pulling out my homework I neglected due to the shock of what today was. The reminder thrown in my face when I came home from school resonating deep in my soul when dad drops me off just to make the two hour trek to pick her up and the two hour ride back was enough of a shock to make me sit in my chair for just about four hours staring at my walls and ceiling. Only getting up once to take down every piece of art I taped up, picking up every one of my art supplies strewn across my room, and hide it all in the top of my closet. One of mom’s rules is I’m not supposed to have anything on my walls. That rule made absolute when she tore down all my artwork I did in middle school and forced me to watch her burn it all in the back yard in silence when I defied her. She’d have a cow if she saw all the money spent on a shit-ton of art supplies for me.
Pre-Calculus homework comes first only because I couldn’t finish the last problem before school let out. It doesn’t take me long to finish the problem when there’s a knock on my door loud enough to sound above my music that seems to have turned down while sitting in my pocket.
Dad must want something from me before he goes to bed. He’d be the only one willing to talk to me so I take my ear buds out and go see what he wants. But when I open my door, the vulture is standing there with her arms crossed, a hard look in her eyes making them shine bright with disdain until she steps into my room, making me take rushed steps backwards until I bump into my bed side table. My heart beating so fast I don’t know if it’s beating at all.
“That was a stupid stunt you pulled tonight at dinner. We could have been home half an hour earlier if you hadn’t spent forty minutes in the bathroom.” She said, her words sliding off her tongue viciously with each step she took to get closer. “After all the years I spent drilling respect into that thick, Neanderthal skull of yours, you still throw it out the window and try your best to ruin everything. Don’t you?”
I shook my head no but she grabbed me by the hair and pulled me forward then yanked pulling my head back with enough force that the vertebrae in my neck cracked so loud I heard it in my ears. Her eyes wild and making my skin crawl. I wish I could look away but I drown in those eyes of hers and I stop fighting her. It’s like her touch, and her eyes, is draining my energy away like a sponge.
“Your father wouldn’t stop talking about you and it made me want to puke. Tomorrow, you will come up with some excuse so my husband and I can spend time with each other. Alone. Do I make myself clear?”
With a swift nod, she lets me go with a jerk and leaves my room with the last of my strength and I fall to my knees. The door wide open and with a soft thud, the front door closes. Signaling that they’re leaving, mom playing follow the leader in her car, so dad can show her the way to her condo. I take in air, not realizing I had been holding my breath throughout the entire altercation. Tears are falling from my eyes and, with a shaky breath, I crawl to my bedroom door and shut it as quietly as I can and lock it once more. I have no strength left to get up off the floor and finish my homework so I crawl to bed once the lights are out. Taking my medicine dry because my water bottle is on the desk, and I somehow make it up onto my mattress underneath the covers. I don’t change into night clothes. I clutch some of the blanket I’m using in fists, burying my face into the black fabric as quiet sobs wrack through me until I can’t cry anymore.
I get no sleep, no matter how tired I seemed when I went to bed. Even the promise that mom can’t live under the same roof as me can’t remove that fear embedded inside my soul that she could come at any moment.
Music is resonating through the suffocating air around me as I sit at my computer desk. I’m waiting for the moment they would walk through the front door, announcing their arrival and bringing forth a nightmare I believed would never come back while I lived under this roof. My mouth is dry like sandpaper and my palms are sweaty, clammy, and constantly shaking while my heart pulses like a bird’s wing in flight.
Closing my eyes I take a shaky breath and lean forward in my chair. Opening my eyes to stare at the midnight blue walls of my sanctuary which are pretty much bare save for a full-length mirror hanging by the closet and bedroom door. By my closet on the right wall from the doorway sits my dresser and a book shelf. The left wall from the doorway beside me houses my bed while the back wall by the window is my bedside table and my desk.
Everything’s basic right down to the black sheets and the black comforter that sits on my bed and the gray carpet that rests between the floor boards and the furniture. The only extras I have is a laptop and a television resting on top of a small stand. It’s addition to my room happening after mom’s arrest when I wanted to be alone and heal from the trauma she inflicted on me. I don’t think I watched it then either.
My heart wants to leap out of my chest thinking about her coming through the front door. She wasn't supposed to come back. There were still two years left on her sentence when I finally left Karrington Heights to start my life in another place. But no, my mother--the Vulture--was released early on good behavior despite being charged with child abuse, endangering a minor, and assault. In my opinion, she manipulated the system and the people around her to believe she's changed. I know her too well. She hasn't changed, and whatever she promised the judge will never stick. Won't be the first time.
Sighing, I grabbed my iPod and stopped the music. Music isn't helping me calm down. Reading hasn't helped either. A walk might work, but dad said I should be here when he brings home the vulture. So I'm stuck. Tears fight to the surface and I blink to keep them back. I haven't cried in three years so why should I cry now? All my tears dried up when she tried to kill me.
The silence is broken as two car doors close half a minute before the front door opens and closes with a bang that makes my heart stop. The tears force themselves past the dam I made and stream down my face before I hear my name called. My heart skips a beat... two beats... three beats before it pounds, once again, like bird's wings fluttering in flight.
