A screaming woman on the sidewalk shouting at her husband didn’t make me move any faster as I buzzed myself in to my cold dirty building and walked up the creaky four flights of stairs to my apartment. The screaming woman reminded me of my mom and my dirt bag of a father always fighting. When I was eight, I would scream at them to stop, my dad just ended up beating me until I stopped, or passed out. They could never get along and my dad finally left us. He left me and my mom dirt poor and in a shitty apartment. He never came around at first, but then he started coming around sporadically to beat my mom and take what little money she’d had, but I haven’t seen him in a couple of years, so I don’t know what’s happened to him.
As I climbed the stairs, my eyes scanned over the dirty green and brown flowered wallpaper stripping away, the holes in the walls seemed to grow larger by the day, and the broken banister looked like it had its day a hundred years ago, when the building was first built. The hallway lights flickered as if they were trying to stay on but the electricity was deciding on something else. This building was so run down and old that you had to watch your every step on the stairs, or you might just fall through the boards, each step almost felt like it would be your last.
A little warmer now that I was inside, I pulled my hood down as I reached the top of the dirty stairs. I paused a moment as I heard loud bass music coming from the end of the hall where my apartment was.
Groaning, I knew when that type of music was playing, it meant Skinner was with my mom. I made my way down the hallway to my apartment and reached above the doorframe for the little copper key. When I stepped into the apartment, all the lights were off. The music pounded away as if the speakers were ready to blow and my eyes scanned around the room, looking around for evidence of Skinner.
Inside the apartment was shittier than the building itself. Garbage was everywhere, fur stuck to the carpet from my mom’s three cats, and the crappy furniture looked even trashier since she never vacuumed. Dishes flooded the sink with old food stuck to them. Newspaper was crumbled up all over the counter and table. I stomped my foot hard at one of the cats, making it hiss and skitter away fast as lightning.
God, I hated cats.
I turned down the stereo in the living room and walked into the kitchen to the fridge for a beer. When I opened the fridge door, it smelled as if something had died in there because of all the rotting food. Mold contaminated a full loaf of bread; I don’t know which revolted me more, the rotting food smell or the loaf of bread that had just gone to waste.
When I was a kid, that bread would have lasted me at least a week. When my dad left us, my mom stopped trying to take care of me. I taught myself to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for my main meal of the day and wash my own clothes in the bathtub. Sometimes, it was days before I could eat because she went on a drug spending spree. Now sitting here in the fridge was a loaf a bread, just fucking rotting away.
Out of anger and pure disgust, I slammed the door shut, causing the fridge to rattle and bang into the wall behind it. I stalked my way to my mom's room and turned the doorknob, but it was locked. I banged on the door with my closed fist and yelled for her, but no one answered . . . no sounds…no movement. I tried again . . . nothing.
With my hands clenched in fists I yelled, “I’m gonna break down the god damn door if you don’t answer!”
Nothing.
“Mom!” I pounded on it again, hoping Skinner or my mom would finally answer.
I hated to cause more damage to this shithole of a place and have Skinner bitch at me for more money that I don’t have…or so I told him. I banged on the door once but no one answered. Grabbing the doorknob, I slammed my body into the door. It gave away fairly easily and I watched as the door fell back into the wall, barely hanging by its broken hinges.
My mom, who was beautiful at one point in her life, was motionless; her body was sprawled out on the bed, in her dirty pink nightgown just barely covering her body. Her eyes were closed as Skinner crouched over her right arm.
Heat blazed my face as I saw the rubber strap wrapped tightly above her elbow. Skinner was drawing a needle out of the vein from the crook of her arm.
He whispered to her, “Sleep now, baby girl,” and then kissed her cheek.