Mkay, this is something new for me.. I'm begging someone to give it a chance & to give me some pointers (Haha).
It was the summer before fifth grade. That one summer, that three month period, a mere sixty-four days. That was all it took for my picture perfect life to fall apart, cracking into a thousand tiny pieces that will never fit back together again.
It’s all kind of like the porcelain piggy bank I received for a gift from my grandparents when I was six. I’d loved that pig. I was constantly raiding the couch cushions in search of loose change to feed him, stuffing him full until I could barely lift him off of the bureau. Two years went by, and I had finally saved up what I thought was enough to buy a new bike. Sadly, I knew his time had come. I’d had sat him on the picnic table, hammer in hand, as I held back the tears. One quick blow to the head, that was all it took. One swing of the hammer, and it was all over. He may have felt as heavy as a ton of bricks, but he’d been demolished as easily as a tower of toy blocks.
Before that summer, I‘d always thought of myself as strong. Little did I know that I was just a block in an already tilting tower, as delicate and porcelain as my piggy bank.
Officer Garcia sat across from me, and I could see the sadness in his eyes. He’s probably seen far too many girls in my situation, and I was surprised to see that he was shaken even still. Maybe he had a teenage daughter of his own? I couldn’t bear his gaze any longer, and my eyes landed on my lap. I was going to be strong. I was going to get this over with, so that I could push the terrible reminders of what had happened out of my head forever. In my mind, I had convinced myself that everything was just a terrible nightmare. Talking about it made my nightmare come to life.
I waited for the officer to ask me all of the necessary questions: What he’d said and done, how many times it‘d happened. Silence. It was the most awkward silence I’d ever felt. The hairs on my arm stood up, my throat grew dry. I felt as if the silence was suffocating me. I was afraid that when he finally spoke, my throat would be closed entirely. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to answer?
Instead, he cleared his own throat, the way nervous men do, and said something quite startling.
“Desiree,” he whispered.
I held up a hand, stopping him before he was even able to start.
“It’s Dee.”
No one ever calls me Desiree. Even when she was alive, no one ever called me by that name. It was her name. Desiree Ramos - my mother by birth, not association - has been dead for several years. I don’t speak of her, no one does. No one even mentions her name. Except right before it always happened, and that very moment.
“Sorry, it’s just that you have such a striking resemblance to her. It’s almost uncanny.” He turned a noticeable shade of red, knowing that he had offended me and caused this already awkward situation to worsen.
He’d probably known her in high school. They might have been good friends. It occurred to me that his sad eyes had not been full of compassion for me. Instead, they’d been filled with thoughts of her. The bitch of a mother who’d so selfishly left me alone, all because she hadn’t been able to deal with herself. Officer Garcia took pity upon the crazy bitch who’d caused it all.
I’d replaced her in a million ways, moved on and forgotten her entirely. Hearing her name brought her back to life. My nightmares became real. The officer had hit several soft spots by carelessly uttering one name. It seemed as if my mother lived on to kill me too.
I can vaguely remember my mother before she turned crazy. I once found a photo album revealing pictures of the three of us vacationing, camping, opening gifts on Christmas day. Looking at those pictures made me sick to my stomach. I ran to the bathroom and heaved in the toilet for a long time. How had those picture perfect moments ever existed?
I don’t see the point to pictures anyways. People keep them around only to be depressed by the sight of them when they realize things will never be that good again. Their loving smiles, my innocent face placed strategically between the two. Such bullshit. Disgusting. That’s the perfect way to describe the both of them. I don’t know who I despise more, but I guess I blame her for leaving. Mother’s aren’t supposed to desert their children. Dad’s walk out everyday, but it’s almost always the mother who a child depends on. She left me without a goodbye. She left me with him, and for that, I hope she rots in hell.
It began when she got sick. She complained of constant pain, all over and all at once. We took her to several doctors, but no one could figure out the cause of her mysterious aches and pains. She’d pop pill after pill, every hour on the hour, shoving the colored capsules down her throat like candy. Nothing seized the pain. It took months for us to figure out that she had created it herself. I was ten when I realized that my mother’s constant illness was about as real as the tooth fairy.
He was always working, so I dealt with her most of the time. When he wasn’t at work, he was slaving away on the computer. She’d lie bed ridden for weeks at a time, unable to cook me dinner, or to take me to school. After missing more then the allotted amount of days, kind neighbors stepped in and began giving me rides, inviting me over for meals. They were all well aware of the situation, but no one knew how much worse it could get.
I’d been gratefully shoveling my face full of the Smith’s green bean casserole, when I came home to a quiet house. He was still at work, so I didn’t expect to hear the usual clatter of a keyboard, or the hum of the monitor. He’d become quite attached to that glowing box.
However, it was unusual for her to stay quiet. She didn’t moan, nor complain. I called her name, running through the house, searching for her familiar face. She always caked on a pale powder that she wore in order to convince herself and others that she was indeed sick.
