Copyright: This work of FanFiction is the intellectual property of K-NICE and her IRL persona. No copying,
distributing or editing of this material is permitted without the express permission of the creator,
K-Nice, under United States copyright law.
 
Ó K-Nice, 1999

Reb waited, anticipating the swift change that would come over her mother when her anger reached it's summit. Reb trembled with sweet expectation of what was to come. She heard her mother seething curses in her direction fast and hard and then faster and harder. Her mother's climax came suddenly as she stopped screaming.

Her face burned into Reb's memory, so familiar and yet so strangely different every time she saw it. Which was often lately. She thought about the faces of the mothers of her classmates from junior high school. She was lost in a reverie, knowing that their faces must sometimes look like her mother's did now.

The fist came then, sure and swift as expected but Reb was too distracted to dodge. It hit its mark strongly and sealed her fate.

The hatred poured through her nails as they ripped at live flesh. The arms had anger-strength when they lifted the ball of human dung from the corner and slammed it against the far wall. The picture frame softened the impact and in appreciation, the flesh provided a new home for the slivers of broken glass and chunks of twisted aluminum. The body met the putrid mass before it could
shrink to the floor again. The first pounded, the feet kicked, the arms threw and the hand slapped for twenty solid, hard, angry minutes before the anger subsided enough for the body to give a last kick and leave the room, vindicated.
 
Reb's mother went into the bathroom and took a shower, then prepared for another afternoon shift at the factory. Once outside of the shabby, whitewashed bungalow, she saw the liquor bottles that had accumulated near the garbage can throughout the week. Instead of placing them in the trash, she threw rocks at them until there was a glittering pile of broken glass. The sound that prevailed was her sigh at the sound the shattering bottles. She couldn't even afford Wild Turkey nowadays, with all the bills from that rancid waste of space she had left broken, covered in shiny bruises and glass shards on the living room floor.

Life was ironic that way.

She walked down the drive onto the dirt road to walk to the corner, where a flash of thigh might earn her a ride to work. She hoped.
 

Reb tried to open her eyes but they were covered with microscopic glass shavings and far to swollen to be attractive. The body thought she was ugly. Maybe it was right. She couldn't think of the thing that hurt her so badly as her mother. Her mother never touched her, only the faceless, formless body.

She couldn't move her head. She suspected she had been out cold for a good hour and probably had a crick in her neck. She stood up blindly. She was very careful not to touch herself of the wall lest she leave bloodstains on the greasy wallpaper. She shuffled her way to the bathroom.

Reb sat gingerly on the toilet seat. She slowly, meticulously picked the glass shavings off her eyes, cutting her fingers in the process. She longed to walk down the lane to Miss Anna's house. The old woman would surely know how to remove the glass best. But she just couldn't bear it, depending and telling and being touched.

She relieved her eyes of their bloating with one of her mother's steaks from the freezer. She rested her head against the tub and rested for a few minutes.  When she could see again, she laid the meat carefully aside and picked the visible glass and metal chips from her skin. She carefully put them in a paper grocery bag. The bag was filled and folded and set aside for later. Reb bathed the blood away with peroxide and cotton balls, not even flinching from the sting.

Uncle John called her Reb, short for rebel, Rogue but she was not strong enough to prevent this. She felt ashamed of herself for goading her mother into such behavior. Such hatred.

She bandaged the cuts and rubbed the bruises with alcohol. She slipped into a warm tub filled with cheap dime store bubbles, bought with her birthday money. She only afforded herself a half-hour to soak but it soothed the aches and contusions. She stepped out of the tub, got a fine toothed comb and stood naked, aside from her tissue-paper thin, thigh length robe, before the bathroom mirror to comb the glass from her hair, gently picking it out of her scalp. She hoped she had removed it all but she had no more time to waste on herself.

Reb dressed in a baggy sweater and worn, faded, hand-me-down jeans. She disposed of the paper bag in the trashcans outside, carefully avoiding the mess of broken glass. She returned to the shack and got the broom and mop. She cleaned the bathroom to military specs and removed all traces of glass from the floor of the living room lest her mother cut her foot. She disposed of the glass and the rest of the picture frame in the trash.

Reb then walked down the dusty road to town and stopped into the drugstore to pick up a replacement frame with the last of her savings. She returned home and mounted it where the other had been and cleaned the blood marks form the wall.

When she was satisfied that there were no traces left, she washed her hands and retrieved the steak from the bathroom. She prepared two meals, one steak with cute little baby carrots, snap beans and mashed potatoes with gravy and a bottle of her mother's not-so-secret secret wine. The wine was cheap, the steak was on the small side but the second meal made the first seem gourmet. She quickly ate her meal of a small pork chop and soggy leftover broccoli.

Reb greeted her mother cheerfully when she returned home, hoping to get back in her good graces. She hoped the body would not hurt any more, that her mother would someday think she was real and human enough to never touch her again.