56. Poppy Wells

56

Poppy Wells

L ate at night, when ghosts haunted the halls, my hands found the back of my neck, and suddenly I could breathe again. I knew my mother was awake. I could feel her presence through the walls. It was like having a detector in my head that knew when she was near. I’d always been like that, even when I was a kid. I was always able to tell people’s moods before they even uttered a single word.

It kept me safe. It was the only way I could survive.

I locked myself away inside my head, gripping onto my skin so tightly until it turned white. It was safe inside my head. I could distance myself from the world around me. Where I wasn’t in that body. Where their touches didn’t reach my skin.

A house of secrets. A place I’d never be able to leave. Not if they had any say in it. There was nowhere I could go anyway. Nowhere would take me in. Nowhere would want me. Why would they? I was trapped in that body, that mind, that house. Reliving those days over and over and over again. Each touch, each bruise, each trickle of blood that seeped between my fingers.

My head bashed against invisible walls. Phantom hands around my neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing until my vision went black. My lungs compressed. The air thinned. Ribs cracked. One by one by one. I couldn’t see anything. Open eyes. Open mouth. I made sounds, screamed, and screamed, and screamed, but nothing came out.

The numbness settled beneath my skin.

Calmness washed over me.

My room came back into focus.

My lungs breathed.

One.

Two.

Three breaths.

There was red on my fingers.

On my neck.

Down my back.

My body was a crime scene.

I was my own murderer.

My legs carried me to the shower on autopilot. Steam covered the glass.

All the little red rivers seeped down the drain. Traveled through the pipes.

The evidence washed away. No one would ever know it was there to begin with.

I was a fraud.

Each raw patch burned under the hot spray.

I held onto the pain. Close to my chest.

Closed my eyes.

Shut off my mind.

And stood there.

The water still flowed.

My heart still beat.

My lungs still breathed.

Time carried on.

The outside world sped away.

And no matter how quickly I ran, I could never seem to catch up.

I made my way back to my room. The journey a blur.

Covered my body in clothes. Hid the atrocities, the scars.

Threw my hair back in two braids to deal with some other time.

I jumped onto my bed. Pulled out my old, comfort Marvel comic.

And let my mind escape for a while.

“You are broken in the head, Poppy Wells. You break every single person in your life until they are reduced to ashes. You don’t deserve that boy of yours. I don’t know how you ever thought you did.”

You break them.

You break them.

I break them.

As the hours passed, the voices never quietened.

They rung throughout the house like a cruel, little lullaby.

Even as I closed my eyes,

the screams were never as loud as the ones inside my head.

Why was I not enough for you, mom?

My cheeks dampened. Eyes stung and itched and burned and I just wanted to bury my head so deep inside the ground I’d never be able to hear another thought again.

Why

was

I

not

enough?

I never asked to be her daughter.

I never asked to be here.

So maybe…it would all be better if I just stopped trying to fit into a world that was so adamant at keeping me out.

“ Poppy !” She screamed, over and over again until it was all that I could hear. “Poppy, help me, please!”

I should go and help her— no.

I was not the parent here.

I was a kid , just not hers.

Everything went silent.

The voices, the screams… stopped .

Even the ghosts didn’t dare breathe .

“Mom?” I said, glancing over towards the door as if I could magically see through it. “Mom, are you okay?”

Say no.

Say that we were broken and that this wasn’t something inside my head.

Nothing.

I flexed and scrunched my fingers repeatedly, trying to distract them from clawing at the one place they were itching to erode away.

Me.

Before I could stop myself, I stood up and walked towards my door. A sense of dread pooled in my stomach, but I pushed the feeling away before I became nauseous with worry. My fingertips grazed the lock on the door handle, and as soon as the little click echoed around my room, my mom burst into my room holding a knife.

I was going to die, I thought as she brought the blade up against my neck, the cool metal digging into my skin in a frantic pattern.

“Mom,” I choked out, “w-what are y-you doing?”

“It was never supposed to be this way,” she spat viciously. “It wasn’t supposed to be him. It should’ve been you. Why wasn’t it YOU ?”

