Black Hole Sun

It was dark in the room when Holly opened her eyes and looked around the room. She could hear shouting again and knew that this mean her parents were drinking. At three Holly already had that concept down pat. The drinking began when her mom rolled out of bed in the afternoon and did not stop throughout the day. Holly did not know to feel angry about this concept- it just was the way it was. She loved her mommy and daddy and did not like it when they fought so she began to cry, hoping to defer the parents squabbles to the more important subject- Her.

After twenty minutes Holly had all but given up. She was quiet now and laid in bed but could not sleep over them hollering. She decided that it was now or never- and pulled herself from the safety of her room and walked into the loud, brightly lit hallway. Her father was in his bedroom- and her mother was desperately trying to break into the bedroom. The door was opened a tiny bit so she knew it wasn't locked..... it seems silly that something was pushed up against it to keep her mommy out. Daddy must of made a mistake.

"Mommy?" Holly said in her most tired voice. Her mommy stopped what she was doing immediately- looking almost embarrassed by her daughter catching her in this position, but almost directly after Jean directed a plan. The child could fit thru the gap left from the dresser- and her small child would have no problem asking Michael to come back into the hallway. Maybe an apology would suffice.

"Holly, sweetie. Go into daddy's room and tell him to come out, that mommy is so sorry." Jean smiled at how clever she was being and Holly instantly complied. She couldn't wait for him to be in hitting range of her again.

Holly squeezed her tiny frame into the room and walked carefully up to her daddy's bed. She thought it was so funny how her friend Kristen's mommy and daddy share a bed- when her parents have different rooms all together. Later this will horrify her but for now she just thinks her parents are normal and everyone else is 'strange'.

"daddy?" Holly said quietly- touching her fathers face. "daddy..... mommy is so sorry..... come out to the hallway."

"Go to Bed Holly!" her daddy barked back to her. "Stay out of This."

Quietly as she came she felt her way back to the hallway and to her mother- standing in wait drinking from her glass. When Jean saw that her daughter had failed she collapsed onto the floor hysterical, begging god to bring back her son. Holly knew all too well where this night was going but this is the first night that it would forever be burned into her brain. She desperately wanted to go back to bed but she just could not leave her poor mommy crying in the bathroom. As she sat down loyally her mom opened up the rusty blue cabinet and pulled out a stack of pictures of the baby she had when she was a teenager, almost twenty years prior.

"This is Jeffy. He died when he was three months old. Its called crib death. Sometimes kids stop breathing. You could just stop breathing. His daddy was a heroin addict." Jean started the spiel the same time each way and it always made Holly shiver. As her mom talked she couldn't bring herself to look at the pictures so instead she watched her mothers cigarette burn another big hole into the tile floor of the bathroom. She began tracing the other holes all around her and wondered if they were all from nights like this or if her mom used to bring the pictures out while she was alone.

The sun was coming up when Holly was finally allowed to return to her bedroom- desperate for the escape from her mothers harsh words about her and her father. She didn't understand why her mother hated them both so much- or what the phrase "you were born because it was illegal to abort you" meant.