I am sixteen.Sixteen do you hear me? And already I know more of suffering than some men do in sixty years.
I live at 17 Rue des Lias, in a house that ought to have collapsed long ago under the weight of its silence, its shouting, its unspoken things. That it still stands is a kind of mockery. The walls should have screamed by now.
I tell myself, every day, like a condemned woman tracing the edge of her own sentence: "Hold on. Just hold on. At eighteen, you can leave. Just two more years. Two."
But time doesn't pass normally in this house. No. It drips, like water from a cracked ceiling.
mocking you with how slowly it falls.
And tonight of course it begins. The ritual.
A plate shatters downstairs. Like the starting gun of hell..
I go down. I always go down. What else is there to do?
There she is my mother holding her cheek like she's trying to press the swelling back into her skull. Her eyes are empty, blank, dead. And there he is my father wobbling in front of the television, muttering curses not even the devil could translate. He's lost in his drink again, like he always
Every scene plays out like theatre we're all forced to attend. Same actors. Same lines. Different night.
My father was supposed to be something. A footballer talented beyond belief, they said. He could've had a future. But no, his parents wasn't a career. Said he should get a real job. those wise, cold bastards said no. Said football
So he did. He got a job. A tie. An office.
And then one day he got the call: his younger brother had been signed as a professional archer.
That was it. That was the moment.
He like a suit coming apart at the seams. And all that was left of the man was a shell filled with cheap liquor and old sports commentary.
Now he sits in the same armchair every day, yelling at a television that doesn't even care he's watching. Selling off his memories one by one just to afford more to drink My mother - if she ever had a dream, she buried it. She married him and that was the end of her story. She gave birth to me and never let me forget what a catastrophe that was.
I've heard her say it. Whisper it. Spit it like venom. "I wish I never had her. She ruined everything."
Do you know what it does to a child to hear that? And worse to believe it?
But I never cried. Oh no not for that. What's the point in crying when no one listens? So I stopped hoping. I stopped asking. And I started counting.
My mother if she ever had a dream, she buried it. She married him and that was the end of her story. She gave birth to me and never let me forget what a catastrophe that was. I've heard her say it. Whisper it. Spit it like venom. "I wish I never had her. She ruined everything."
Do know what it does to a child to hear that? And worse to believe it?
But I never cried. Oh no not for that. What's the point in crying when no one listens?
So I stopped hoping. I stopped asking. And I started counting.
Two more years. Two more years and I walk out of this place and never look back. That is - if I that long.
This house doesn't bleed, it devours. And I am slowly, silently, being digested.