“It’s Slasher Saturday!” Joy squealed as she hugged her big sister.
“Sure kiddo.” Faith beamed back. “I got most of Strangetown Massacre recorded on my phone yesterday. It was a quiet showing too so hopefully not too many heads popping up to obscure the picture – if you think you can handle it?”
Joy puffed out her little chest. “Pfft! Nothing scares me, sis!”
“That’s my girl.”
“Faith, can I have a word?” Her mother’s voice was soft from across the room. “Joy, please go to your room.”
“Oh but mum!” Joy huffed making a big show of stomping off down the hallway and slamming the door.
“Sit with me Faith.”
Faith crossed the room and took a seat across the table from her mother. “I’m sitting mum.”
Her mother turned towards her. Faith wondered which conversation was coming. Joy is too young to watch that kind of movie! or Don’t make pirate copies of movies at work!
Faith took a slow breath. One… two…
“I got a call from the landlord yesterday…”
Oh? Faith stopped counting.
“…He says he’s given us enough time to make the missed payments. We have until Thursday to find the remaining funds or we face eviction.”
“Thursday?” Faith’s eyes were wide, “how much do we owe?”
Her mother lowered her voice. “About fourteen hundred.”
Faith shook her head. “How will we get fourteen hundred simoleons by Thursday?”
“I don’t know Faith. He said if we can get five hundred to him by then, he’ll consider postponing the eviction, again.” She hesitated. “Could you take any extra shifts at the cinema? Or perhaps we can sell something?”
Faith silently fumed. She could work every single shift before Thursday and wouldn’t earn five hundred simoleons. She looked around the sparse room with its bare walls. What did her mother think they could sell? The windows?
“I’ll see what I can do,” she mumbled.
Her mother smiled, her blank gaze settled somewhere to the left of Faith’s actual face.
“Thank you Faith. I hate having to ask you to do this.”
Faith silently mouthed some words that would have earned her a clip around the ear but she responded gently, “It’s OK. I’ll call work, I might be able to get an earlier shift in this evening.”
Adina reached across the table to her daughter. Faith leaned awkwardly over, laying her hand so her mother could find it and pat it softly. “Thank you, my lovely girl.” She rose from her seat and felt around for her stick. “Could you please give me a hand with breakfast?”
“Of course.” Faith got to her feet and followed her mother to the kitchen. She wasn’t smiling but her voice sounded like she was. It was all that really mattered.
Didn’t anyone at the cinema ever answer the phone? She’d tried a dozen times. Then again, Johnny was the manager on shift today. He was such a creep and he’d surely put Zoe on today’s rota. The two of them were probably half-naked in the store room already, far too busy to answer any calls. She’d just have to turn up a few hours early for her shift and hope that he would agree to pay her.
Oh, her stomach was giving her grief today, but April had told her it would. She had expected it to be much worse, based on April’s description. The nausea however was something else entirely. She didn’t know how she was going to take eight hours of watching fat kids stuffing sticky popcorn into their faces. She had only managed to eat her ashtray of a breakfast because she knew how hard she’d had to work to earn it.
Faith wandered back in to the living room. Her sister was watching some age-appropriate television – much to Joy’s disappointment – and her mum was wrestling with the bin, trying to get the bag out.
“Allow me.” Faith intervened.
“I can do it.” Her mother insisted, oblivious to the banana skin that had slipped out of the hole she had made in the bag.
“Please mum. I don’t want you going out there anyway. It’s icy.”
The last thing she needed was for her mother to have a fall and be even more incapable of looking after Joy.
It was cold this morning. A light snowfall, unusual for April, had dusted the run-down houses in her neighbourhood. It sparkled in the sunlight and looked almost magical.
As she took in the sugar-coated scenery she felt her insides flip.
Her knees buckled beneath her as pain rolled through her torso. OK, now this hurt.
She gripped the fence for support, waiting for the sensation to subside. Powerless, she felt her body crumple to the floor, the breath taken from her. She felt so full; felt something swell up inside her like a balloon, filling every cell before it reached her skin and pushed its way through. A heavy void was all that remained. Then, with the ease of drawing in air, she felt something else fill her. Something cold. Something dark. She clamped her teeth around her scream.
Adina was starting lunch when Faith entered the kitchen again. She shivered as her daughter approached her. “Who’s there?”
Faith startled. Her mother hadn’t seen her face for many years, but she always knew when Faith entered the room – or tried to sneak out of it.
