My father’s words are sharp. They slice through the walls and echo behind the thin plasterboard.
Today is my fifteenth birthday and instead of meeting Harlen at the river like I’d planned, I am in Jade’s room peeking through a small sliver I’d managed to crack at her door.
The beat of pop music filters out of a small second-hand set of speakers I’d stolen for her a year ago from our local thrift store. It acts as background noise for what is driving the grisly tempo beyond the safety of this door.
Our father is shit-faced again. And like every other day, his temper has flared. This wasn’t unusual for him, he was a sloppy drunk, and an asshole at that, apparently the same way our grandfather had been. But today, the depth of his wrath clung to the air differently.Ominously.And the bones in my legs have grown rigid, as if each limb has moved into rigor mortis.
I blink through the hollow gap and watch my father curl his grease-stained fingers around my mother’s petite jaw, his handprint already purpling on her right cheek.
High pitched cries rattle through my mother’s chest, her shoulders shaking as she fights the force at her chin. Herhands at his wrists, broken nails attempting a desperate crawl beneath his steely grip.
My father holds her tighter though, pressing his forehead to hers, oscillating it toward her temple and back again. His filthy dark hair hangs limp, dripping sweat over her ashen face. And my mother squirms, hits and kicks, only for him to dig his fingers deeper.
“P-p-p-please, Jack, I can make this better.” Her voice quivers on a stutter, and my stomach coils, bile shooting up the back of my throat.
She was always trying to make thingsbetter,to placate him.
“Please, let me make this better,” she begs.
But to my father, her entreaty was a short stretch.
He reels his fist backward and punches her in the face, silencing her pleading cry.
His wife, the woman that carried and birthed his children—my mother—stumbles, then falls like a weightless domino, her temple cracking and bouncing off the timber floor, and I silence a gasp, biting into my bicep.
Jack Keller stands above her and scoffs.
It’s a dirty, filthy sound.
It boils my blood. With a hold on my breath, I step forward, ready to barrel through the door, only to take another two back when my father does the same, pushing forward, spitting on her.
“Fucking cunt.” He’s dragging his mouth across his arm, crouching down, his knees cracking.
He rests at my mother’s stirring, helpless side. She is groaning, pressing her palms flush against the blood-speckled floor when she tries to push herself up and away from him, failing, only to try again. And as she struggles, blinking, he remains perched over her, laughing uncontrollably.
My pulse is thundering in my ears, and I feel myself slipping into a trance-like state. The kind that pushes the boundaries of black and white, leaving you lingering among a shadow of gray. And when she falls back down, unmoving, her body weightless, my father grips her by the back of her hair and wrenches her upward.
He isn’t laughing anymore.
“Look what you made me do, you stupid bitch!” He wraps her hair around his knuckles and begins to drag her across the floor, deeper into the living room. Because he wasn’t done yet,he never was.
She tugs and rips and tears at his arms, an attempt to alleviate the pain that would be blasting across her scalp. It’s only when she gets her nails into him, pulling toward his elbow, that he stops.
A chill chases through me, goosebumps flaring across my skin. I feel like I’m going to be sick, and yet, I can’t stop watching.
My father is eerily calm, even though the skin at his knuckles has turned a stark white. He drags my mother beneath him. She’s on her knees, trying to get to her feet but he slaps her again, catches her, then uses the same hand to unbuckle the tattered belt from the loops of his dark denim jeans.
“Not now, Jack, please, not now. Wait until the kids l-l-leave,” her words are desperate and quiet.
My father doesn’t hear them though because he doesn’t stop. He rips the fake leather free and wraps a loop around my mother’s neck.
It’s then that I press my eyes closed.
I’d always known my father was a bad person, the kind that should be locked away, to never see the light of day. But he had everyone fooled. The town of Devil’s Peak thought he was aloving husband, caring father and great colleague, yet behind closed doors, he was a monster. And today, the violent buzz vibrating from him reeked only of selfishness and cruelty.
Today would end differently, unless I did what I should have done the first time I watched him lay a finger on my mom. Only, I couldn’t do what I needed to with my sister still in the house. Jade was twelve, almost thirteen, and she had already seen too much.
A small, warm hand catches the skin of my shoulder and I flinch, spinning around. I’m sitting on the edge of adrenaline, my pulse thumping out of my flesh. It takes me a moment to clear my vision, to see her standing in front of me.
