Amy woke to the sound of cupboard doors slamming. Not just one, but three in quick succession - the percussive rhythm that meant her mother had been awake for a while, already wound up. Her heart sank before she even rolled out of bed. Morning hadn't started, and already it felt ruined.
The chat log with Void was still up on her computer. Amy hadn't shut the PC down after Void signed off. The words sat there like a challenge she couldn't blink away: tomorrow. 4pm. szczecin. bohdana zaleskiego. playground. swings still creak if you breathe on them. She'd read that line at least twenty times since the message dropped, her stomach coiling tighter every time. Szczecin. Given the distance to Gdynia it might as well have been another planet.
She should've laughed, or told this stranger that they were out of their mind. Instead she'd typed, okay fine. creaking swings. ill find it. She didn't even remember hitting enter. Now it was the only thing she could think about, echoing in her head louder than her mother's voice... Until the voice actually came.
"Amy!" Her name was a knife hurled from the kitchen. No endearments. No warmth. Just that grating tone that demanded instead of asking.
Amy put her rig to sleep, as if the screen itself would betray her. "Coming!" she yelled, forcing her voice steady.
"You couldn't be bothered to wash the dishes last night, could you?" her mother said, voice like a blade drawn slow.
Amy froze. The sink was empty - she had washed them. Scrubbed every plate before bed. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"I- I did," she said carefully, quiet.
The smile that curved her mother's lips was anything but pleasant. "You call that washing? Look at the streaks on the glass. Look at the grease on this pan." She lifted the pan, tilting it under the light like she was revealing evidence of some crime. "Lazy. Always lazy."
Amy wanted to scream that it was clean, that there wasn't a single speck on it, that she'd spent fifteen minutes scrubbing that pan until her wrists ached. But she knew better. Arguing meant escalation. Arguing meant things breaking, voices rising, doors slamming, maybe even worse.
"Sorry," Amy whispered.
"You're always sorry," her mother snapped, throwing words like obsidian shards. "Pathetic little apology machine. Do you even realize how much of my time you waste?"
Amy's hands tightened on the sponge as she picked up the pan and walked towards the sink. She scrubbed harder, letting the burn of the water scald her skin just to have something else to focus on.
Her mother's voice rose behind her. "I work, Amy. I hold this entire house together, and you-" A hand landed hard on Amy's shoulder, nails digging through the fabric of her shirt. "-you can't even manage the bare minimum. What are you good for?"
Amy bit down hard on her lip. She could feel the tremor in her own arms, the instinct to flinch away, but she stayed locked in place, scrubbing the pan until her reflection warped in the suds. If she stayed silent, maybe it would pass.
But silence was never good enough.
"Answer me!"
"I'm-" Her throat caught. "I'm trying."
Her mother scoffed, a sharp, humorless bark. "Trying. God, listen to yourself. Do you think trying puts food on the table? Do you think trying pays for electricity? You're a useless drain, Amy. Just like your father. At least he had the decency to leave."
The words landed harder than the slap that followed, though both left her reeling. Her cheek stung; the after-taste of metal filled her mouth. Amy didn't move, didn't look up. She knew better. If she showed anger, it would spiral. If she showed pain, it would be mocked. She kept scrubbing, vision blurring with tears she refused to let fall.
Her mother finally stepped back, muttering something about "weakness" and "thankless brats." Amy finished the dishes in silence, then drifted back to her room like a ghost. She shut the door and slid down against it, her breath shuddering out of her lungs.
She finally checked if her lip piercings were still intact. Her mother hadn't always hit her. That part came later, after the divorce, when the silent treatment and the sharp remarks stopped getting the same reaction. Words became slaps, slaps became shoves. Rarely hard enough to leave the kind of marks that teachers or neighbors would notice. Just enough to remind her where she belonged - beneath, beneath, beneath.