“How do you know?” Faith had asked of her mother one time as she was half in and half out of her bedroom window after curfew. “A mother always knows,” Adina had chuckled, “and my ears still work.”
Now her grey eyes narrowed in Faith’s general direction.
“It’s… it’s me mum.”
Adina reached out her fingers. This time, Faith didn’t have to position herself for her mother to find her. She stroked her fingertips gently down Faith’s face, then pulled her hand away, clutched at her chest.
“Faith,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
Faith backed away and felt her phone vibrate at her hip. Shaken and welcome for the distraction, she left her mother unanswered and ran down the hallway to her bedroom to answer it.
“Hey babes, it’s Johnny.”
Faith bit her tongue. She disliked Johnny at the best of times, but even more so when he called her babes.
“Hi Johnny. Thanks for calling back. I was just wondering. Can I get any overtime today?”
Johnny sucked in his breath. “You called me?” She could hear him tapping on his phone. “Oh shoot, you did call me. Ten times! Sorry about that babes, I’m a busy man. Anyway, I was just calling you to let you know that the cinema’s closed, so no need to come in tonight.”
“Closed?”
“Yeah, burst water pipe. Whole place is flooded. Looks like it’ll be a good couple of weeks before we’re open for business.”
Faith shook her head, disbelieving. “But I need to work.”
“We all need to work, babes. But hey, if you’re really struggling for something to do tonight, come round to mine later; maybe we can even reach some sort of agreement.”
She couldn’t hang up fast enough.
Faith brought her fingertips to her cheek, still feeling where her mother’s had burned into her. She was staring at her phone wondering if she should call April when a message popped up on the screen.
Ugh, it was probably Johnny sending her his address. She hoped he wasn’t sending her an accompanying image.
She ran her tongue over her teeth and felt a surge through her body.
Maybe she would go round to his tonight. She opened the message.
My place. Urgent.
It wasn’t Johnny.
On the way, she replied.
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Almost Eternal 
Ok we’ve definitely got big gaps in what we’re seeing. I demand more information 😀
This is interesting – at first, I was thinking what a crap parent Faith’s mother is for mum is for making her make up for her financial problems and putting that kind of pressure on her, as if it’s all on Faith to support them both… but then, she also seems to be the only parent that’s actually noticed their child’s transformation, so that’s some major props to her… meaning I’m at a loss of what to make of her!
You’re also having me wonder if April is really the main character of this story – it feels like right now, we’re getting to connect much more with Melinda and Faith, really getting to understand their motivations, while April, we only really know on a surface level. Which I gather is intentional, but I do wonder if this is just a detour that will bring us back to April eventually, or if we were just thrown off at the beginning…
Or maybe Sandy is secretly our main all along 😛
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Ok, I admit I might be withholding some teensy bits of information…
I’m delighted that you picked that up about Faith’s mum/the mothers in general.
Ooh you are a deep reader, aren’t you? All intentional.
Sandy as the main? Well she does always have to be the centre of attention.
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I can’t help it, I read the same way I write 😊 Minus the fact that the second paragraph of my comment is barely a sentence 😂 Do you ever get that thing when you’re trying to express one thing in two different ways, but you somehow end up using both to ensure it makes no sense? That’s my comments in a nutshell, i.e. pure brain dump.
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Ha! Love it! I didn’t notice at first, it must be an innate form of language.
Your brain dumps are very useful to me. I don’t pretend this story will be perfect but going down your comments thinking ‘hey, I’ve covered most of these points in future chapters’ makes me feel like I’m not just totally winging it.
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What a sad background Faith has. What happened to her mother’s eyes? I’m feeling so so sorry for her. From her actions it’s not apparent. But Adina’s cautionary, polite tone along with the fact that she couldn’t bring it in herself to reprimand Faith speaks to me that she feels guilty and most likely feels incompetent. I can’t imagine all the pain and shame she’s feeling for asking her daughter to take on her duties. Is there governmental aid for handicaps in your story?
No wonder Faith is such a furious teenager. She’s under so much pressure and shoulders the family’s financial burden and her mom’s wellbeing. What a good kid. She’s constantly tiptoeing (physically, but emotionally too) around her mom to care for her feelings. Luckily for Joy she’s too young to notice. But that can’t help with Faith’s wellbeing at all. Where the heck is dad?
She needs to give her mom space to feel competent again though. Lots of people with disabilities need to feel useful. Hopefully they get some intervention for everyone.
