WARNING: skip this volume if you don't like extremely dark stories and/or don't care about his background on Earth. It'll be 2 chapters and then the new volume/world will begin.
Wham! Ladar's bedroom door swung open. Out of his groggy sleep was a venomous woman storming into his room. "You disgust me!" She hissed with all the malice she held for her son. Ladar squinted at his alarm clock to see it better since the only source of light was coming from the hallway. The clock read, "2:18 AM." His mother's fury rose as she noticed his calm and uncaring demeanour. She slapped him across the face and yelled, "You are 17 years old! When will you support your frail mother? After all, you've been working for some time! Wait… Are you still sulking about that THING?"
His mother pointed at his cat that he had taken care of for 2 years. His cat stood on a platform, looking both alive and lifeless. Ladar felt both pain and anger rising to such a degree that he could hear his heart pounding in his ear, and his throat began to prickle. Fighting back his tears, he yelled, "How could you let him do it?! He's your 200th boyfriend who means nothing, and you let him kill my cat then taxidermy her as a gift for me?! How does that make sense?!" He could not contain his raw emotions.
For as long as Ladar could remember, his drug-addicted mother would parade her boyfriends throughout the apartment. His mother would blame him for her misfortunes, and her reasons were always justified for her. "It's your fault your father left because you never listen to your parents." "My boyfriend refuses to support me because you keep interrupting our 'private' time." "No pharmacists want to visit my home because you scare them away with your gloomy attitude." The constant blame and harassment ate away at Ladar every day.
Ladar would find himself constantly berated by his mother, but what made it worse was that her boyfriends' felt they had the same authority. They would either try to be his pseudo-father or his guidance counsellor. They'd tell him about how he should "handle" his mother. Some would even give him advice on what could make her happier. Ladar recalled a time her mother was so drugged she just lay on the corner of the bed with her eyes wide open, staring at the wall while her boyfriend pulled him into the bedroom and shut the door. There he learnt what they meant about "making her happier." At the time, he was only 11 years old.
Ladar shook his head as he recalled these unpleasant memories. His mother yelled back at him for his comments about her "200th boyfriend." She replied, "he's not even my boyfriend because we are going to get married! I'm his fiancé!" She held up the ring on her finger for Ladar to admire. However, Ladar was expressionless as he noticed that the ring was a half-eaten RingPop. Ladar's mom was so baked that she thought she was wearing something like a glittering diamond when it was actually the spit residue shimmering on the RingPop.
The one thing Ladar's mother hated was her child's expressionlessness. She wanted him to feel what she felt! She wanted him to feel the pains, joys, and loneliness that she carried daily. She then yelled, "You always have to embarrass me! You told my fiancé how much you hated him and what he did, but he did that to your cat FOR YOU! For your own good! He noticed you couldn't take care of it, so he made it into a stuffed animal. Zero maintenance! Isn't he so sweet?!"
Ladar punched the wall next to him and screamed, "I took care of her! I even got a job to pay for her food because you said it was my problem! The only reason you got rid of it is because you hated that I used my money for my cat instead of your drugs."
Ladar's mother gasped, "I'm offended! I've paid for you, and now you accuse me of being out for your pathetic earnings?"
Ladar noticed how his mother was smirking and acting like a victim. She felt like she won because she saw the pain and anger in her son's eyes. Even though he might have known this, he could not calm down after the continuous prodding of his mother. He retorted in outrage, "Weren't you the one saying to support you with my work just when you came barging into my room at 2 AM?!"
She didn't even look at him as she walked out the door and said, "You don't care about how you treat another human like my fiancé. You don't care about how you treat your mother. Don't you even care about saving face? You should be ashamed of your behaviour!" She slammed the door behind her, and her destructive force arrived as fast as it left. In the wake of her storm lay Ladar on his bed, hugging his knees. He stayed like that as his mind was both blank and filled with thoughts. He'd replay yesterday's and today's events, but it all felt hazy to him.
Ladar heard through the walls that his mother was calling her pharmacist. He knew that either his mother would leave him alone after her first dose or she would get worse if the pharmacist rejected her. He got up and left his apartment, heading towards the park behind his building.