At first I searched her room from a distance, peeking through the door, then moving on to check in other places. It was when I came back for the second time that I noticed her thin frame dangling from a rope in the closet. Her eyes bulged out of her head, her skin had turned a terrible shade of bluish-gray. For once, my mother appeared to be sick. But she wasn’t sick. She was dead. Without warning, she had gone and killed herself. Desiree was dead.
At ten, I had loved her even though I knew she didn’t love me back, at least not as a normal mother did. I’d counted on her to be there, just as she counted on me to run to the drugstore whenever she ran out of her precious pills. She’d taken her game of pretend too far.
She’d left him to take care of me, and for that, I forever resent her.
When my mother was alive, she had forced people to shower her with attention. She craved it as much as a newborn craves milk. He took a backseat. I knew my father, but never well. He was always at work, or mysteriously slaving away at the computer. That damn computer.
A couple years had passed. I was twelve, and my homework load had grown. Sixth graders wrote reports. Good students even typed them. I always tried my best to please my parents, and after she was gone, I focused on pleasing him. This was a huge task, since he’d never shown much interest in me, just as my mother had shown none in him. I’d gone to bed, only to wake up in the middle of the night remembering that I’d never finished my paper. I thought it shocking that for once, he wasn’t working his fingers across the precious keys.
I settled down in his chair, oblivious to the fact that it was still warm. I didn’t hear the refrigerator door open with it’s usual squeak, or the bang of a cupboard, nor the click of a light switch. I placed my hand on the mouse, with honest intentions of finishing my report. Instead, I stumbled across a picture of my father naked with a little girl. That little girl was Morgan Smith. The eight-year-old daughter of our neighbors.
Before I’d even been able to look away from the repulsive picture, I felt his hand fall upon my shoulder.
“What are you looking at sweetheart?” His voice sounded cold, although he was attempting to appear calm and collected. I didn’t know what to say.
This is what he’d been doing all these years? This is why he spent so many hours at his beloved computer? Granted that the whole computer phase started around the time Desiree had turned crazy. He had probably felt terribly unloved and neglected, just as I had. He’d taken to the internet in order to supply the needs that his insane wife no longer could. The internet only did so much. Soon the sick fuck had turned to the neighbor girl.
He sat down, forcing me to look at other pictures. There were pictures of other girls too, one’s I didn’t know. Sometimes the girls were older then me, but always just barely. Other pictures showed both a girl and boy. Always naked.
Now that I knew his secret, I had to become a part of it.
“Desiree,” he’d always whisper, hissing the words like a snake before it strikes. At first I fought back, but I quickly found out I’d never win. Telling anyone was even more so out of the question - I’d end up dead, just like her. Chills ran down my spine every time I heard the name. I always knew what was coming next.
He’d kiss me all over, while removing my clothing piece by piece. Sometimes he’d take pictures, but mostly he just went to work. To me, it was a job. A chore. Every time I heard the name, I prayed that it would pass quickly, just as a normal teenager prays for the last dish when washing them after dinner. I was his Desiree. I was the perfect replacement for the wife that he’d lost.
Why hadn’t he thought to use me before? I fit the role better then any neighborhood child or teenage girl. Having his way with me was far more satisfying than internet porn.
They say a girl is born to fill the role her mother once filled before her.
The years passed by, all of them a blur. I’d never had the courage to speak before, but all at once, I was pouring out my secret past to a police officer I’d never known, a mere stranger. But he’d said the name, brought the nightmare to life. It was finally my chance to end it.
Officer Garcia sighed as young Dee Ramos exited his office, tears staining her cheeks. She’d just revealed her terrible past, something he knew had to be hard to do. Heck, seven years later, and he still hadn’t been able to do it. He thought of how he had taken part in causing the young girl a life of so much torture and pain.
He’d only wanted to get back at Desiree Ramos. Make her feel as terrible as he felt when she broke his heart in high school. From the day he’d met her in tenth grade Biology, she’d never left his mind. At first he’d only stalked her, using his position as a police officer to keep her from opening her mouth. He only meant to provoke fear, not to drive her insane. Things went too far too fast. He knew her sorry excuse for a husband was never home. He burst into the house, held his gun to her head.
All the while he was screaming with rage, calling her a crazy bitch, saying that he could no longer stand the sight of her. He couldn’t accept the fact that the girl who broke his heart hadn’t suffered as he felt she deserved. He instructed her to hang herself with the rope he‘d brought. If she didn’t comply, he would kill her - and her daughter.
He didn’t think he would have gone as far as to kill her daughter. The little girl hadn’t broken his heart. But now he knew that he’d basically done just that. He held the police pistol to his head, the same gun he’d held to hers seven years ago. Right before he pulled the trigger, he whispered one name.
“Desiree”.
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