I vote Johnny as vamp feed.
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More will be revealed later but yeah… you dont get to being like Faith for nothing. Adina definitely feels incompetent and yes, where the heck IS dad?
Eww no, he’d be all slimy.
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Seconded Johnny as vamp feed. Just based on that introduction I was like, welp, there’s one character I wouldn’t mind seeing vanishing into a red mist. That’s one thing I like about SimLit. Male power fantasies in Literature (*coughUpdikecough*) be like “and then the 52-year-old man finally got to fondle the 13-year-old girl’s honeysuckle-nipple budding breasts behind a shed” and fanfic and SimLit are more “the disgusting greasy creep cornered her, so she turned into a Lovecraftian tentacle abomination and chopped his dick off, then she ran home, pulled an entire sleeve of oreos and some cab sav from the pantry, and watched Pitch Perfect for the fifth time that week.”
I’m really feeling for Joy here—if she’s feeling lonely, I want her to know that her friend-soulmate is chilling in another sim-universe and would be thrilled, as a seven-year-old girl, to go through some infectious-disease medical textbooks with her while watching every slasher film ever.
Agreed on the mom thing. Adina’s 100% paying more attention to her daughters than the other two moms despite missing a sense. Although I do like that they actually *can* sell the windows, and that does make perfect sense in their universe. And I see you doing the narrate-in-kinda-your-voice-and-kinda-the-character’s-voice move, and I love how aggressive, but totally relatable and justified, Faith’s inner monologue is compared to everyone else.
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If a dick-chopping romp through the darkness is what you’re after Dolly, do hang around.
I don’t know if you’re saying that narrating like that is a good thing or not, but I enjoy trying to think like my characters. Especially Faith. I never knew I had so much pent up aggression.
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I hope it’s a good thing, because I do it in like every chapter from Book II onward. As for the darkness, bahaha. Try me. You’ll have to do a *lot* before I stop eating popcorn and laughing.
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It may have to do with those stories usually being written by creepy old men, while fanfictions are usually written by women who had enough of stories written by creepy old men.
Looks like most simlit writers are female too, at least I could count the male ones on less than a hand, while there’s a lot who I know are female.
That said, I second dick-chopping tentacles.
Less so a Vamp-turned Johnny, that one is probably harder to get rid off. (or who knows, every story needs a character that’s safe to hate 😏 )
Okay I’m out again.
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Another vote for dick-chopping. Guess I’d better go make the poses. 😆
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I would LOVE for Faith to show up and devour Johnny whole. And maybe take all his money…because she needs it and that guy seems like an asshole.
Found family is one of my favorite tropes and I feel like slowly, but surely, that’s getting set up here. I mean who is looking out for these girls besides each other?
I’m going to say it now, and I’m probably wrong, but that pipe bursting is SUSPICIOUS.
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If draining jerks is your kinda thing, do hang around.
Yeah, I enjoy me a found family too. Clueless, undead girls gotta stick together, right?
I would say the pipe bursting was convenient. Or highly inconvenient, depending on who’s perspective you’re looking from.
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When Adina asked Faith if she can take extra shifts, first thought I had was wonder why they were so terribly poor, and if Adina is sick and maybe they have high medical bills. It didn’t cross my mind that she’d be a terrible mother before I read the other comments. The mood was kinda soft/loving, idk how to explain. So I guess, compliment for writing?
I love that she named her daughters Faith and Joy.
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Everything’s open to interpretation.
Yeah, I mean those names alone mean she cared more than Broof’s mum, right? 😉
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Or Sandy but at least April *is* used as a name
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Okay, so. Adina´s trouble with eyesight is obvious enough to me, so I don´t think anything bad about her at all. If she can´t even take out the trash, it would likely be very difficult for her to keep a well paying job. Or any kind of job for that matter. (I´m talking based on what jobs we see in Simland, not real life, mind.) It suddenly brings so much light into why Faith is the way that she is, too. That´s difficult to deal with. It also shows so well in how Faith handled her transformation, not even screaming. She learned to shut things up inside, eh?
Also, I advise against Johnny as vamp food. He´d probably taste even worse than mortal food does right now. 😡
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Maybe she learned to shut things up or maybe embracing the darkness just wasn’t as hard for her…
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I don´t know. If she´d done that, wouldn´t she have bailed out of there? Right here, she just comes across as pretty brave. 🙂 Struggling, yeah, but doing what she can.
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