Garden of Fiends by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wicked Run Press
Published: 2017-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven: Tara Snyder

When you wake up, text me. I need to talk.

The text to Stacey was sent, but I hadn’t received a reply. It was still early. Stacey stayed up late and slept in late. Her biological clock was etched in stone from snorting coke in New York bars then walking home when the sun came up.

Where the hell is Dad?

I scratched T-Rex deep with my nails, right under his ear where he liked it, and he growled in approval. I was his drug, and I was leaving him. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

I paced the room, stopping to check my phone every few seconds.

Halfway house. What was I doing? Halfway houses seem like jail with their rules, curfews, drama queens. House meetings because so and so ate my cottage cheese out of the fridge that had my name on it and other nonsense that would make anyone living there want to sneak out at night to get high.

My skull was cracking and everything inside was about to spill out. Mom’s ugliness was spilling out too. How the hell did she hide her crazy all these years? Dad left because it was too much. Where is he? He said he’d be right back. I kept pacing, glancing out the window at the driveway, looking for Dad, for Brett, for Stacey, anybody to rescue me. I couldn’t wait to grab my bags off the ground and bail out of this house. T-Rex’s head was in his paws, and his pupils followed me across the room. He knew something was up. He’d wither and die here, same as me. But I’ll come back for him.

Finally, a car pulled into the driveway. My mom’s.

She got out in a rush, backpack over her shoulder, moving like she forgot something inside. The front door opened, the air-tight vacuum of the house broken. I heard her bustling inside as if ready to evacuate, sounds of things being moved, then footsteps down the hall, creaky hardwood shouting out alarms. I could hear her just outside my door, listening for me while I listened to her, finally, the rap of boney knuckles knocking on my bedroom door.

I didn’t say a word.

“Oh Tara, come on,” she shouted through the door. “There are things. So many things. Thank God you are here. First, we need to get you right, fix you up, then we need to get the body, after that, there is truth to be told.”

TAP, TAP, Tap, her knuckles rapped again, but this time, she turned the door handle, swung the door open, and stood in the doorway. Her eyes were ablaze and her skin sweaty, like she’d been in a sauna. The stench from her skin was much worse than sweat, much worse than body odor.

“I owe you an apology. I really do.”

An apology was the only acceptable way for her to start, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. She took my silence as an invitation and walked right in.

“Tara, I am so sorry.

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