by C. L. Quinn
A CHILD’S
DAYS
PREQUEL TO THE VAMPIRE SERIES “THE FIRSTS”
C.L.QUINN
Blak Kat Publishing
March 2015
All rights reserved
This novella is a prequel to the Vampire Series “The Firsts” and tells the story of the troubled childhood of that book’s heroine. It’s a dark tale that details some of what she went through with her drug, alcohol, and sex-addicted mother.
We learn later that there are reasons her mother is so troubled, but this novella is mostly the child’s story as seen from her own point of view. It is harsh at times, but true to her journey that begins, as a successful woman, in the first book of the series, Forbidden Days.
It is an introduction to new readers, and a special glimpse into the past for those who already know the series.
ONE
Mother had been gone so long this time. The young girl stood by the window and sighed. She was running out of boxes of the cereal that she’d eaten for over two weeks, and it was the only food she had.
She’d be back, Mother always came back. Wouldn’t she?
Punk didn’t know anything for certain, little in her life was. Her books, maybe, but if her mother realized how many she’d stashed under her bed, they would be uncertain too.
Mother must never know how much Punk enjoyed the books since she would take them away. As much as she’d like to think that Mother would be pleased that the crisp white pages and beautiful black letters made her daughter happy, Punk knew that wasn’t true. If Mother did, she would do what she’d done in the past…she’d burn them in the middle of Punk’s room.
Mother would invite her friends, light them up, and make her watch them burn, just for laughs. Then they would close the door and leave Punk to clean up the sad ashes of words that had meant so much to her.
Grime covered the only window in the tiny apartment that hadn’t been blocked with wood and screws, but Punk could still see out. Not clearly, but the sun still made it through the mucky glass. It was so warm and bright and Punk loved every second she could spend with the heat on her skin. Books and sunshine were, without doubt, her favorite things in the whole world. She could live on just those two things!
But if Mother didn’t get home soon, food would be a problem. Water never was, it came from the sink, and she had the cute little glass that Mother’s friend Julia had given her last year, which made her smile every time she filled it. The glass had little princesses on it from movies by something called Disney. Punk loved to look at the pretty girls while she drank the cool clear water, and when she finished, the glass went back under a stack of boxes in the corner of her room.
Julia had warned her. “Don’t let your mother see this. She’ll take it away, Punkster, so keep it hidden.”
And Punk always did. Julia was nice to her, most of the time. And Punk really liked the unexpected gift Julia had carefully sneaked to her one night when Mother had passed out. Until then, she’d had to use one of the empty beer or wine bottles that Mother and her friends left lying all over the apartment.
That had been okay, she didn’t mind the wine bottles, but she didn’t want to lose the princess glass, so it stayed unseen under the boxes that she knew her mother would never find. Mother didn’t clean, she never touched trash, that was Punk’s job.
As with everything, she did it well. The stack of boxes in her own room, which she used to hide her books and the precious glass, Mother didn’t care about. It was in Punk’s room, and nothing there mattered to Mother. Because of that, it was Punk’s sacred place. It was also where she went when Mother had her friends over to party. Behind that door, even though the loud talking, laughing and shrieks came through, she was out of their sight and off their minds. Invisible, and that’s what she wanted to be.
Sitting here now, with the sun’s touch on her face, Punk had nothing else on her mind, just one of few perfect moments.
Calm, quiet, safe.
When someone rapped loudly on the door a few seconds later, it startled her. She looked toward the door, but she didn’t move. Mother forbad her to answer the door. And sometimes, she tested her. Once, Punk had done so, she’d answered ceaseless knocks, and when she pulled the door open, Mother and two men stood there.
Mother laughed in that horrible, gruff way she did when she was drunk. A cigarette hung from her mouth and her clothes were messed up, like one of the men had been pawing at her. Punk had seen that too many times.
“I told you guys the little bitch is stupid! She knows when she disobeys me, no food for a day, but here she is, doing it anyway!”
