Astrid's ears twitched for the hundredth time, and she slammed her pen down, splinters of plastic flying across the desk. Couldn't they ever stop fighting?

Forget homework. She couldn't concentrate with her parents constantly yelling. And who cared about getting into a good college, anyway?

Standing, Astrid kicked the chair away, hands clenched into fists so tightly that her knuckles turned white. She gritted her teeth and started pacing, eyes trained on the ceiling. The adrenaline coursing through her arms made them tremble, but they remained pinned, ram-rod straight, to her sides.

"Look at all we've done for you," she mimicked the words her parents had hurled at her countless times, lip curling up in a sneer.

Astrid jerked at the fox-like ears situated atop her head. Searing pain streaked across her scalp, wrapping its fingers around her skull and squeezing. Stupid infernal mods! She hated them, despised them so much she'd tried to pull and dig them out on multiple occasions. But every time, the agony had been too great to bear and she'd given up.

Whirling around, Astrid drove her fist into the wall. She snarled as she punched it again and again, chest heaving, until red seemed to bleed from the edges of the hole. Entire body shaking, her arm dropped back to her side where it hung limply. There was no pain, just a tingling numbness, and a tired, frustrated feeling that settled deep in her gut.

"What are you doing?" Astrid ran her undamaged hand down her face, forcing herself to take deep breaths.

I have to clean this up.

She rushed for the bathroom at the far side of the room, flipped the light switch, and winced in the glare. As water gushed from the faucet, she took a rag from one cupboard and then bandages from another.

"Why are you so stupid?" 

She hissed as the water poured across her knuckles, the blood swirling with the water to form a rosy pool.  With a gentle dabbing motion, she cleaned away the flecks of paint and drywall. Already, purple bloomed across her swollen pinkie.

Astrid turned the water off and patted her wounds with a towel before placing band-aids over them. Now to take care of the rest of her mess...

With a heavy sigh that seemed to drain almost all of her remaining energy, she crouched in front of her dresser. She tugged on the bottom drawer and it opened, stuffed to overflowing with old sweaters and discolored t-shirts. This was where she stored her most precious items, well out of sight of her parents' prying eyes and the fading touch of time. 

At the far back, under the ugliest green sweater in existence, was an old poster for the 'Tronics Kids, a group she loved and used to listen to nonstop when she was much younger. Two guys and three girls posed on top of a skyscraper, a photoshopped galaxy shining behind them as they held their various acrobatic positions. Its vibrant blues and purples screamed for attention against the white walls and bland carpet, but it was large enough to cover the hole.

Swallowing down the memories it brought before they could fully surface, she shoved the tacks into the wall and stepped back to view her handiwork.

"It's like bleach to my eyes," she groaned, massaging her temples. Her ears burned from where she'd pulled them and the steady throb of her knuckles was growing.

All that was left now was the dusting of the drywall on the carpet like snow. Astrid could get away with vacuuming it up so long as her parents were still arguing, but the only sound now was water sloshing through the pipes. The moment they heard the roar of a vacuum, they'd know what she'd done. Spreading it through the carpet would be the best solution.

When she finished, Astrid sat back on her heels. Strands of her pale hair clung to her forehead and she brushed them away.

Why am I sweating?

Strange, how her body couldn't decide whether it was hot or cold... The room tipped and Astrid pitched forward, yelping in pain as she landed on her injured hand. She rolled to the side as the room started spinning, lights fading in and out.

What's wrong with me? Why...I don't...Oh no, oh no, oh...I didn't take my medicine.

Invisible hands wrapped around her throat and slowly tightened as tremors wracked her body. The drone of a thousand wasps grew louder as the darkness swallowed her.