“I don’t want to live anymore,” was the unconscious command emanating from her being: “I give up.”

  Zoe was quiet for a long time and by the the time she started looking to the officers and comprehending the world around her, she spoke even less. It seemed like they were taking her home. The sweet nurses gave her some hot tea “for nerves,” but she did not drink it because the chaotic heat of the cup was a sensory affront to her numbness.

  She did not take it with her initially because it was too heavy.

  And then she forgot about it.

  By the time Zoe had moved from the hallway a great deal of time had passed at least three hours she guesstimated later. When Zoe rose to the fact that she was being taken home she thought they meant her grandmother’s place. Zoe’s home: where she lived, where she ate, where she went to sleep; where she played videogames, wrote short stories about aliens and ghosts – they’re out there! – , petted and cuddled her cat Mister Scuttlebutt; and, probably most of all, procrastinated on doing her homework…

  This was also where she went to school from, and then returned to. Zoe’s home was where her grandmother did her friday nights “with the girls,” they called it “the swinging sixties.” It was where grandma waited for Zoe with homemade baked goods, these bite-sized balls of raw dough that she fried on a pan with onions. It was where grandma did everything … and now it was all suddenly gone?

  “Was it ever real?” Zoe silently wondered in horror. “For it to have ever been real, how could it be destroyed so quickly? How could it be gone in the blink of an eye?”

  “Zoe, Zoe. How long are you going to be like this?” Zoe’s father spoke through her emotional-stupor on day three which in reality manifested as him talking through her closed door.

  She had barricaded herself in his “study.” A room with a desk, computer, empty filing cabinet, and a small bookshelf.

  “Your mother’s worried about you…I’m worried about you. You can sleep in my room. I can sleep on the couch in the living room, like I told you when you first got here.” Zoe might have felt an internal wince if she were not so numb; but, in truth, nothing touched her.

  “It’s okay, just…come out.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “It’s the first selfless thing he’s done,” she thought to herself bitterly. Zoe was not a fan of her father – if she did think of him, she thought of him as “Father-Irrelavant.” An honory title which was more than he deserved.

  “No.” She replied.

  “Come on. I want to help you.” – That was a lie.

  “You want to help yourself,” Zoe snapped back.

  “I care about you,” he said with softer tone. He did. She was his daughter in the end, whether or not he was a self-indulgent “pig” and tended to put his own needs above the needs of others.

  “I hate you,” she thought and voiced: “Leave me alone!”

  Fustration buiding up in the father’s tone: “You know you should be happy those officers didn’t press charges against you for assaulting them! Imagine –”

  He cut himself off but then, ensorcelled to his own affective currents, finished the train of thought.

  “Imagine how much trouble that would have caused me! A teenage daughter in jail with a record.”

  Zoe went to put a pillow over her head but then in a fit of rage threw it at the door. It was the first concrete bodily expression she had in a while – her body felt foreign to her.

  Thud. Cotton pillow meets hollow door.

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry…” After a moment’s pause, “you can come out when you’re ready. Just let me take care of you. This isn’t normal.”

  Several hours passed by with Zoe doing absolutely nothing except the constant cycle of thoughts and memories she did not know how to stop. She had gotten all the supplies she needed – snacks, pillows, blanket, phone charger – in the middle of the night, purposely while her father was asleep, when she first arrived to minimize contact with him.

  Zoe’s phone vibrated and chimed. It was Zack, arguably her only school friend she had met in homeroom by virtue of proximity.

  He said he was going to bring her over her homework. “That’s not what friends are for!” She groaned. “You should be helping me break out of this prison – not building me a new one!! I don’t care about school!”

  She did at least wonder what news he would bring.

  The night Zoe was in hysterics and was forcefully removed from the hospital room. She realized she had completely forgotten about Mister Scuttlebutt!! Who would feed him and take care of him?!

  Zoe had messaged Zack that night and he said he would go feed him though he had never been to her house before. She did not think much of the issue and felt lucky to have him.

  Zoe contemplated bringing Mister Scuttlebutt to her father’s but she had no intention in staying with Father-Irrelevant; and, he, true to his self-centered nature never pressed the issue. He probably forgot the cat existed!

  “Scuttles must be so lonely,” Zoe thought to herself, accosted by the experience of a now harrowing and ruptured world without her grandma.

  Never fully realizing she was talking about herself in clandestine form; refusing to contemplate and hold in consiousness a world without her bright light.

  “Maybe I should just bring him here after all,” Zoe sighed with deep resignation. This mental resignation soon turned to a full-bodied psycho-physical resignation and Zoe gently drifted off to sleep.