Punk had never answered the door again.
Of course, Mother couldn’t do that anymore now that Punk’s strange ability had strengthened and she could feel her mother’s presence when she was close.
So she stayed near the window, because she knew the sun would move past it soon, and just closed her eyes until the knocking stopped. Hopefully, soon, Mother would sweep in, and maybe, just maybe, she would bring some food with her. Punk liked cereal, but sometimes, she just needed something else. Usually, she didn’t get it.
The knocking stopped, whoever it was went away, and eventually, with the comforting warmth of the sun on her skin, Punk fell asleep.
Punk came awake slowly, noise intruding into her sleep. Someone was tapping on the top of her forehead, and she tried to swat them away, but they kept doing it, pulling her completely from her restful sleep. Her green eyes opened to a super bright light shined directly into her eyes from just above her.
Squeezing her eyelids as tight as possible, she put up her hands to push away the offensive light, but someone grabbed one of her hands and squeezed the fingers. A graveled, deep male voice laughed.
Then she heard Mother laugh and cough. At once, Punk felt relief and a trickle of sadness that Mother was finally home. Nearly three weeks had passed since she left and, while Punk considered herself a capable young lady, worry had still wandered into her mind.
Pushing upright, and pressing herself back against the wall, she opened her eyes again, but only a slit, to see if the person with the punishing light was still there. They weren’t, her eyes didn’t burn now. Slowly, she opened them and scanned the room.
Mother, looking a lot worse than she’d prayed she would, stood a few feet away, the ever-present cigarette in her hand, a bottle of beer in the other, and her makeup smeared. Red lipstick stained her teeth, and Punk thought that a comb would do wonders for Mother’s hair. It was actually quite pretty, with golden strands shot through dark brown, but as usual, it hadn’t been combed or even washed recently.
“We’re ba-a-ackkk,” Mother said, in that menacing sing-songy voice that made Punk wince. It meant she was feeling well and that normally meant bad things for Punk.
A soft kick into her calf forced Punk to stand up, her eyes focused on the man with her mother, equally drunk and enjoying himself too much. He threw an arm over mother’s shoulder, the fingers crawling down her shirt. Punk looked away.
Then his dark eyes landed on Punk.
“Hmmm, Rena, your girl is very cute. I thought she was a baby, but she’s almost teenaged. How old is she? Ten? Twelve?”
Punk wasn’t worried. One thing Mother never tolerated was when her boyfriends paid attention to her little girl.
“You just keep your attention on me, you old fart. You ain’t goin’ anywhere near that thing. ”
Mother’s eyes went to Punk, and burned into her. Punk knew exactly what she was thinking, and while none of it made a lot of sense to her, she knew it wasn’t a good thing. But it was common whenever the men were around.
“Brat, go get me another beer and something to eat,” Mother belched out as she pushed the dark-eyed man bac
k away from her.
“I can get you a beer, but we don’t have any food other than half a box of cereal.”
“Fuck me, really? Dirk, you are goin’ to be takin’ me out to dinner, motherfucker.”
The man surged back to Mother and wrapped his arms around her belly. “As long as I get that ride to heaven you promised.”
With another wild laugh, Mother turned, stuck her tongue down the man’s throat, and they walked out the door.
Punk looked out the window, dark now, except for a streetlight barely visible through the top of the window as its weak light shined through the dirt that covered the glass. She would have cleaned it, but Mother didn’t like that. Mother hated “shit that was too clean.”
As the door slammed closed again, Punk stood and just looked around the empty room. Well, Mother had come home. And left. That wasn’t unusual either, but she had really hoped for something to eat. At least some milk for that last bit of cereal.
Closing off the light that Mother had turned on, Punk made her way to her bedroom and dropped, fully dressed, onto her bed. Time to sleep. Maybe morning would bring better news. Her eyelids dropping again, she thought about what Mother had started calling her recently. That thing. Usually, she just addressed her as little bitch, but for the past few weeks, the new term had stuck. Thing.
