Fated By The Moon Goddess

Chapter One: Messy Family

Lila

It was a regular day at work as usual; attending to patients when needed, avoiding over familiarity with my colleagues, talking when I’m required to, avoiding unnecessary drama. That was how I lived, so you could say my life was an ordinary one. But deep down in my ordinary life, lies traumas, hidden from the world—pains buried deep within my soul.

Going to work was just an escape mechanism for me. I wouldn't say I love my job, or I became a nurse because of a noble cause or whatever. I just wanted to survive. I wanted to survive the overwhelming debt my mom's last husband left her after he ran away with the loan my mom took for him to start a business.

Sometimes I wish I could make the hospital my permanent abode, but that would only make everyone at work know I didn't have a happy home. And I wasn't ready to reveal that vulnerable side of me to the world yet. Actually, I planned to take that fact to my grave. I guess we can say I'm a proud person.

I opened the door to my house, hoping my mother would be in a calm state, as she was always in a different mood each day due to her manic depression. Sometimes, I wish she had just listened to me and started getting therapy, but she didn't listen.

I didn’t see her in the living room, so I went straight to my room first so I could change and take a shower first. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with seeing her face after all the work I did today.

I noticed the drawer in the right corner of my room was slightly open. I’ve been living with mild OCD for almost half of my life, so I’d never leave my drawer open like that. I walked closer to it and took a peek inside, only to discover that my piggy bank was gone. My heart started racing, and I could feel my blood boiling. Did she...? Oh, I'd be damned.

Without contemplating, I rushed out of the room and headed straight to my mom’s. I knocked but didn’t wait for her response before I walked in.

“Hey, Lila, you are back.” She said, lying down on her bed, almost naked. Her eyes were fixed on the bottle in her hand. Fine! She's low today, not manic.

“Did you go to my room and touch my money?” I asked, my chest falling and rising in rage.

Deep down, I already knew the answer, but I was still hoping it wasn't as bad as I thought. She wouldn't have taken and spent the money, right? It took me months to gather that money, despite my student loan.

“The one in your piggy bank? Yeah, I needed an emergency fund, so I had to borrow it.” She said casually, and I could tell she was drunk from the way she sounded.

“What could be more urgent than the fact that any second from now, you and your husband’s creditors will come knocking, but you took the money I’ve been preparing to give to them?” I screeched, forcing back the tears coming to the surface.

She sat upright, “Come on! Is it such a big deal I took your money?” she barked. She's so ridiculous.

I rubbed my hand with my hair in despair, my whole body trembling in anger. “You don’t even have a job, how do you plan to pay back?”

“What if I don’t pay back? I’m your f*****g mother! I may not have given birth to you, but when your godforsaken mother left you in the gutter on a rainy day to die, I picked you up and raised you.” She guilt-tripped me.

“How did you raise me? By making me feel I’m not worthy of love, while you move from one husband to another? Or was it when you finally found love and I thought I'd gotten a dad, only to discover he was a scammer? And look at where that has brought us today.” I shot back at her, cleaning back the tears that'd fallen.

“You are just an ungrateful b***h. You know how depressive I get at times, so I only wanted to have fun and relieve my stress by going to the club and getting a few drinks,” she said, walking up to me.

“You spent a whole 4k dollars drinking and clubbing!?” I asked, surprised at her audacity.

“I did a little shopping too. I even got you a bag.” She pointed to the bag on the floor.

“You forgot to bring a man home as you always do.” As if I had just touched her weak point, she slapped me hard across the face. She retrieved her hand back immediately, as if she regretted it, but that was until she turned back and went to sit in her bed, her back facing me.

“I’ve met a lot of people, both men and women, but you are still the one I wish I had never met.” She said, her voice clear and void of emotions.

I let out a sadistic chuckle, "You really should have left me to die on the street that night you picked me up."

With anger and hurt, I rushed out into the woods. Our house is on the outskirts of the town, so we are surrounded by woods. Anytime I found the house too suffocating, I went into the woods to cry and relieve my pain.

But this time, for an unknown reason, I walked past my usual spot and kept going deeper into the woods, tears streaming down my face. Maybe because I wanted to be far away from the only constant thing that kept hurting me. My home.

I’ve tried so much not to be a burden to her. Ever since I turned 13, I had taken care of myself. I had to take out a student loan to go through school without asking her for a dime. I took care of her when she was sick—even when she had to go from one drug to another due to her mental state, I paid for them.

And if I were to mention the abuse I went through at the hands of her husband, she owed me more than I owed her. Yet, I was the biggest stain in her life; the stain she couldn’t seem to wash off, no matter how hard she tried.

I noticed a big tree and went straight to sit under it. I cried until my face felt numb, and I wished I had never existed. I wish I had never been born.

The sun was setting, so I decided to go back home, even though I knew I’d be getting silent treatment from her, and it’d probably last for a while.

After walking and coming back to the same spot three times, I knew I had lost my way since I wasn’t good with directions.

I went back, sat under the tree, and started crying again.

My crying was interrupted when I heard a snap behind the tree before me. I rushed to my feet, dusted my pants, and waited to see if something would come out.

It was a man dressed in black, not too dirty, not too clean.

“Hey, are you lost too?” I moved closer to him, wondering if we were in the same predicament.

“No, I just found food,” he said with a smirk, licking his lips afterward.

I looked around me, not sure what he meant. “Food?” I asked, as my instinct told me to move backward, which I did.

He shook his head slowly, smiling mischievously, like one of those beings from the ‘From’ series.

But before I could process his actions, he bared his teeth, and I could swear I saw them look like a vampire’s teeth.

I fell to the ground as he suddenly launched at me.