"Koda! We're home and your mother wants to go out for dinner." My father's voice sounds into my ears like nails and my heart falters for a moment. A cold sweat breaks out on my forehead and the back of my neck as my eyes dart to my window. The only escape route I have when she’s in the house.
I clench my teeth together. I don't want to go out there knowing she'll stare at me with those emerald eyes full of fury and vengeance. I don't want to be in the same room with her as she thinks up new ways to torture me. I don't to go anywhere with her. The vulture can starve for all I care. I wish my father could understand and realize that i want to be as far away from her as I can.
“Come on. Let’s go.” Dad said as my bedroom door swings open. I don’t turn to face him when my head shakes a “no” automatically.
“No isn’t an option. Get your shoes on and meet us outside.” He turned and walked away, leaving the door open to let the arctic air in the living room seep into the warm air inside my room—or is it me that thinks my room doubles as a sauna?—and leaving me with no choice. I gulp air as I shakily get up out of my computer chair and slide my feet into a pair of Walmart brand shoes. I grab my iPod, flip phone, ear buds, and wallet before leaving my room into the frigid air of the living room where the vulture waits for me.
~*~*~*~
The vulture has ignored my existence as far as I can tell save for her daggers boring into me once in a while when I take a bite of food. They’re deep in conversation and every move I make brings her gaze towards me like it acknowledges that I’m alive and in her presence. It feels like she’s keeping an eye on me to see when I’m rotten enough to devour; just like a vulture. Dad hasn’t looked at me once since we got here, his undivided attention on mom. Striking up a conversation the second we hopped into the car and got to this local diner for dinner. This is the longest he’s talked in three years with anybody. I don’t count. I haven’t spoken in three years.
“And Leiah, Koda here is in the top five percent of his class!” He chirps, the only time I pull in what he’s saying because he speaks of me in his conversation with mom. “Can you believe that! I was shocked when I got this news, but I shouldn’t be; he’s been studying his ass off every day for the last three years. To the point he sleeps at his desk almost every night.”
My heart skips another beat and I force myself not to flinch at the pain that resonates through my whole body from that skip. Shut up! Stop talking about me. She doesn’t want to hear about me!
“That’s wonderful to hear Ayden!” Mom said, her voice slick like honey and makes my hands tremble and turn cold.
I no longer have an appetite. Not like I had one anyway, so I push my still full plate away from me and silently excuse myself from the table to hide in the bathroom where I can center myself again so I can survive the ride home.
Once I’ve locked myself in a handicap stall I collapse onto the toilet seat, knees weak and shaking. I feel like I’ve ran a marathon without stopping and my pounding heart provides support for that hypothesis. With enough effort, I try to regulate my breathing by inhaling through my nose and out my mouth in slow, controlled breaths until it’s somewhat normal. I didn’t bring my valium with me tonight. And with the stress I was in I completely forgot to grab my medicine I’m supposed to take with dinner. Now I have to find a way to take it without the vulture finding out about them.
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my iPod and ear buds. Until I’m home I plan on listening to music so I can ignore their conversation. I don’t want to know how else he “praises me” to a woman who doesn’t want to hear any sort of conversation that isn’t about her and her alone. With all the years dad’s been married to her, I wonder why he hadn’t picked up on that. I guess he hasn’t paid much attention to her like I have.
Taking a deep breath, my music playing into my left ear, I exit the stall and wash my hands. The raw skin on the backs of my hands, my knuckles, and wrists burning from the constant washing but I’m able to ignore the pain by the time they’re dry and I’m leaving the bathroom. When I have a view of the table, I can see mom and her sandy blonde, mid back length hair reaching over one of her shoulders. A hand combing through the thick, wavy tresses with nails painted blood red. Her lips painted the same color and in a wide smile, the color contrasting with her slightly pale skin. And the way her slightly square shoulders are slouching as those blood red lips move with each word she squawks makes my skin crawl. And the way dad is leaning onto his elbows, broad shoulders hunched up and head low to get near her level because he’s six foot two and mom’s five foot six. His gray eyes shining in a way I haven’t seen before and I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable.
My vanished presence isn’t ignored for long, and I’m noticed a few moments later when mom’s eyes dart towards my direction and fall on me. Daggers leaving that gaze and embedding themselves in my heart when it skips another beat and I rush to my seat. The table in front of me no longer home to a plate of unfinished cheese burger and fries but a set of boxes already bagged and ready to go home. I must have spent too much time in the bathroom and she’s mad because I’m keeping them here longer than she wants to be.
“Koda, you were in there so long I thought you drowned.” Dad said and I scoff at him silently. “I was about to go looking for you but it looks like we can go home now.”
Don’t lie to yourself; you weren’t getting up any time soon from what I saw.
“It was a long drive to finally make it home and I’m tired. Could you carry our food out to the car Koda?” Mom asked with a small yawn as the two of them stood.
