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The Holidays are supposed to be a time for cheer, and yet there's something strangely dismal about tonight. You're out by yourself and you pass by a building completely coated in a strange sheet of ice. When you catch your reflection, you're trapped reliving your loneliest moment. The illusion can last for as long or short a time as you like, but the hollow sensation lingers even after the memory fades. What memory did you find yourself reliving and, now that it's over, what are you going to do to shake this mood?
It was frosty and cold, the young punk walking for home with a bag of gifts wrapped by paying some band students raising money. She was quiet, and watching. The crowds seemed so bright and jubilant but right now, Ally didn't feel such. Ducking to one side, the woman began walking down another street, and blinked at an icy sheet nearby. Moving over, she realized it was a building, frozen, cool,imposing, nobody around it despite the bustle, and for a moment, Ally breathed. Then she managed to not scream.
"No, go change."
Ally's mother Jennifer spun on her child, Lorenzo looking away again as the eight year old paused, wearing a brand new boy's sweater with cars and robots printed festively wishing a Happy Holiday, the child in jeans and boyish boots, all ready to go to a party, even if there wouldn't be other kids. There wetre never any kids.
"But Mommy I like it and it's Christmas!" Ally objected, and Jennifer moved, motions imposing and cold, and the child flincherd in terror.
"I said no, go put on your holiday dress." The woman's tone was warning, threatening.... Dangerous. The child flinches, backing away some as her mother turned a baleful eye on her, and she frowned.
"But Mommy it's dirty from visiting Grandma yesterday!"
"Well I told you to put it in the wash. Are you talking back at me?" And then Ally was confronted by a terrifying sighht, her mother moving in front of her like a threatening sentinel, standing over her, one wrong word off from punishment. And Ally blinked.
"I tried Mommy, this is my only clean Christmas stuff!"
And thenb, it came, hard, fast, and cold, her mother slapping her across the face, and the girl cried immediately. She hated this holiday -- her mother made her decorate the tree and listen to decoration stories she didn't care about without a kind word if the child protested. The child's father swore and cursed as he was forced to hang an unhealthy amount of decorations, often asking the child to help. And trying to be HER for Christmas was getting punished -- even if she preferred thjese clothes to a dumb dress today. She liked robots and aliens and unicorns and fairies but she wasn't allowed robots or aliens often because she was a GIRL. She didn't... She didn't want to be stuck like this.
The child cried, Jenniufer snarling.
"Oh, stop your bellyaching. You have nothing to cry about." The adult snarled warningly, and Ally tried, but couldn't do more than stop screaming, the woman rolling her eyes.
"Do you WANT me to beat you?"
Small, frightened eyes turned to Lorenzo, the tired, battered man offering his daughter no succor or comfort. He just looked away lazily at the door, ignoring her cry for help. He was thinking of his own freedom, and finally Jennifer shovbed.
"I said go CHANGE. And wash your face, you're a mess."
The child whimpered, running to her room in terror, and winced as Lorenzo finally could be heard outside the room, moving. A few muffled words permeated as the child looked for the hated dress, still whimpering as she dug with small, shaking hands, still sobbing, but moving in fear. The muffled speech was growing louder -- they wee fighting again. About who's fault she was 'badly behaved' or 'messed up', about why, about who failed what -- and then while cpulling the awful, hated dress on, Ally heard Lorenzxo bellow at his wife.
The words were... Terrifying.
The names rolled from his tongue -- Psychotic b***h, self absorbed c**t -- and more. He was laying into the woman with the anger a battered man could, and then an eerie quiet several minutes before there were noises below, followed up by her mother screaming furiously. Her father was... Was leaving? Her? Alone? With her MOTHER?! The child whimpered anew, and shivered as footsteps stormed about the house, the child shaking before her mother came in, and immediately struck her. Hard.
"YOU. Thius is YOUR fault for not LISTENING!" Jennifer Hart screamed in the face of her eight year old before styriking her again, the child crying in distress. Jennifer just verbally laid into the child, Ally freezing as the ranting went on several minutes, small form trembling in terror. The adult loomed several moments, nostrils flaringm, chest heaving in fury. Slowly, after the momentys drtagged out like so many in the past, the adult leaned back, scowling.
"Clean up. We're taking the bus. TRY to look like I'm raising a little girl and not a little boy." And Jennifer stormed out.
Ally shivered, looking outside. Daddy wasn't coming back though. Not this time, she could tell, and she felt more alone than she ever had, the child swallowing as she forceably composed herself, moving to caqll her Uncle Kenji first. They were going to that side of the family anyway... So maybe he'd be there and she could hide in him, and not feel so alone.
Alkly screamed, jerking back before it felt the building was gone -- or not, it was there, but she turned from it in terror, moving for the bustle and crowds with a sensation of agony reliving that day. Of reliving her father abandoning her to tyhe monster she escaped, and the young adult trempled, hiding in her hands for several moments, and cried.
Two steps back. Her ability to deal took two steps back.
