The rain came down like a grey wall as it punched the sidewalk in fat drops. Abby did this from time to time when she need to clear her head. Perched on the balcony criss cross applesauce watching from the fifth floor.

  Her dad always complained that the city ruined good scenery but Abby found there was a serene peace in seeing the buildings around her under the rainfall. They grey skies, the light breeze and the very smell of the rain itself. All of it to her was peace.

  Her classmates might run for cover, grab an umbrella or pull their hoods up. Abby loved the rain. Even when it fell upon her skin. Made her clothes wet. Matted her hair even if it wasn’t wash day. She loved it, It calmed her soul.

  Today she sat with her fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. Her favorite mug, that stupid off white mug that said “Coffee”. She did not drink coffee and to this day if you asked her why she bought a mug that said coffee to drink tea out of she would just shrug.

  In truth she bought it because it was ironic. Like feste being the wisest person yet a fool. Like the drowning man forgetting how to swim. Like Walter White never lighting a cigarette and getting lung cancer. Ironic.

  She sat there barefoot even as the fall cold nipped her toes, all painted a different color. Her father asked her why she meticulously painted each toe a different color.

  She would shrug whenever given this question however to her it was deeper than that.

  She could do whatever she wanted. There existed no consequence for doing something in a strange way, for breaking societal norms. It did not matter. Not truly. Few things do. She could paint her toes however the hell she pleased couldn’t she?

  The question to her was why the same people asked the same questions expecting a different answer. Ask for another time and see If you get a different response, other than the trademark shrug that is now a part of the routine.

  She splayed her toes out and wiggled them as she cherished the warmth from the mug of not coffee and breathed in deeply the smell of rain.

  It was late afternoon, she would scrape together some fend to eat tonight.

  She smiled at the memory of when she first heard that term as she sat there.

  “its fend for supper tonight kiddo”, Her mother would tell her when she would get back from school and almost immediately ask what was for dinner.

  “whats that?”

  “fend for yourself”, Her mother would say shooting her eyebrows to the ceiling as she said it in a mock solemn tone and Abby would giggle. It was their routine. On days when mom didn't want to cook. Before the apartment. Before the funeral. Before whatever this was.

  Abby exhaled a tired breath and pushed the thought away. There was a soft wisdom in the term she had once heard “let go or be dragged”. She still couldn’t figure out the “let go” part but she was pretty good at the “getting dragged” part.

  She stood up and took one last look at the steady downfall of rain the spattered and pattered around her before retreating back behind the sliding glass door. She left it open so she could still hear the rain and see the setting sun try to shine past the clouds but would ultimatley just end up outlining them instead. She loved day rains the best. They made the sky magic.

  The apartment was a cozy two bedroom. with most of the floor plan residing in the kitchen/ living room area. An island of fake marble seperated the small kitchen from the living room that consisted of an ikea couch and a 32 inch tv hooked to bunny ears. She however did not mind.

  It was her opinion that money was for the birds. The way of the world was to step on others to get more money to step on more people and climb higher up the corporate ladder.

  To be frank. That life could eat her ass. She was unwilling to step on so much as a single soul and a simple life is what she truly desired.

  Abby opened the steel double door of the fridge and peered inside.

  “fuck”, she muttered under her breath as she realized she had forgotten to lay out the hamburger meat she had planned on using for dinner.

  Another little ritual their household had. Abby would lay out meat to thaw in the empty drawer at the bottom of the fridge and her father would tell her it was unhygienic.

  She would point out he doesn't bother sorting groceries and puts produce and meat on the same shelf to which he would scoff and say “they’re packaged”

  To which she would point at the clearly packaged meat she was thawing and say “what's that then”.

  Used to be a routine. Not anymore.

  People and their routines. When you don’t know what to say, maybe it is better to let silence fill the space.

  Abby blinked as she realized she had been dissociating with the fridge door open and settled on cut up hot dogs and not kraft mac n cheese. The great value brand that everyone said was just as good but she swore the texture was different. She did not dislike it but she did not enjoy it as much either .