I nodded once as I stood with them, grabbing said bag and made it out the door before they even left the table. The only thing running through my mind was 'the faster I get home the faster I can lock myself in my room, then maybe see if I can talk dad into getting me a pack of cigarettes on the way home' because sometimes I need a little more than valium to calm myself down. Found this out when I learned the vulture was coming home earlier this week on Monday during one of my weekly appointments with my psychiatrist, Dr. Amayo. She wanted to break the news to me instead of dad, fearing that my reaction would cause a relapse and do something stupid if I were home.
Dr. Amayo was right, though, and I did something stupid. I ended up having a slight mental break down. Almost breaking one of her picture frames so I could have something to cut myself with and die. In the frazzled state my mind was in, I couldn’t miss the way she said those words to me. Said beforehand that she tried to get my mom court ordered to several miles away from me, but the judge letting mom leave prison on parole wanted to hear nothing from her. There was no time to find another judge to be sympathetic with us. Mom made it home today, a Friday evening, leaving me to deal with her and her hatred towards my existence while she lived just down the street from us.
In the car ride home, I had both ear buds in and Bullet For My Valentine blasting into my ears to drown out their conversation if they had one going. Listening to my mother’s voice, the way it drips in honey during conversations about me and melodic when dad’s talking about something else—especially about how much he missed her—made me sick to my stomach. It was almost like hearing a parent-teacher conference; my dad the teacher and my mother the ungrateful parent. The ride doesn’t last long and when the car’s parked in the garage next to mom’s red, two-door Pontiac. I climb out of the black Kia and head inside before the engine’s off. I put the food away, checking to see if mine was brought home, and leave it out. When the door to the garage opens again, I’m closing the fridge and grabbing my left overs. I’m in my room before the door closes and dad can say good night. I leave those two to have time to themselves, just like mom wants, before either dad carts her off to the condo down the street or mom takes hers that's sat in the garage for three years with routine check ups to make sure it works properly by the time she got released.
I go into routine from here. The door clicking closed and the lock sounding into place, I put my food on the right corner of my desk and plant myself in my chair, pulling out my homework I neglected due to the shock of what today was. The reminder thrown in my face when I came home from school resonating deep in my soul when dad drops me off just to make the two hour trek to pick her up and the two hour ride back was enough of a shock to make me sit in my chair for just about four hours staring at my walls and ceiling. Only getting up once to take down every piece of art I taped up, picking up every one of my art supplies strewn across my room, and hide it all in the top of my closet. One of mom’s rules is I’m not supposed to have anything on my walls. That rule made absolute when she tore down all my artwork I did in middle school and forced me to watch her burn it all in the back yard in silence when I defied her. She’d have a cow if she saw all the money spent on a shit-ton of art supplies for me.
Pre-Calculus homework comes first only because I couldn’t finish the last problem before school let out. It doesn’t take me long to finish the problem when there’s a knock on my door loud enough to sound above my music that seems to have turned down while sitting in my pocket.
Dad must want something from me before he goes to bed. He’d be the only one willing to talk to me so I take my ear buds out and go see what he wants. But when I open my door, the vulture is standing there with her arms crossed, a hard look in her eyes making them shine bright with disdain until she steps into my room, making me take rushed steps backwards until I bump into my bed side table. My heart beating so fast I don’t know if it’s beating at all.
“That was a stupid stunt you pulled tonight at dinner. We could have been home half an hour earlier if you hadn’t spent forty minutes in the bathroom.” She said, her words sliding off her tongue viciously with each step she took to get closer. “After all the years I spent drilling respect into that thick, Neanderthal skull of yours, you still throw it out the window and try your best to ruin everything. Don’t you?”
I shook my head no but she grabbed me by the hair and pulled me forward then yanked pulling my head back with enough force that the vertebrae in my neck cracked so loud I heard it in my ears. Her eyes wild and making my skin crawl. I wish I could look away but I drown in those eyes of hers and I stop fighting her. It’s like her touch, and her eyes, is draining my energy away like a sponge.
“Your father wouldn’t stop talking about you and it made me want to puke. Tomorrow, you will come up with some excuse so my husband and I can spend time with each other. Alone. Do I make myself clear?”
With a swift nod, she lets me go with a jerk and leaves my room with the last of my strength and I fall to my knees. The door wide open and with a soft thud, the front door closes. Signaling that they’re leaving, mom playing follow the leader in her car, so dad can show her the way to her condo. I take in air, not realizing I had been holding my breath throughout the entire altercation. Tears are falling from my eyes and, with a shaky breath, I crawl to my bedroom door and shut it as quietly as I can and lock it once more. I have no strength left to get up off the floor and finish my homework so I crawl to bed once the lights are out. Taking my medicine dry because my water bottle is on the desk, and I somehow make it up onto my mattress underneath the covers. I don’t change into night clothes. I clutch some of the blanket I’m using in fists, burying my face into the black fabric as quiet sobs wrack through me until I can’t cry anymore.
I get no sleep, no matter how tired I seemed when I went to bed. Even the promise that mom can’t live under the same roof as me can’t remove that fear embedded inside my soul that she could come at any moment.