LIM 01

BLISS

I want to d*e.

Their laughter is sickening like choking chirpings from a sick cricket.

They say laughter is contagious, I say laughter is the worst disease anyone can ever have.

I am there again, in my dark basement a two-day-old leftover pizza at my feet. Slowly I pick the pieces, not minding the offensive smell and I eat it all, swatting away the buzzing insect sneaking their way to it.

The basement door opens and she comes in. I look up from my food and stare at her, the woman who is my guardian. Aunt Patty. I don't refer to her as "Aunt" even though she is my mother's sister because I had made that mistake once and she had hit me severally with a mopping stick, not without her telling me how evil I am and how I deserve everything she does to me because I am nothing but bad luck just like my mother.

"Good evening ma'am," I greet as she stalks her way toward me, her heels making annoying clicking sounds on the floor. It only sickens me the more.

"Did you say your prayers before your evil hungry mouth devoured that food?" She asks me.

Did I forget to mention that Aunty Patty is a deaconess in the Pentecostal Church we attend, the only one in the whole of South Dakota, and her husband is a missionary preacher who is rarely home except on special occasions? Her son is a Sunday school teacher and her daughter is a chorister.

The perfect definition of a Christian family!

"Of course, you can't even utter the lord's prayer rightly because you are nothing but a demon who will surely be cast into the lake of fire," she continues in her annoying high-pitched voice.

I say nothing as I stare at her, something I know she hates but I still do it every time.

"Only the Lord is still merciful to you that he still keeps you alive when he should have just taken you with your whore mother," I cringe inwardly at the mention of my mother's death.

The one I had never really known. I hated hearing Patty rant on and on about how my mother was six feet beneath the ground because of her grievous sins.

"You still won't understand and be thankful that you even have a roof over your head and eat at most twice a day"

Lies.. I barely eat once a day... Eating to me is like a ceremonial event, it only happens once in a blue moon.

It's her normal routine, always reminding me that I don't deserve the benevolence extended to me by her and her family. They were the closest thing to parents I had ever known all eighteen years of my life. My mother had died while giving birth to me, she was sick with gastrovascular cancer —whatever that was.

"I'm sorry Ma'am," I say, even though I know she hates it when I say sorry and I know she will hit me for that.

I am right and she does hit me over the face. I wince as I sniff in the metallic smell of blood but I don't cry. I never do.

My skin is so tender that even just a little hit has blood spurting out in no time which of course is also considered as one of my evil attributes.

"Sorry for what? I have never asked for your sorry... Your sorry should go to God who of course is still keeping you in good health, even though you are extensively ugly with no hope of beauty, you should be thankful you are still alive because you do not deserve—"

"Mum, you have a visitor," Gabe, her son's voice interrupted her. It is not the first time she is telling me how ugly I am. How the demon inside me has crawled up to distort my appearance.

How no one will ever love me because I am only a piece of trash not worth loving. Normally I should take a mirror and check out how ugly I am but I am far from normal and I don't because I don't want to see my face.

The face that has done nothing but allow me to get this ill-treatment from my aunt. And so every day I tell myself the bitter truth.

"I am ugly, very ugly and I am nothing but an evil demon who brings bad luck and is to be cast into the lake of fire at the end of time."

Patty glares at me one last time, muttering what I know is "devil incarnate" and leaves slamming the door shut.

I sigh and lay back down, closing my eyes to this unfair world and wandering away into the world of fantasies and dreams.

⇜⇜⇜⇜

In my dreams, my fantasy world. I am a rock star with my beautiful face shown all over the world.

My stage name is "Singing Bliss" and I am far away from this world of suffering. I have a fiancée who loves me so much and goes to any extent for me.

A girl can dream, can't she? Only that they will never come true as long as I am stuck in this basement for as long as I can take.

They are all figments of my imagination and me— I am only going to wither away like the dry summer leaves falling to the ground.

Maria's voice is what wakes me up. It is Sunday morning and as usual, Maria is practicing for the special service she is going to render at church today.

Maria is Patty's daughter, she is a role model to every young female in South Dakota... Everybody wants to be as devoted as Maria— daughter of Missionary Evangelist Phillips and Deaconess Patricia.

It's normal, nobody knows me or rather nobody acknowledges me in church and our little Dakota missionary school Patty enrolled me in.

Of course, nobody wants to associate themselves with the demon-possessed girl Deaconess Patty and her family are stuck raising because they are so blessed with the divine grace of God.

And every time people see me with them, in my baggy tattered clothes. They rather bless the Lord for the kind heart of the Phillips family and pray the demon inside me is cast out immediately.

I have learned to live with my demons, I love my demons, and I'd rather be cast together with the demons out and far away.

She is coming again, I can hear heels as they approach my door.

"Get ready for church Bliss," she says without opening the door.

"Yes ma'am," I reply to her and wait until she has left before I feel my way around searching for my bathing bucket. I practically do everything in this basement. Even though it is always dark... I have learned to live with the darkness and it doesn't bother me anymore.

⇜⇜⇜⇜⇜⇜

After coming back from Sunday service, Patty suddenly calls me up to the living room. She has never done this before and I can't help but wonder what she wants to do.

A woman is sitting opposite her when I get there. One look at this woman and I don't like her. I turn to Patty curiously.

"Here she is," Patty says to the woman whose eyes scan me thoroughly before she finally smiles.

"I will take her," she says.

My eyes widen. Take me?