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  She reached under the sink and grabbed a pot to boil the noodles.

  Maybe today she would fry the hotdogs first, get them nice and charred before she added them. It is how she liked bologna. Cut the cross, fry until its blackened. Bonus points if you put the cheese on it before you take it off the pan so it gets goobey. Extra bonus points it you fry the sandwich after so even the bread is crispy and browned.

  Abby's stomach rumbled as the thought of such a perfect sandwich was conjured in her mind. There was no bread left though. Only tortillas and she had the opinion that you don’t disgrace such a perfect carb with bologna.

  Abby reached out and got a frying pan as she was now certain she wanted the hotdogs cooked.

  Her dad would tear the dogs with his hands and Abby hated how some pieces were bigger than others and the thought of finger germs on her food was something she could not get past.

  Abby pushed and twisted the gas burner.

  She liked the tck tck tck swoosh the burner would make, seeing the flame yellow and blue dance high and then shortened. The dials were worn to be unreadable but she knew which flame height worked best. For cut hotdogs she would leave the flame tall.

  She lived most of her life inside of her head, it was a miracle she survived from day to day as it was not uncommon for her to allow her thoughts to wander and suddenly minutes or even hours had seemingly passed and her tasks were done. It was almost a super power. Dissociate and viola your chores are done.

  Like right now the hot dogs were mostly cut already and she could not tell you when she grabbed the cutting board, hotdogs or the knife. She had cut hotdogs to the same size pieces discarding the rounded ends and she didn’t even cut herself. To her a super power, to her teachers it was the reason she never paid attention.

  But they could blow her. She could teach most of the classes she attends. She did not need to be instructed twice on ionic bonds when she already knew how it worked and had learned it on her own long before some middle aged divorcee tried to do it with a white board.

  A younger her had often been called gifted, talented. Smart. Now she brought home average grades and papers that said “Apply yourself!”

  She could not give a fuck less. What was college going to do? Put her in debt for thirty years?

  Yeah no fuck that.

  The hot dogs sizzled and hizzed as she prodded them with a fork. Stab and flip. Flip and stab.

  It was at this point two things happened.

  She realized she never started boiling the water.

  And that Dad had woken up.

  She heard the shuffle of his feet against the fake wood floor and his sigh without ever even turning around.

  Shhhhhlunck

  As he closed the sliding glass door. Cutting of her peaceful rain.

  She was always anxious without ever meaning to be around her dad, others. Everyone.

  Another touch of irony. She acted as though she did not care what people thought and then immediately cared what people thought.

  She braced herself for the inevitable.

  comments that always seemed to fill the space around her father.

  If he wanted it one way this time, you would think that by doing it that way the next time he would be satisfied. But not it was wrong. It was always wrong.

  Her dad shuffled in and sat at the stool on the island and the smell followed. She would see in courtroom videos that lawyers would argue for dui cases that alcohol itself had no smell.

  ‘than tell me council why can I smell it now’ she thought the silent joke to herself.

  She currently did not know what to do. If she did not look at him he would say a snide remark and maybe get mad. If she did he would no doubt see it as a judgmental look and go off the handle that way.

  “Hungry?”, She asked with a neutral tone. Not accusing. Not chirpy either.

  Her dad did not bother with a response. Which left her more confused as the black hole of anxiety seemed to draw her chest into a crushing pressure.

  It was a lose lose situation. A game she had not yet figured out the rules too. Before mom he had been different. The kind of man to laugh, to take life at face value and not stress too much. Now she missed him and he was ten feet from her.

  She resumed her task of flipping the hotdogs as she set the noodles in the boiling water.

  She hated this game. If she made it runny he wanted it clumpy, if she made it clumpy he wanted it runny. If she cooked the hotdogs he wanted them plain. And so forth. It was wrong.

  He stood up with the groaning protest of the stool. Shuffling his feet like a zombie. To the freezer. The tingling of a glass bottle and a shuffle back.

  The snap of the seal and the absence of the glug into a glass. Just a wince as he sipped straight from the bottle.

