The Waiting Game

The door slammed, echoing down the long hall.

Sealing my fate. Trapping me in this box. This tiny ass room with this annoying ass man who asks too many damn questions.

He looks at me with his dead eyes and this shit-eating spread wide across his narrow ass face. Checks his watch. Plays the Waiting Game. Wants me to talk. To answer questions he has no right to ask.

If Daddy wants to know why I burned down his house, then he should ask me. Not lock me in a room with an idiotic head shrinker with dead eyes and a shit-eating grin.

What a bad parent.

Makes me wish he had another house I can burn down.

Dead Eyes clears his throat. Makes a few notes on his tablet. Tells me that our time is almost up.

This is a lie. We have forty-seven minutes left. Forty-seven minutes to exchange dead eyes and shit-eating grins and silence.

Sweet, blessed silence.

They don’t know it, but I like it here. I like the texture of the white walls. The coolness of the tiled floors beneath my feet. That faint scent of bleach and ammonia that seems to cover every surface—even the food…all of these things make me like this place.

But the fact that I get my own room—that makes me love it here. No more sharing a bedroom with three ornery girls. No more sharing a bathroom with three other hormonal teenage wenches. In this place, I have four white walls all to myself. It is my own personal paradise.

I love having my own room so much that I’m now thinking of what I’m going to burn down next just so I can come back.

Dead Eyes puts down his tablet.

Stares at me.

Keeps playing the Waiting Game.

Well, let him wait.

The longer he waits, the longer I can stay.

And oh, baby…I want to stay.

So this Dead Eyed bastard?

Let him wait.