She knew why. Something had happened a few weeks ago just before her mother had left.
Mother hadn’t really seen anything, not really, but she’d turned just as it happened, and she must have noticed that something was different. Maybe she noticed exactly what was different, Punk didn’t know. But Mother had stared at her for a good three or four minutes afterward, then silently left the apartment and didn’t come back until the next day.
It wasn’t Punk’s intention to scare or confuse Mother. But, high on that white stuff she put up her nose, one night Mother had destroyed the one piece of clothing that Punk owned that she’d liked, a shirt with a piece of lace along the bottom. When she wore it, it made her feel special.
That night, Mother had puked and then grabbed the shirt to wipe it up after she’d chased down some nasty drug with too much beer.
Puke! It broke Punk’s heart to see her precious shirt balled up and covered with that vile, smelly, rank, stuff that poured out of her Mother more often than it ever should. She couldn’t stand it, she couldn’t. So she fixed it.
Punk used the weird magic that came from her mind, she lifted the ruined fabric and spun it in the air, used that air to draw the horrible wet mass and stains from the shirt and dropped it carefully onto her sheetless bed.
But Mother had been high, confused, and facing the other way when she did it. Punk had just been so furious, she hadn’t been able to help herself! All she could do was hope that her mother had been too high to notice the strange thing she’d done with her mind.
Sleep finally came and her growling tummy calmed down. Dreams flooded in, as they often did, of a pretty house with frilly curtains, toys, games, cake, and mostly, wall-to-wall books. She knew what television was, she’d seen it in Mrs. Brook’s apartment next door a few times. It intrigued her, the idea of stories playing out on a screen in beautiful moving shapes and colors, but they’d never had one in the apartment. But in this dream, there was one just like Mrs. Brooks watched every day with what she called her “soapies.”
Morning came too quickly, though, because her bedroom door, which she always closed, slammed open hard and crashed into the wall. It hit the big hole that the handle had knocked in her wall six months ago when they moved into this tiny box within a box.
Punk shot up, not because she was startled, she was used to being awakened like this, but because it was wise to be ready. Mother would want something and she would want it now.
“Good morning, Mother,” she said to the woman leaning against the doorjamb, a cigarette already burning between her fingers, a clawed hand holding a ratty robe around her naked body.
“There isn’t a fucking piece of food in this place,” Mother complained. “Not a fucking cracker.”
“I told you that last night. I hope that man got you something to eat.” Punk knew not to antagonize her or remind her that she hadn’t had much to eat in the past few weeks for the same reason.
Mother grinned with a cackle that turned into a coughing fit. “Yeah, he sure the fuck did. And then some.”
Nodding, Punk slipped from her bed, her feet cold against the floor. No heat again, not that that was unusual.
“Why don’t I go down and get something from the store?” Punk asked, and hesitated before she finished her request. “Um, do you have any money?”
Lingering against the wall, Mother slowly went back into the living room. Her eyes moved around the room as she looked for her bag. She glanced back at Punk, who had followed her, but kept some distance.
“It’s too clean in here,” was all she said when she noticed that the few items in the room were put away and the place looked tidy.
“I wanted it to look good for you,” Punk responded, aware that the comment was almost a compliment. Almost.
Once she found her bag thrown on the floor in front of the sofa that had been furnished with the apartment, rips in the upholstery and all, Mother dug around in it as she balanced the cigarette on the edge of her lips.
“Here. Ten bucks. Make sure I get the change. Make sure they get it right. Get some bacon and eggs. Coffee, if you have enough.”
“Okay,” Punk said, thrilled to have money so that she could finally get something other than cereal to eat. While she would cook the bacon and eggs for her mother, in that process, she would be able to keep some for herself too. If she had enough money, she was going to splurge for a small bottle of orange juice.