Amy pulled her knees to her chest, staring at the black monitor screen sitting on her desk. Void's words still glowed behind her eyes. good girl. don't be late. The strange comfort in them twisted against the rawness in her chest. She barely even knew who this person was, weirdly enough though, Void felt leagues better than the woman in the next room.
The day crawled. Each hour dragged its own fresh wound. Her mother found reasons to berate her: the laundry wasn't folded "properly," the vacuuming missed a corner, her tone when she answered was "defensive." Every little thing turned into a trial.
By noon, Amy's stomach was growling, but lunch was a punishment, not a right. Her mother ate standing at the counter, scrolling through her phone, while Amy hovered in the doorway.
"You don't deserve any," her mother said without looking up. "Calories are wasted on someone like you. Maybe if you starved a little, you'd finally learn discipline."
Amy retreated without a word. Back in her room, she sat on the bed, arms wrapped tight around her middle as hunger twisted inside her. She told herself it wasn't worth crying. Crying gave her mother ammunition. But her body betrayed her, tears sliding hot down her face as she buried herself in the pillow to muffle the sound.
By late afternoon, the bruises bloomed. Her mother had caught her flinching when a plate slipped in her hand, and the reaction had been immediate: fingers digging into her arm, shaking her hard enough that her teeth clicked. "Look at me when I speak!" she'd hissed, then shoved her back into the counter. Amy had stumbled, hip striking wood, and now the ache pulsed with every movement. She didn't need a mirror to know it would purple by morning.
She lay resigned on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Every insult echoed in her skull, louder with each replay. "Useless. Pathetic. Burden." The words stuck like gum under her skin. No therapy had managed to peel them away. She'd tried. The college counselor, the psychologist her mother grudgingly let her see for three sessions before declaring it "a waste of money." Later, in secret, she'd scraped enough savings to see another one. Then another. They all gave her the same lines: "You have to set boundaries." As if Amy hadn't tried locking her door, hiding in her room, speaking less. Boundaries meant nothing when the other person delighted in crossing them.
Not even psychiatrists had helped. The pills dulled her for a while, made the tears come slower, but they didn't silence what was happening in her head. Her mother's voice had become her own, whispering that she was nothing, would always be nothing.
Amy rubbed at her wrist, nails digging crescent moons into the skin. The thought surfaced again - the one she despised, one that clung to her like a parasite: "Maybe it would be easier to just stop existing." It was equal parts threat and lullaby, and she hated how comforting it sounded.
And yet - Void's words were still sitting in the back of her mind: a volatile beacon of hope.
She staggered towards her desk, legs trembling, and hit the power button on her rig. The chat log flared back to life in the glow of the screen. Her cursor hovered, her pulse rattling in her throat. She could almost hear her mother through the wall, spitting the same poison as always - "you'll never make it, you're weak, you're nothing." Amy's jaw clenched. Perhaps if she slipped away without a word, she could finally prove her wrong.
Her fingers fumbled as she pulled up the train schedules: Gdynia to Szczecin. The numbers on the screen made her stomach lurch; the one-way ticket would gut nearly everything she'd scraped together from odd babysitting jobs, the meager savings sitting in her account, waiting for the right moment. She'd always called it her "rainy day fund," half a joke, half a shield. The irony didn't escape her now - sunshine had never really been part of the equation.
She clicked through, biting her lip so hard it split. When the payment cleared, she sat frozen, staring at the confirmation. Departure: tomorrow, 10AM. Arrival: 3:30PM. A way out of her personal hell.
Her breath shook as she leaned back, letting the tears fall again. It wasn't triumph - it was terror mixed with a sliver of relief. She was risking everything: if her mother found out, she'd never hear the end of it. Maybe she'd end up on the street for real. But if she stayed, she knew exactly what the rest of her life looked like - more bruises, more silence, more erasure.
In the muffled hum of the house, she could hear her mother's laughter from the living room, sharp and cruel at some TV joke. Amy wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, whispering to the empty room.
"I'm going. I don't care if it kills me. I'm fucking going."