Scars Of The Soul

by J J Cobban

  My feet felt heavy as I dragged myself down the dilapidated driveway. I took a steadying breath as my fingers shook on the door handle. I opened it as quietly as possible, listening for the usual signs that my father was in a drunken rage or my mother was coming down off a bad high. I was met with an eerie silence. I closed the door behind me, practically jumping at the soft click. My heart slammed into my chest frantically as I moved into the living room. Broken glass crunched underneath my sneaker making me freeze.

  “Drake?” My mother slurred from her usual seat on the couch “C’mere.”

  Her hand waved around in some sort of ‘come here’ gesture. I looked around for my father. My mother’s aggression was easier to handle, she mainly stuck to the verbal beatings. It was my father with his lead fists that did the damage.

  “He’s-gone,” She sighed, clearly high, “bar.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, sitting down beside her. I kept my eyes away from the chipped coffee table knowing that I would find whatever she had used to get high lying there. It may be a common occurrence but it still stung to look at the reason for her state.

  “Need help.” She lifted her skeletal hand and pointed to the table in front of her “Fill it.”

  The slamming in my chest stopped abruptly as a cold sweat ran over my body. I’d managed to avoid this for fourteen years. I was never asked to partake.

  “W-what?” she reached for me, turning her arm up so that the crook of her elbow was exposed. Bile rose in my throat as I took in the track marks, there was no way she could find a clean vein there.

  “Falling, Drake.” She muttered looking at me through glazed eyes “Need more. Please, before he gets home. I can’t fall yet.”

  I closed my eyes as the reality of what she was saying hit me. I had heard her telling one of her junkie friends once that when she started to come down from her high it was like falling. So before she really started to fall, she topped up on something else. She wanted me to shoot her up.

  “Do it.” She tried to demand weakly.

  I was trying to weigh the decision. If I refused her there was every chance she would lay into me verbally and if she was screaming when my father got home he would join in. He looked for any reason to lay his hands on me lately. The worst part? The beating could go on all night. There was no way I would be at school tomorrow and then Jo would worry. If I helped my mother with this she would be docile for longer. I could hunker down in my room before my father got home. They’d both pass out and I’d manage to get through the night without any more sore limbs. My stomach knotted as I looked to the needle on the table.

  My hands shook as I picked up the packet of powder and tapped it onto the wet spoon lying beside the syringe. I was moving robotically as I flicked the light on, holding it beneath the spoon as the contents began to mix and melt. I’d watched her and her ‘friends’ do this on countless occasions. My mouth felt like I’d eaten a cotton ball as I picked up the syringe, feeling the bile rise once again as the liquid filled the needle. My mother moaned happily as she watched me fill her needle.

  “Fill it up a little more, baby” She cooed, lifting her bare foot onto the coffee table “In there, Drakey.”

  I ignored the stabbing in my gut as I angled the needle between her toes. I swallowed roughly as I watched the needle empty into her veins.

  Her head rolled back as a smile played across her face. Wherever the drugs had taken her she was happy. A small part of me wanted to know where she went. Was she with another family? Was she living a different life? A life where she was happy? I tried to imagine what our life could have been like if she’d been strong enough to say no the drugs she was offered ten years ago. She might have been more like Jo’s mother. Always worrying about her child getting into trouble but never letting it show too much. Maybe she could have gotten my father out of the bottle.

  Maybe.

  There was always a maybe.

  The front door opened, pulling me from my painful fantasies.

  My father stumbled in the front door with a dazed and confused look on his face. I willed my feet to move but they remained rooted to the spot. There was no way of knowing how to react to him. He could walk into the house and instantly start yelling and screaming or he could walk past you with a muttered curse and nothing more. It was a waiting game to gauge his reaction. He glanced to my mother’s position on the couch before grunting and walking into the kitchen.

  “When she hit up?” he garbled on his way back through with a freshly opened beer.

  “Just now.” I answered clearly and with absolutely no emotion in my tone. Showing emotions to a man like my father was weakness. He picked at it like a hyena on a carcass.

  A loud gasping and choking noise suddenly filled the living room. Both our heads snapped towards my mother. A white foam was forming at the corners of her mouth as her body convulsed erratically.

  “Fuck!” roared my father, throwing his beer down to haul her off the couch. My back hit the wall as I watched my father stick his fingers to the back of her throat. She’d overdosed before on pain pills but my father had been able to bring her back then.

  “It was a needle,” I breathed, “She made me put it in a needle.”

  My father stopped what he was doing as he looked over his shoulder at me. The rage and anger were burning in his gaze as my mother convulsed before him.

  “What do we do?” I gasped, feeling the hysteria building.

  “Nothing.” My father clambered to his feet, wobbling slightly as he moved towards the phone.

  “Nothing?” I echoed, watching in horror as her convulsing eased and the froth oozed from her mouth “Is she-?”

  My father ignored me as he dialled for an ambulance. White noise surrounded me as I stood against the wall as my mother’s now lifeless body lay limp beside the coffee table. The empty needle glared at me from the table, taunting me. My eyes burned as I tried to keep my emotions stamped down.

