Dark Light (Part 1)

It was 04:47am, the wall clock just confirmed that her wrist watch was correct. She had had a jolt off the bed because she detested stay-overs, she hated the drama of sneaking out. Grudgingly, she lifted his hairy arm off her chest, slowly shoved his huge body aside and crawled her way out of the blanket. She picked up her sleeveless top from the table, her miniskirt from the top of the lamp stand, her heels which lay squalidly on the floor. She dressed up almost like she was in a timed contest, her heels in her hand, she tiptoed towards the front door of the one room apartment. The room was so small that I would think the huge hairy Bigfoot of a man wouldn’t fit at all. His small wooden table was littered with books which looked like they had barely been touched except when being thrown around. One section of the table had a bag of spilled syringes, some rolled-up papers and what looked like cocaine. His room looked like all the objects were in complete chaos. She latched onto the door handle and turned to give him one last look, a cloud of extreme disgust covered her face as she whisked away from the room.

Her extreme hangover was at the verge of blurring her vision that she almost stumbled on the staircase. She knew she had to get to her apartment before even a ray of sunlight caresses the new day. The thought of the man she just left behind once again, sent chills down her spine because he was extremely hooked on drugs. This made her waltz to the section of her thoughts which she really had avoided exploring- she had no idea of what had happened last night, and that’s how she wanted it to remain. Looking at her eyes, I would say it didn’t bother her that much because when she opted for the game, she gave her all. But I guess I was wrong because as she stood under the rain waiting for a taxi, she couldn’t care about hiding the tears which rolled down in quick successions as they would be mistaken for rain.

But this was not where it all began, no, she wasn’t always like this. She once was a young girl who loved fishing out dramas, films, pictures, from the cold black and white pages of every book. She devoured every piece of scribbled words that stumbled her way so much that she would almost always be seen at the library. Her voracious reading eventually turned her family against her. Her father, who was a poor pot-bellied and chronic drunk, felt that her addiction was a curse placed on her by his enemies. He believed this so much that he would scream at her at the top of his voice each time he sees her bend over a small piece of literature saying that reading would not make her rich and would make her undesirable to any man. Her mum, who was less superficial, would beat her mercilessly every time she gets caught at the library saying that this addiction was replacing her duties as a young woman. To think that she was just a ten year old suffering the beatings and punishments of an armed robber was just too disheartening, even for me. Her dearly beloved hobby slowly came to a halt when she was twelve, when her father, at the peak of his drunkenness, slammed the door on her and ordered her not to sleep in the house that night. She begged and begged that she had nowhere to go, banging on the door, crying and wailing, hoping it would at least, soften her mother’s heart. It all proved futile. The best her mother could do was to shout at her the more to quit making such a racket, the irony though. The night was caving deep so fast, she had to find shelter. She remembered her father’s brother who lived about thirty minutes away so she hurriedly began her journey. He listened to her pathetic story, comforted her, fed her and gave her a nice bed to sleep in. She was woken up by the sound of shouting from her uncle’s bedroom. She closed her eyes shut as she endured the whimpering of his wife, she could tell that he had beaten her to pulp. Suddenly, the war was over just after the slamming on a couple of doors. She still lay there, wrapped up in the blanket, comforting herself to get some sleep. Five minutes later, her door swung violently open, her uncle’s frail figure walked down to her with a huge and mischievous grin spread across his face.