Dressing quickly, Punk threw on her coat, which, this winter, was too tight now, but it was still warmer than going without as long as she could get it on. Although it was really tight on her arms and she could no longer button it, it would do.
The apartment was five stories up, and, standing at the top, Punk smiled. She loved running up and down the stairs! She’d gotten really quick at it, now that she was old enough for Mother to send her to the store. Before that, Punk rarely ever left their apartments. She was grateful, that her mother was often too lazy or high to go shopping. Punk had so much fun when she did! So many nice things at the store, an incredible variety of great things to eat, and the chance to watch people.
Oh, she loved to watch people! They fascinated her, and many of them smiled at her. Several had stopped to tell her how pretty she was, but that always made Punk blush, because she knew it wasn’t so.
Mother told her that it wasn’t. “You’re a sad thing, little bitch,” she’d told Punk just after they moved here. Since they moved around a lot, there wasn’t any chance of really getting to know the neighbors. But that particular night, what Mother said had really gotten to her and made her cry half the night.
“Now, stop that blubbering,” Mother had said after she poked her head into Punk’s room. “You play the cards you’re dealt, and your hand just sucks.” She’d laughed hard and tossed down a tall glass of whisky. “You remind me of something my mother used to tell my older sister, you look like you got beat with the ugly stick. Ain’t nobody else gonna care for you like I do. They’d just kick you to the curb. Just do as I tell you, and you’ll be all right.”
Only, most of the time, Punk thought that she was barely all right. The things that Mother said, they had to be true, didn’t they? Mother wouldn’t say something that wasn’t true, not to her own child, right?
Sometimes, she would catch a glimpse of her own image in something shiny and she would wonder what was so awful about her. Mother hated mirrors and only kept a small one in her bedroom, so Punk rarely saw what she looked like. Sometimes, though, the window at night would make sort of a black mirror and she could kind of see herself in it. Or the lid of one of her cooking pots would show Punk a kind of wavy image of her face. Was she really as ugl
y as her mother told her that she was? Probably. Mother wasn’t the nicest person most of the time, but surely even she wouldn’t be so cruel.
Punk had come to terms with the truth. She wasn’t pretty and she wasn’t loveable, just as Mother had always told her.
“But you’ve got your uses,” Mother would tell her, when she was feeling generous, not often, but it had happened.
In those moments, Punk could see something in her, in the woman that bore her, that Mother wasn’t a bad person, she just didn’t love her little girl. No one had to tell Punk that she wasn’t loved, it was apparent in every word her mother said to her, in how she looked at her, how she cared for her. Mostly, it was apparent because Punk knew that people hugged their children, told them how precious they were and how much they were loved.
She’d read about those moments in her books, and she’d seen it happen now that she occasionally went out of the apartment. Not once had her own mother ever said anything like that to her. And she’d never held her. On the rare situations where her mother had touched Punk, she reacted like Punk’s skin burned her fingers. It was okay, she accepted that some children must be wonderful to live with, but she must not be one of those children.
No worries, Punk had always told herself. She had enough.
In the lobby of the store, she lifted a dark blue plastic basket from the front entryway, and wandered around. She wouldn’t get the items she needed right away, she wanted to just linger here, look at all the goodies, the bright colors, the pretty things. Listen to people talking and watch them smile at each other. Sometimes she would get to see a kid about her age, which thrilled her, and she got to say hello to them. Sometimes they answered back and sometimes they didn’t. It didn’t matter, all of this made Punk happy.
Eventually, she knew she’d taken too long, so she hurried over to the refrigerated case and snatched a carton of eggs, then a pack of thick-cut bacon. If she got a small jar of coffee, she could afford the orange juice that she desperately wanted. Adding the numbers in her head, which was easy for her, she assessed that she had enough for all in her basket with a dollar left over. Pausing at the check-out lane, she stared at a dark brown wrapped candy bar.