Daymare

Sensitivity Warning: Mental Health, Physical Violence, Abuse, Self-Harm, Suicide, Substance Abuse.

“Hapi!” He banged on the front door, it’s wood groaning from his weight, “I’m done playing with you, get out here now!”

He screamed, he wouldn’t stop screaming. I couldn’t move. My butt was set to the top steps as if I’d sat in a fly trap. I couldn’t see him anymore. I wouldn’t. And then I couldn’t see myself. Just my father, the smell of stale beer, the sound of sticky stomps. 

Hapi! My father yelled, slurring the a and i into an unrecognizable gurgle. His foot rocked the bottom floor as if the stomping would make me move faster. It usually did. But today was different. I always cooked dinner but today we splurged on enough for dessert. I knew he’d eat it all. A smile formed on my face as I stood from my seat on the top of the stairs.

I bumped the mop bucket next to me and a small gasp left my throat as I saw the belt and the hands. And then I smiled again. I left it dripping, I didn’t need to clean it though it had a strange smell today, like a million bugs took a sip and dropped dead. 

But I ignored it as I stepped down the stairs. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that it was stinging my bare feet or curling my nostrils. All I saw was Daddy on the couch, a baking sheet of apple seed tart resting on his stomach. 

A beer had fallen from his hand. Another sticky spot I would’ve been made to clean up, But instead of grimacing in my mind I only smiled wider and wider. Foam sputtered around his mouth. A tinge of blue near his fingernails and I knew. I won. I got to leave this place, I got to have a life. I got to be Me. 

“Hapi!” He continued to bang. Like a knife chopping an onion on a wooden cutting board. Thunk Thunk Thunk, in quick succession.

The couch was gone, replaced by two lazy chairs, the beer was missing though a multitude of soda cans lined the floor. The stickiness was still there, squelching under my bare feet reaching it even through the spilt gasoline.

Just because I ended him first doesn’t mean I get to leave, I thought. 

I spent ten years in juvie for what I did and it would’ve been longer if I let the marks fade before calling the police. When I got out, I came back to the old house. Just to look, mostly because my therapists said it’d be a bad idea. But then someone was waiting for me.

“You must be Hapi N. More.” A black suited lady said as she stepped out of the black car parked in front of the house.

I could only nod.

With a puppet’s smile I’d seen on the guards or shrinks at juvie, she handed me a thick manilla envelope, “Your mother feels terrible for what you went through with your father and your time in juvie. She wanted to pass on a new lease on life as she likes to say.”

I tried to speak but my lips wouldn’t open. I sent letters to my mom but I’d thought they never found her.

“Inside you’ll find a deed to the house, a bank account in your name able to pay for a single year’s worth of internet and utilities as well as some personal effects.”

A smile spread on my face as I opened the envelope, and then it shattered.

“I will say that she is a very private person and while she does feel sorry for your situation she would prefer this to be your last communique.”

They were gone as I stood staring at the three smaller envelopes all unopened. All labeled, “To: Mom, From: Hapi”

I fell to the dead yellow grass and wept long enough to remember I’m supposed to be inside.

“Hapi open this damn door before I break it down!” He yelled, accenting it with a few stomps on the door itself.

Tears fell from my face as I turned to the door and continued to turn to see the fireplace. I walked up to it not seeing the teddy bear with a red ribbon or family photos. I turned the knob on the left until I heard a hissing laugh come from the pipes below pushing past charred wood with the sound of crayon hitting paper. I tightened my fists and found I was already holding the lighter. 

I kept my steps as silent as I could moving through the slick floor back to the stairs. I sat down and brought my head to my knees. I took a breath and gripped the textured lever to unlock the damn thing.

Click.

“Hapi open this damn door,” he screamed again. 

Click. 

Steps echoed from upstairs and I clicked faster. My lips parted to say please but no noise left just the-

Click.

“Mommy,” a voice rang from upstairs, “Why is daddy upset?”

Click.

My daughter looked down from the top of the steps, her blanky dragged behind her. She didn’t acknowledge the leaking metal gas can. She didn’t see the lighter or smell the gas. She just stared at me. And I stared back.

Click.

The lighter brightened and my vision erupted in flame.  It crawled around my body feeling of squirming maggots coated in acid. I couldn’t hear my screams or see my husband finally kick the door in breaking it from the hinges. I couldn’t see him look between Abigail and myself. Or how his eyes hardened as he sprinted up the burning stairs to reach his child picking up her screaming form and running back through the fire to reach the outside. I couldn’t see or feel any of it as my nerves died and eyes popped. All that was left was a blank black.

———————-

And then I was back. I was in the kitchen. Paul was cutting an onion for his omelet, Abigail was sitting in her booster chair drawing a picture of what seemed to be a tree but she’d call a UFO. I sat there silent as tears slowed down my cheeks. Paul finished saying something and when I didn’t respond he turned, “Hapi what’s wrong,” he placed the knife down next to the half done onion and knelt in front of me. All I could see was the hate in his eyes that my daymare conjured forth.

“Maybe it’s time for you to talk to that therapist I mentioned?”

I nodded, wiping tears from my face.

“I’ll give Loraine a call then.”

He stood and walked out of the kitchen leaving the onion and carton of eggs on the counter. I stood, rinsed my hands and started chopping the onion myself. Thunk Thunk Thunk in quick succession. 

“Hi Hapi, I’m Loraine.”

I jumped dropping the knife on the cutting board as I turned and found a blonde woman staring at me. Her full pink suit and skirt seemed to sear my eyes as I realized the lights were off.

“Paul told me you’ve been in here all day cutting the same onion from this morning, can you tell me why?” She walked forward hooped earrings the size of my nose clattering with the others on her ears. 

I opened my mouth but she began before I could speak.

“It’s not very nice to keep someone from their breakfast, you know,” she motioned to the cutting board, “You stopped Paul from finishing his onion with that blade.”

I glanced down at the knife and the board covered in sticky blood. The onion smushed beyond a paste. The egg carton was open next to it. Every other shell was open with a cracked baby chick. Their blood joined Paul’s as it trickled into the onion juice.

“Remember sweetheart we only want to help,” Loraine grabbed my shoulder to push me into a chair with a needle in her other hand.

I grabbed the knife and shunted it into my sternum.

———————- 

The sharp sting opened my eyes to the white sterile room. I was in a hospital bed if the alarms and code calls were any indication. Paul sat next to me reading a book I couldn’t see the name of. Abigail sat next to him sleeping in a curled up ball, her head resting on his arm. 

“Paul?”

His eyes shot to mine. He nearly jumped from his chair before remembering Abi, he shook her awake and before I could tell what was happening she dangled from my neck sobbing. I shushed her and stroked her hair and wished I could promise everything would be fine. But I couldn’t. Not when I was about to wake up again. And again. Then again.

The dreams will never stop, I thought.

“Hapi we found the rat poison”

Paul said it with a strange tone. It wasn’t anger or disbelief. Disappointed maybe.

But I ignored it and smiled and said, “That’s fine they’ll be back.”