“Get me ’nother beer, Mary Sue!” he slurred as he hollered from the dirty old couch that he spent most of his waking hours on. He snorted and grunted as he watched the game oblivious to the old pizza boxes and partially empty take-out left-over boxes that lay around him on the floor and the chair he used as a side table.
Mary Sue did as she was told because the beatings weren’t worth it anymore. She had lived with Ralph since he got back from Iraq. He had lost his legs while he was there.
While waiting for her next command, Mary Sue eyed the prosthetic legs Ralph had discarded to use as legs. He now used them as his weapons on Mary Sue.
If only she knew a way out of this dump, she often thought. But she was only 15 and Ralph was all she knew. He kept her after he killed her parents, “by accident” he told her. “They were stealin’ from me. Takin’ my food. So I had to get rid of em. They didn’t feel a thing.”
She wondered how to kill him and ‘not feel a thing.’
“Mary Sue? Where ya at?”