  Pros to your father drinking a lot? You can steal liquor in small amounts and he wont notice.

  Cons? Yes.

  The bottle came up with the slapping of liquid against the glass sides with an audible ferocity. Wince. Then the thump as it was roughly sat back down again.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  He liked crown. She had had her first drink due to him. She had tasted crown royal at the tender age of three years old.

  He would pour it into a styrofoam cup filled with ice. He always said he was drinking sweet tea. Her dad always seemed to be drinking tea. On one particular day after playing in the back yard and very thirsty she had put her mouth on the straw and pulled. He had left it on the coffee table.

  As the burn hit her throat she heard him running to her, panicked.

  Her dad had tried after that, no more wishing to be Spider Man. Spider man would be strong enough to drag his drunk 230 pound frame up the stairs. Three year old Abby could not.

  He did get sober though. 12 years of sobriety washed away. Here he sat. Drinking on a rainy day. Because of the rainy days.

  rain rain go away

  Abby strained the noodles, re added them to the pot with the hot dogs, cheese pack, milk and butter.

  Not too much though. Just enough to make the texture the way she wanted. If he was going to complain she was at the very least going to enjoy her meal.

  She opened the cabinet with a sharp squeak as she pulled down the two mismatched bowls. Blue plastic bowls. Mismatched in size, one was larger than the other. Not a serving bowl but much too large for the average person's stomach.

  She spooned the large bowl full with the hot dog macaroni and turned around to serve her father.

  She turned to find him staring directly at her with a blank expression, frosted crown bottle in hand.

  Handsome may have once been a word to describe her father. No longer it seemed. A salt and pepper stubble covered his jaw and the blackness of his hair almost fell long enough to cover the bloodshot green eyes.

  The shirt he wore bore a wet spot on the collar where the whiskey had dribbled out of his mouth.

  He said nothing as Abby sat the bowl in front of him and put the spoon in the bowl for him.

  She offered him a polite smile more strained than genuine as she said “There you are”

  Her father wrapped a weathered hand around the spoon and brought up a mountain of yellow noodles and a piece of hot dog before scoffing and throwing the spoon back in the bowl with a force that sent a spray of noodles flying across the island like the spread of shotgun peppering the meticulously cleaned surface of the island and floor.

  Abby’s jaw tightened with frustration as she braced herself for the routine to come.

  He would insult her food, she would say she would make it different or fix it and he would fly off of the handle from there.

  “I told you I like it thinner”, Her father said in the same quiet voice. Like the soft winds before a storm he always started calmly.

  Abby put on a polite smile despite the crushing burn of frustration in her chest as she said sweetly, “I can just add some milk to the pot and thin it, Dad”

  He scoffed and shook his head as he said in the same deceptively calm voice. “So you can fuck that up to?”

  Abby stood there silent for what felt like an eternity as she racked her brain for a way to defuse this as the anxiety grew into a strangling fist around her heart.

  It always seemed strange to Abby that she had the world's biggest attitude with anyone else in the world. She always had a comeback, a verbal assault loaded and ready to go. Anybody, anytime, anywhere she would defend herself.

  But not against him

  Her dad nodded with a smile and said “I guess I’m not worth your time to-”

  He swatted the bowl, his face screwed up in a mask of venomous rage as the mac and cheese hit her square in the chest exploding against her shirt as she stood still as a statue as the noodles slid off of her chest and splattered on the floor.

  “RESPOND”

  Her dad finished with a roar standing now, towering now. Bigger than her.

  I’m big, you’re small. I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m smart you’re dumb.

  Same song, Same dance, Same actors.

  Abby’s face dropped all expression as she calmly smoothed her shirt. Wiping the sweat off of her hands against her jeans. Her palms hurt. She had a habit of this. Clenching her hands so hard the nails would dig in and leave pained and raw half moons carved into her flesh. Blood streaked her jeans as she wiped her hands.

  She calmly walked around the island. Grabbing none of her belongings and opening the front door as his screams of rage kept on like a tsunami.

  Abby paid no mind as she had heard it all before and walked out of the door with no intentions to ever return.