A coppery tang arose in my throat mixed with the bitter taste of bile as her fist connected with my cheek. I fell from her grip, crumbling like a pile of broken bones to the floor. My head crashed against the floorboards with a thud .

Her fingers wove through my hair, gripping it by the first as she hauled me to my feet only to fling me back across the room. Every muscle in my body roared as it collided with the cold wall before falling limp like a rag doll.

“M-mom…” I gasped, heaving. Wetness coated the back of my neck, trickling down fresh open wounds.

“You never should have been born ,” she roared, gripping onto the knife like it was sacred as she kicked me in the stomach. “I never wanted a flaming baby. Never wanted this flaming life.”

I barreled over onto my side, tucking my knees to my chest as I took every single hit. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just shut up and took it.

Just like a good girl.

“Fight back ,” she snarled, gripping the back of my neck as she hauled me to my feet only to throw me back down again. “ Fight back you useless child.”

My entire body shook with the weight of her anger. She had cornered me, blocking every chance of an escape I had.

This was the day I died. This was it.

Her foot collided with my barred arms instead of my stomach that time, but the sheer force of it sent me flying into the corner of my closet. I hit my face on the wood before collapsing back onto the floor in a heap, bloodied face pressed up against the cold, wooden floorboards.

Through swollen eyes, I could just make out my room. And the blood. The blood that was everywhere . My blood. I was bleeding. I was going to die.

“Mom…M-mom, just…” I flinched violently. “P-please…”

Another kick to the stomach.

My head rolled backwards.

I had no energy left to hold it up.

Eyes fluttered closed.

The weight crushing me.

This was it. This was it. It was all over.

“Mom, please…” I croaked out, scrambling to get out of her tight hold as a stream of red trickled down my eyes and dripped into the cracks in the floorboards below. I barely managed to push myself onto my knees, my legs violently wobbling. My malnourished body was giving up. It was finally failing.

“It should’ve been you ,” she gritted out, pure malice shining in those lifeless eyes I didn’t even recognize anymore. “All these years…It should’ve been you. He was so pure, so innocent…he was nothing like the monster you are. It should’ve been you.”

She gripped the back of my hair, dragging me up from the ground to hold me in place as she hit me over and over and over again. I coughed up the blood caught in my throat, feeling it drip down my lips and onto my clothes. I clawed at her, kicking and screaming my throat raw until I felt my body slowly give up on me, little by little. My movements became sluggish like every muscle inside me had already accepted defeat. I desperately tried to gasp air into my lungs, to try and fill them up enough to fight for even one second more.

Just keep fighting.

Just keep fighting.

Just keep fighting .

I repeated the words over and over again like a mantra every time she hit me with the force of years of pent up anger. She spat at my feet before her elbow jutted into my ribs so hard I saw stars. I lost all focus as I barreled over, spouting and coughing up dark crimson blood all over the floor.

I was dying.

My eyes rolled back into my head, each hit coming like a tsunami wave.

Where are you, Jasper? I thought, wasting whatever was left of my energy on him …I really need you right now.

My heart was thundering in my chest in a desperate attempt to get the rest of my blood around my body, but the more I coughed up, combined with the streams dripping from the multitude of open scars and wounds that decorated my skin, the more it started to slow. I tried to picture Jasper’s face. His touch. The scent of him…anything that I could hold onto.

I didn’t want to be alone.

You’re never truly alone, Wellsy , Jasper’s voice rang in my ears, instantly sending a wave of calmness through me.

“Please don’t leave me all alone,” I whispered back.

Just close your eyes, Poppy. It’ll all be over soon.

I wasn’t feeling any of her hits or kicks anymore. I wasn’t feeling anything at all. Nothing except the warmth of his voice. The softness that cradled me as my eyes fell closed.

The victorious gleam in her bloodshot eyes was the last thing I saw before my entire world went black; a sense of peace washed over my body, as if death was cradling me, welcoming me home.

You won, mom.

I’m sorry.