  “Stupid little fucker.” My father was suddenly moving back into the kitchen, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from my mother though.

  “She’s dead.” My own voice sounded foreign to me “She’s gone.”

  “You saw to that,” My father shrugged, dropping down into his armchair “didn’t give you enough credit, boy, never took you for a fucking stone-cold killer.”

  “No.” my entire body began to shake, she’d told me the amount to put in the needle “I didn’t mean to. She told me-”

  “Ha!” my father barked humourlessly “so you fell on her with a needle in your hand? Fuck off with that excuse.”

  I moved away from the wall, side-stepping across the living room until I reached the doorway. My father sat beside my mother, sipping his beer like she was simply passed out. Hatred, fear and guilt raced around my head as hot tears stung my eyes. I had overdosed my own mother. I had killed her.

  I’d killed my mother.

  “Where the fuck you think you’re going, boy?” my father snapped as I moved towards the door, emotions slamming into me from all sides. The sound of sirens in the distance was all the nudge I needed. I turned on my heel, ripping open the front door and flying out like the devil himself was chasing me. My father roared after me as my feet pounded the pavement. Images of my mother convulsing and frothing at the mouth like some kind of rabid animal filled my mind. Her skinny frame jerking as my father tried to make her throw up. It was all too much.

  I turned right at the crossroads, pumping my arms and legs harder as the road turned up a slight hill. The sun was beginning to set across the sky as an ambulance flew down the bottom of the road, heading in the direction I had just come from.

  They were too late.

  My face was wet but I didn’t know if it was from sweat or tears.

  I reached my destination without even realising that this had been my destination at all. I blinked away the fresh batch of tears that filled my eyes. My knees shook and my legs felt like rubber as I climbed the winding path leading up to the white fro
nt door. I climbed the porch steps feeling more lost than I ever thought possible.

  “Drake?” Jo’s voice came from the left as she came from the back of the house with a garbage bag in her hand, “What happened?”

  She dropped the garbage bag, running across to me. Concern was written plainly across her face as she reached out to grip my biceps. It was right then that the damn broke. My knees collapsed beneath me as a gut-wrenching sob tore from my throat. Jo fell to her knees beside me, holding onto me for dear life.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got you, D.” she soothed in my ear before turning her head and calling for her parents. I closed my eyes and sobbed into her shoulder shamelessly as years of pent up anger, pain and sorrow were purged from my system. Jo’s parents gathered me up, ushering me inside before doing their best to console me. My father never came looking for me and never demanded I return home. It was like all the annoyances in his life had been erased with the death of my mother. I’d never felt freer and more unwanted in my entire life.

  I finished telling Scout my shameful childhood secret while staring down at my clasped hands. I couldn’t bring myself to look up at her. I’d opened up to Travis and Lacey about my past and although they tried to hide it, it bothered them. I couldn’t work out if they pitied me or if they were just horrified that fourteen-year-old me had technically killed my mother. The thought of Scout looking at me like that killed me.

  “So there it is. A snippet of my tragic upbringing.” My voice felt thick as I spoke.

  Silence fell between us as I watched a range of emotions flicker behind her green eyes. Sympathy seemed to be the most prominent but there was something else I couldn’t name.

  “I’m proud of you.”

  My head jerked up to look at her. Out of everything I had expected, that was not something I had seen coming. She was proud?

  “Don’t look at me like that.” She shook her head, her eyes own eyes glossy from unshed tears “You were raised in a really shitty situation, beaten regularly and witnessed your mother dying and yet here you are. Drake, shit like that can break people. It can drive them towards everything they despise because they need an escape. What happened to your mother is not your fault. Your mother told you how much to put in, even high she would know how much is too much. It sounds like she was ready to give up and she wanted you there with her. She was a shitty person but in those final moments, in her own twisted maternal way, she wanted her only child there. Or it could have simply been that her body gave up! You father is a selfish asshole who had no right putting that on your shoulders.”

  My breathing deepened as I saw the fire in her eyes. She was angry, sure, but not at me for me.

  “I’m glad you had Jo.” Scout bit her lip as she moved off the bed and closed the distance between us. I looked up as she stood before me. She ran a hand through my hair gently, cupping the back of my head.

  “Go for a shower and then you can tell me about the show.”

  And just like that, we were good. I didn’t like to dwell in the past and she knew that. She understood that. I’d been terrified about telling Scout about my past. About the guilt I had carried around with me all these years but as she looked down at me like I’d hung the fucking moon, I realised I never had a damn thing to worry about. This woman was something else for sure. She was the clarity to my confusion, the relief to my pain.

  She was becoming something important.

  Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ Ｅｌｅｖｅｎ

  Ｓｃｏｕｔ

  I sat on the bed as I listened to the hum of the shower and the drum of the water bouncing off the floor of the tub. Suggesting he get a shower before filling me in on something completely off topic had been as much for my benefit as his. My mind was still racing over what he had told me. I’d tried to keep my face impassive throughout his story but I was certain that I’d failed a couple of times. The thought of a skinny and fearful Drake being terrified and beaten every day of his young life made my stomach churn and my skin crawl. Then his selfish mother asking him to help her get high? I’d felt my chest tighten when he’d explained why he’d helped her get high. I wasn’t mad at him. I wasn’t sickened by his actions. No, I understood completely why he’d done it. What child in that situation wouldn’t have thought along those lines? He was doing his best to survive. Drake may have had more knowledge than most sheltered fourteen-year olds but that didn’t mean he was an expert. He would never had queried if the drugs had been tampered with by the dealer or not.

