Candy Quackenbush can walk on water. (toitshour) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-02-06 20:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, candy quackenbush |
Who: Candy Quackenbush.
What: Dreaming.
When: Monday night.
Where: The apartment she shares with Remy.
Rating: R for violence.
Status: Trigger Warning: physical abuse, verbal abuse.
Everyone had always commented on how much Candy Quackenbush looked like her father Bill. And maybe that was true on the outside - she had Bill's dark hair and high cheekbones, to be sure, but on the inside, no two people had ever been more different. Bill had been content to work a machinist's job during the day and drink himself into a stupor at night. Candy, she'd always dreamed of something more. Most of the dreams had been good, and since her arrival in California, even better. But sometimes, if Candy was being perfectly honest, she'd admit that she craved sleep without stories. Candy didn't dread the dreams where she was drifting on the waters of the Izabela. Those dreams were miraculous - the Abarat and its islands were so real that she felt she could almost touch them and it made her feel transcendent. No, the dreams that made Candy whimper and go fetal were the dreams that were just memories.
She hadn't even broken the stupid lamp, it had been her brother Rickey who was playing baseball in the house. But it was some sort of novelty Elvis lamp, some limited edition thing that her father had loved more than any of his children. She hadn't even had time to try to glue it back together - she, the youngest, yet somehow the one in de facto charge - when Bill had come storming in from work. He'd been like some sort of missile, honing in on the ceramic fragments before his work boots were even off. Candy's mother had been covering someone's shift at the hotel, which, in retrospect had been good. It would've made things worse to have her mother around.
Which wasn't to say things were good.
"Who the fuck did it?" Bill's words were poison, and he spat them at his children. Rickey and Billy immediately blanched, shaking their heads and backing up. "It was you, wasn't it, you little pissant?" Bill reached out with a calloused hand, snatching Ricky by the shirt collar and tugging him. Rickey's cry made Candy's blood boil, and she stood between Billy and her father.
"I did it." Candy's voice was quiet, sullen, barely audible above Rickey's sobs. Bill didn't let go of her brother, instead moving to grab a fistful of Rickey's hair.
Candy folded her arms, squaring her shoulders and glaring daggers at her father. "You hear me? I did it. I broke your stupid fucking lamp!"
"I don't believe you." Bill glared at his youngest child, his only daughter.
"I don't give a shit if you believe it or not." Candy walked over to the shards, putting her boot covered foot on one and grinding it down. "Because now you can't ever put it back together again."
In two swift movements, Bill let go of Rickey and crossed the room to backhand Candy. Bill had always been an imposing lunk of a man, and Candy had always been slight and petite. She flew back against the wall, wincing and crying out in pain. She could hear the thunder of her brothers running up the stairs in between Bill breaking his usual rules and hitting her in the chest hard, over and over, right, left, right, left, right -
A clap of thunder sounded as Candy cried out, sitting up and reflexively raising her hand to the star shaped scar on her chest in the shape of her father's high school class ring. She hadn't woken Remy up, thankfully, but she wasn't going to be able to sleep again. Shakily she climbed out of the bed, grabbing her cigarettes and stepping outside onto the patio in her tank top and panties, pulling her knees to her chest. The flame from the lighter shook with her hand as she lit a smoke, gritting her teeth between inhales and exhales. He'd made her cry once. He wouldn't have that again.
Still sitting that way until the sun rose, Candy managed to stop shaking. She hadn't shed a single tear.