Birthday Girl Seven Parker

Birthday Girl

Seven Parker

It was seven days after her eleventh birthday that Annie decided to kill herself. She shoved her head down into the thick, rough blanket her mother knitted for her and wailed at the unfairness of the world. The blanket smelled old like crumbly earth. They had gotten her gifts. Plenty of gifts. They bought her a trendy matching Bratz purse, a shiny Pandora charm bracelet, and a big pink plastic dollhouse that came with a convertible the size of a lunch box. But even they were becoming aware that she was too old for these things. So they finally got her a shiny new iPhone just like her friend had, with brand new headphones to boot. If companionship was what she truly desired, they got her a puppy and a kitten to see which she’d prefer. While they hadn’t got her a horse, they had bought her a year’s worth of riding lessons. But she never asked for any of those things. She only asked for one thing, three months before her birthday. She asked her Dad; she could always count on him to cave. She waited and waited as the day drew near, and when her father finally asked her what she wanted, she marched her full height up to his waist. Her eyes gleamed with determination. She looked up at him. The scruffy weeds of his stubble were growing back. She used to giggle at the way it scratched her hand when she rubbed it. But she didn’t do that now. Now she focused all her energy into puffing up those big hazel eyes and pouting her lips into the most serious puppy-dog beggar. For a moment he smiled down on her and seemed warm, like before. “I’m almost eleven,” she began, feeling it important to establish her newfound maturity. Annie had prepared for this. She had spent hours on Google looking up the biggest most meaningful words. Then she had sat cross legged in front of the mirror with cheap Walmart earbuds and her mom’s laptop listening intently to the way the robot pronounced the word, trying to mimic its sounds. She felt smart when she got it right, but now looking up at her father, she was reminded how small she was. She gulped and continued, “I’ve learned a lot about the compliculaties of life.” Her father nodded at her to continue. She squirmed beneath him searching for the words that would make him understand. “I’m almost a teenager.” That wasn’t it either. All those words, all her preparation undone, turned to soupy mush in her mouth. She searched and sputtered at the syllables for the words she had memorized, but finally, she gave up and just said it, “I want you and mommy to live together again.” Silence. Her father’s warmth faded. His eyes formed a wall of an apology. They could give her two birthday parties, but they couldn’t give her that.

Eight days after her birthday, Annie climbed up the little wood ladder to the top of the bunk bed and began the work of tying the blanket into a noose. She would show them. They would find her, mature as Shakespeare, and know they should’ve listened. She grimly moved Mr. Piddles, the biggest Teddy Bear, from his corner on her bed, to face the wall instead. The empty space he left from where he was supposed to be, gripped at the finality of her decision. But she knew she had to spare him the sight of her, dangling. This

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wasn’t Mr. Piddles fault. These mature thoughts were flashing through her mind, and bit by bit the reality, the horror of it all, was creeping through her chest. She tried to focus on tying the blanket around the post at the top of the bunk bed. The blue wool her mother had knitted it with was thick and hairy, and strings of it would tickle at her as she worked. She tugged at some of the larger ones, pulling the weave into tight little bunches. It was an addicting sort of motion. It satisfied her to see the annoying little clumps unseated. But she couldn’t let herself get distracted. Suddenly Annie heard the beginnings of a weak little growl from beneath her. She knew what would come next. The dreaded yapping. It was the dog her mother got her for her birthday. To, “keep her company” as her mother put it, leaving so many things so clearly unsaid. Her mother seemed to think Annie couldn’t see through the ways adults lie to children, but she was eleven now. The animal was a snotty little french bulldog with an ugly scrunched up face that looked as though it were perpetually tormented by foul odors. It wheezed everywhere it waddled. It’s wheezing stopped only when it saw little Annie. Then it would yap at her until its face was sweating and it panted and wheezed so badly from the effort, she prayed it would just keel over and die. It never did though. Her mother had told her it was from a very reputable breeder. As though that would make Annie love it. The animal’s only joy in the world, other than yapping ferociously at Annie, seemed to be leaving wide swaths of piss for Annie to step in late at night while she crept around the house in her socks. That and chewing all the wires for her brand-new headphones. And her mother was trying to get Annie to name it.

As much as she hated that dog, it still wasn’t the worst thing she had to deal with. No, that prize would go to the cat her father bought her. It was always lurking, waiting for her at her father’s apartment. Every weekend, when she nervously climbed the stained carpet steps up to his room, unavoidably inhaling the perfume of ancient cat urine and cologne, the knowledge that she would have to waste another weekend tiptoeing around that cat weighed on her. That and the knowledge that her father might try to talk to her. The animal her father had bought her to, “keep her company”, was a scrawny black cat with oily hair and a cruel vindictive temperament. Its flat, scarred face and upturned nose reminded Annie of the vampire bats she saw on National Geographic once. Only, the bats were cuter. “He’s a rescue.” Her father had tried to explain. As though that would excuse that ugly creature’s uncanny taste for human blood. The animal was the single most hate filled being Annie had ever encountered in her life. It spat at its food. It hissed and clawed at affection. It seemed to take no joy in anything but the sound of human screams and the feel of dripping crimson blood from its overgrown claws. In the daytime, with no shadows to lurk in, it would grouchily prowl the apartment, thin eyes darting back and forth suspiciously. When they saw the cat like that Annie and her father would do everything in their power to avoid getting in its way. They would crawl over counters and stay locked in the bathroom for hours rather than cross that cat. She had thought her father would be better at dealing with the animal he had to live with. But instead

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he seemed to simply accept his life in fear of the small furry animal he had bought for his daughter. He shrugged at the thin red scars lining his arms, like a veteran shrugging at their missing limb. It was a part of the job. At night, the animal’s cruelty would truly come alive. The creature’s only true love was the shadows it used to stage its assaults. Five days after her birthday, on a dark arid night, Annie left the relative safety of her locked room. Her throat parched and throbbing for a glass of water, she stumbled about navigating the foreign space by the faint glow of her iPhone. Then she heard a sound. It was a low guttural rumbling. It threatened at any moment to burst into a shrieking howl and an unseen frenzy of claws and teeth. But for now, it rumbled invisible amongst the shadows. Annie held the light of her phone out in front of her, presenting it like a cross to protect her from a vampire. She shakily raked the light across the unknown lands of the apartment. The light reflected off the small pile of unfinished dishes in the far corner. Then she caught the slight glint of the creature’s yellow eyes shining in the darkness. Then it began. Screaming, kicking, crying in the darkness, the formless monster was seemingly all around her. It was howling too, a battle cry, as it sunk its claws in her skin and viciously tore them about. Annie screamed, and ran in the direction of her room, abandoning her phone to sprint away. She slammed her foot into an unseen object in the dark. She fell to the floor. The animal was on her back, launching its vicious assault on her hair. She was done for. Cracks of yellow light burst into the hallway as her father opened his door and stepped out of his room wearing nothing but a stained wife beater and pinstriped boxers and grimly clutching a katana. Annie watched as her father realized his opponent was not an armed home invader but his cat. The creature prowled at the edges of the light on the floor and hissed at its caretakers. Her father’s sword arm drooped and waivered. Annie hurriedly crawled to the safe yellow glow of her Father’s room. He knelt down to pet and comfort his sobbing daughter. “It’s okay, you’re okay.” He cooed softly in her ear. Annie was weeping messily into her father’s wife beater, not caring about the stains or the way her own snot and saliva added to them. Her father didn’t seem to care either. He just kept stroking her hair and kept repeating those words. “You’re okay, it’s okay.”

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