  A metallic taste filled my mouth as my teeth finally tore at my bottom lip a little too roughly.

  I moved from the bed to retrieve my phone.

  I’d messaged Jo when Drake had first gotten into the shower and hadn’t heard anything back. I didn’t have a key for his room and I was not messaging any of the guys. Images of a smirking Seth jumped to mind and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his smart mouth.

  The shower shut off and I found myself staring at the bathroom door.

  Drake had no clean clothes and he was gloriously naked. My mouth watered as I struggled to move my eyes from the door.

  Wet and naked.

  I closed my eyes as my mind wandered down a dangerous, and sexy, path. I shook my head as I tried to refocus my thoughts. Drake would probably throw on his clothes from the show, walk to his room, get changed and come back. Although if he left, would he come back? He didn’t really have to now that he had shared his past. A past that had now made me realise that anyone on his street could be the leak. A woman dying from an overdose right before her beaten, teenage son made a run for it would have been feed for the rumour mill. I wasn’t surprised that Drake never returned to his hometown.

  The sound of the bathroom door opening had me scampering to the other side of the room to lounge in an empty armchair. I unlocked my phone, crossed my legs and tried to keep my composure. It was safer to have him think that I’d been there the whole time he’d been in the shower than the alternative. There was nothing sexy about a guy finding out you’d been drooling beside the bathroom door for the last ten minutes.

  “You take longer to-” my words came grinding to a halt as my eyes lifted from my phone only to promptly widen and bulge.

  I’d seen Drake on the drums before without a shirt and it was something to behold but Drake freshly out of the shower with nothing but a towel around his hips? A towel that was hanging very low on his hips at that. My mouth dried as I took all of him in. It was no secret that Drake loved his tattoos. Both of his arms and hands were covered but they were only the beginning. The left side of his chest and ribs were also decorated in an array of dark coloured tribal ink. The tribal tattoo started on his chest and swirled its way down to his ribs. My cheeks warmed as my gaze moved from the bottom of his tattoo to his Adonis belt. I’d guess Drake would be in peak physical condition but thinking something and actually seeing it were two different things.

  “I take longer to what?” his deep, rough voice filled the room as I crossed my legs in an attempt to quiet the throbbing between my thighs.

  “Uhm, to, eh, shower.” I stammered “I was getting ready to send a search party after you.”

  His ice blue eyes jumped with excitement as my eyes continued to roam down his body.

  “I’ll bet you were.” Drake moved further into the room and closer to my armchair “Jo come by with my clothes?”

  “She hasn’t answered me.” My body was acutely aware of exactly how much closer Drake was getting. The throbbing between my legs was unbearable and my pulse felt like it was jumping beneath my skin. I uncrossed my legs and sat up straighter in my chair. I had to regain control of the situation and fast. I cleared my throat as heat suffused my skin. Drake was so close now that I had to tilt my head almost all the way back just to meet his gaze.

  He stood before me with nothing but heat in his ice blue orbs.

  “Ever heard of personal space?” I tried to tease. This was too serious, too intense. I had no idea how to handle or diffuse this sit
uation. I felt like I was a lone passenger on a runaway train.

  Drake bent down, bracing his hands on either side of my armchair, before lowering his mouth to my ear. My eyes fluttered closed as his warm breath tickled the wisps of hair beside my ear.

  “Let me take control, darlin’.” He coaxed “Let me make you feel good.”

  The phone fell from my hand as Drake’s lips pressed gently to my earlobe before they made their descent down my jaw and up towards my lips. Christ, at this point I’d give him control and my left fucking kidney if it meant he kept his lips on me. My breathing was so short that I was very nearly on the verge of panting with need. My head tipped to the side, pressing my lips to his as Drake’s hands slipped from the chair to grip my thighs possessively. My hands reached up blindly, seeking his muscular shoulders. I groaned when my fingertips danced over his hot flesh.

  “Need you to say it,” Drake rumbled against my lips “need the words, darlin’.”

  “Take control.” I breathed “You’re in charge.”

  I’d always hated the thought of being out of control. If I wasn’t in control then anything could happen and I would be powerless to stop it. There was no fantasy in that. Yet as I sat there with a painful need throbbing between my thighs and Drake’s lips a whisper away from mine, I gave it up willingly.

  I surrendered completely.

  Drake’s lips pressed back into mine firmly as his hands moved further under my thighs. My arms tightened around him as he lifted me from the chair. My legs wrapped around his lean waist automatically and what had started off as a slow meeting of the lips was now a full-blown war. My hands fisted in his hair as our tongues pressed together fiercely. Drake walked us towards the bed while his hands squeezed my ass roughly. I rocked my hips, desperate for a release.