The ache inside my chest only deepens as I watch my sister put distance between her and this fucked up, crying house.But then, I force myself to move, to take a step back, toward the bedroom door, my fingers curling around the handle that hangs from its hinges. I prop it open and peek around the edge, into the living room.
My mother’s long dark curls are sticky and wet, trailing down her back. She’s drenched, it’s as if he’s poured something on her,pissed on her.The stench of urine hits my nose. It makes me gag. I press a palm to my mouth.
I watch Mom fade in and out of consciousness as my father loosens the belt at her neck and steps away.
His hands are dripping with a mixture of their blood as he lifts his arms, rubs his forehead into the ditch of his elbow before taking his gray singlet and wiping it across his crimson-splattered face and turning around.
“You must like it when I hurt you, Heather. It’s like you’re begging for it.”
My mother falls to her side, defeated, both hands clasping where the belt lay around her throat. “You’re fucking delusional,” she rasps so quietly, but I heard it,and so did he.
I start to creep out of the room, only to pause, slipping back in when my father spins and hauls a beer bottle at her knees. The translucent green glass shatters around her and she screams, only she’s silenced when he storms toward her andyanks at the belt around her throat. Her legs splay out and she’s on her stomach before she can try to fight him.
He drags her over the broken shards of glass and the howls that erupt from my mother are cataclysmic.
Tiny fragments of glass embed themselves into her bruised skin.
And I know…I’m running out of time.
“I saw you talking to Harvey.” Harvey is Colton James’ father, Deputy Chief Officer James. “Batting your fucking eyelids at him.” He scoffs, shakes his head. “Once a cheap cunt, always a cheap cunt, huh?”
My father’s possessiveness would put my mother in an early grave if I didn’t hurry.
She lay on the ground, shards of glass now poking and sticking out of her skin like a pin cushion. She’s sobbing and I wish I could run to her, hold her.
Today, her life was in my hands.
“Then why are you with me, Jack? Leave me. Do us all a favor,” she groans, breathless.
She has given up.
But her words only spur him on more. He spins around, yanks her to her knees and slaps her across the face, just for her to fall down again.
“I will never fucking leave you.” He bends at his waist, screaming directly in her face, “What don’t you fucking understand about that!?”
My father wrenches her up by her hair and beats her again before tugging on the belt, tightening the noose. He’s in no rush, stuck in a cycle of depravity…enjoyment. He could do this for hours—he has before.When his back is to me, I creep out, sliding across the thin wall between Jade’s and their bedroom. I slip around the edge, feeling my heart beating in the nerves ofmy teeth as I move toward the old black-stained timber dresser in the back corner.
A spilled bottle of rum and a can of Coke drizzle off the edge, calling to a trail of ants, and frantically, I rip open the top drawer, shoving the contents around.
I pause when I hear gurgling sounds.
“Look. At. What. You’re. Making. Me. Do!” My father growls each word slowly, and I know now that I’m definitely running out of time when my mother’s cries wither to whimpers.
But that’s when I feel it.
Something cool.
I grasp the metal, ripping the gun out of the drawer, snatching the magazine sitting beside it. With trembling fingers, it takes me a few tries to load the pistol, but once the ammunition is in, I move swiftly toward the door.
The barrel brushes against my thigh as I step out of the room and stop at the end of the small hallway.
My father’s back is to me, my mother is lying on her stomach, not moving, though I see the slow fall of her back as she inhales and exhales.
She’s still here, only just.
Her lips are a stark purple against the crimson red blood. She’s a mess of skin and bone. And he did this—my father, her husband—this is what he made of her.
My mother’s dark, broken and frantic eyes latch on to mine, she shakes her head.
