Jenna hated oats with passion, not because it was the only thing her mother ever made for breakfast, but because it was like a sign to her that nothing would ever change no matter how many times she tried to change.
"You're just as disrespectful as your mother, stupid cunt" her father yelled out. Jenna stood frozen in place as the hot oats scalded her back and slid all the way to her legs, her fists clenched as she fought the urge to break something or someone.
She turned her head slowly, sitting at what was left of a once marvelous oak table but was now worn out with cigarette burn marks, covered in molds and holding a wide accessory of pills of different colors and sizes was the man who had birthed her, a monster.
He sat there, his chest heaving in and out as he looked at her with disgust and her face mirrored his expression. He puffed out smoke from his nose as he took a drag from the cigar in his hand, he coughed and kept coughing as Jenna stared at him blankly.
She couldn't remember a time when her father wasn't like this, a useless man who let out his frustrations on others, a cowardly pig whose joy was knocking her mother up and then beating her up for fun whenever she didn't rid herself of the pregnancy on time, he was simply trash.
Jenna looked down from his coughing figure to the bowl of oat laying at her feet, she shifted back and kicked it across the room with so much vigor it broke and shattered pieces around the room. It made the kids sitting around their father's leg waiting for him to spare them scraps whimper and scamper away in fright.
There was this hot feeling she felt in her chest whenever she saw the kids, sometimes she thought it to be pity and other times it was disgust at them for holding on to life instead of dying in her mother's belly as her father had wanted them to.
Her father tried speaking but a series of coughs had him more preoccupied and she watched as her mother rushed over to him with a glass of water that was slightly tinted brown, at the sight of the water, her father reached over and grabbed her mother by the hair, he slapped her across the face and the water spilled slightly over the rim wetting his pants.
Jenna sighed, feeling repulsed at the fact that such a lesser being in thoughts and actions as her mother was the one that birthed her. She didn't hate her mother; she just wished such a woman wasn't linked to her by blood.
She turned, opened the door and walked out of the kitchen, she had classes in two hours and it was an hour and a half commute from this horror to her school and she couldn't afford to be late again, her grades and future ban ked. Jenna hated that she had to wake up every morning to this nightmare that didn't stay in her dreams but instead manifested itself into her reality, making her unhappy both in her dreams and the real word
She dropped her bucket under the tap and turned the tap with her might so that it would let out the water it housed, her skinny wrists screamed in protest at the effort she was putting in when she barely had the energy to even exist.
She closed the tap immediately the bucket was full and braced herself for the weight of the bucket as she bent and picked it up, she felt her back groan in protest but she willed herself to move.
She walked into the kitchen without looking at anyone and ignored the scene of her father kicking one of her siblings away from him, you would think after years of being around him they would understand that only pain and suffering came from being around him, a cold and hard fact she learnt with time, but she guessed that everyone had to learn it one way or the other and it was their time to learn it.
She trudged past the child wailing in front of her mother's bedroom wondering how stupid it had to be to not realize that her mother would never be in her room at this time, her mother was always at the beck and call of the monster that ruled the house and never had the inclination to care for anything but the pills he handed her when she had been a 'good girl'.
She opened her room door to meet 4 pair of expectant eyes awaiting her return, she stared at them and they returned her stare. "Get out" she said, her voice coming out in a whisper as she had lost most of her strength and couldn't afford the grueling task of screaming the way she would have loved to.
They stared at each other before getting up from her bedroom floor one after the other, they all hesitated at the door, silently hoping she'd call them back in instead of tossing them to the lion that didn't want them as much as she didn't want them as well but she was tired, way too tired to think of anything or anyone but herself.
After seconds of watching her expression remain tired they all walked out leaving her in the silence of her room where the moldy smell enveloped her and served as a temporary calming agent.
She dragged the bucket into her adjoining bathroom that looked even worse than her bedroom. Spirogyra hung from the ceiling and the walls were brown, slimy and chipped from years of not being washed, it smelled of urine and crap.
She ignored the unpleasant smell and went about washing the oats and sweat off her body, she tossed her clothes into the ever-growing pile of laundry and she mentally promised herself to do something about them when the weekend came.
The water was cold on her skin and felt like tiny daggers pushing into her skin but when was it never cold, she couldn't remember the last time she had had a hot shower since the electricity was cut and she had to learn that the world didn't show pity to the child of a drug pusher and murderer.