ONE
Gray
Gray age 12
Kassa age 7
The sound of breaking glass echoed through the house. My heart stopped even before my mother cried out in pain and drowned out the sound of belt hitting flesh. Fear was like an acid churning in my stomach, but my mother needed me.
I didn’t know why Dad was mad, but then again, he never needed a reason. Just breathing wrong near him could set him off. I had eaten a sandwich earlier and then gone straight to my room, hoping to avoid his wrath for at least one night this week. But my mother wasn’t as lucky, apparently.
I climbed out of bed, grabbing the baseball bat I had left there after practice that afternoon. I knew that, sooner or later, I would need it.
I was tired of letting my old man hurt me and my mom. Tired of being scared to so much as sneeze while in the same room with him. I couldn’t tell anyone though—not even my best friends, Sin and Kale. Although they probably guessed. Mom had made me promise not to say a word outside our house about what Dad did to us, but it was past time we stopped taking his crap.
“No, Johnny. Stop! Please stop,” my mother begged as she cried.
That wasn’t like her. She always cried but just took the beatings. Even when I was younger, I had always wondered why. Why would she let someone who was supposed to love her hurt her?
Why would she let him hurt me?
Part of me hated her for it, and I had even thought about running away. So many times, I had packed my backpack with everything I needed and started to climb out my window, but I could never bring myself to go through with it.
Because Mom needed me. Even though she let him hit us, she loved me. And I loved her too.
“You disrespectful cow! You can’t do anything right,” my father shouted at her in his usual slurred voice. He must have hit the whiskey as soon as he’d walked through the door tonight. Maybe even stopped at Joey’s, a bar he went to on Fridays near his work. He always came home smelling like beer and perfume that wasn’t my mother’s on Fridays.
But today was Wednesday. But the day of the week had never really mattered to him anyway. Every day was booze-day to him.
“I’m sorry, Johnny!” Mom sobbed as I got closer to the kitchen. “Please, just don’t hit me again. Ah!” she screamed, and I heard the kitchen table scraping across the floor and knew without having to look he had thrown her against it. “Johnny, you’ll wake Grayson.”
“That ungrateful little bastard doesn’t deserve to sleep. I’ll deal with him when I’m done with you,” he snarled. “He isn’t even my son, you whore. Can’t stop spreading your legs for every man who looks at you.”
My fingers tightened around the bat as I pushed the kitchen door open. The picture in front of me seemed to melt into the back of my mind. Mom on the floor, holding her stomach, her face bleeding. Blood was gushing from her nose, which was broken. Just like he had broken it two years ago. Her eye was already starting to swell, the same one that was only just starting to heal after the last time he had backhanded her. But I was used to seeing her like this, cowering from him as he lifted his belt over his head and hit her again.
What stopped me, what scared me so badly that I froze up for a minute, was the gun in my father’s hand.
“Who’s his father?” he roared. “Is it the same bastard who fucking put this baby in your stomach? Tell me!”
“You’re the father, Johnny,” Mom sobbed. “You’re Grayson’s daddy, and this one’s too. He looks just like you.” Her shaking hands touched her belly. “I swear it, honey. I l-love you. O-only you.”
“Lying whore!” he raged and slapped the belt across her legs and then her face.
The welt that rose on Mom’s face was enough to unlock my muscles. “Stop!” I yelled at him, tightening my fingers around the bat and stepping farther into the kitchen so he could see me. “Leave my mom alone!”
“Grayson,” Mom whispered, but I could still hear her. “Oh, God. Go to your room. Lock the door. Go!”
“No,” I snapped at her, not taking my gaze off my dad long enough to look at her. He was still pointing the gun at her, but his bloodshot eyes were on me. “I’m through with letting him hurt us, Mom.”
“What are you going to do, you sniveling little brat?” His smile was mocking, as if he were actually daring me to do something. “You gonna hit me? Come on, then, boy. Hit me one good time.” He laughed, and the sound froze my insides. “But you better make it count, because when I get done with you, I’m going to kill you and your whore mother.”
“No!” Mom cried. “Grayson, don’t.”
I didn’t understand her. Why wouldn’t she want me to protect her? It only made me madder.
“Shut up, woman!” Dad bellowed, waving the gun at her. “I’ve had enough of you.”
“Johnny,” she sobbed. “Please.”
“Please,” he mimicked her in a high, nasally voice. “Did you beg like that when you had your lover between your legs? Did you cry for him to stop when he was putting another bastard in your belly?”
“No, Johnny. No. I swear. There isn’t anyone else. Only you.”
“Liar!” he roared, but his hands were shaking worse than my mother’s. “You only want my money. Not me. Never me.”
“No, Johnny. It’s you. I love you.”
“Stop…”
The echoing of the sound of the gun going off filled the room, making me jump and my mother scream in fear and pain.
“…lying!”
I was so scared, that it took me a second to realize what had just happened. My gaze went to my mother, who was no longer crying. She was on her back, her hand still over her stomach, but blood was gushing out of her chest, pooling around her in a halo of dark red. Her eyes wer
e wide open, but they had a blankness to them, as if she saw nothing.
As if she were dead.
No, a voice in the back of my head whimpered.
Rage quickly pushed that little, whiny voice down, and I turned my gaze back to the man who had just killed my mother. Dad just stood there, as if realizing he had actually shot her and couldn’t believe it. But then he quickly recovered and turned the gun on me. His hand was shaking so badly that he nearly dropped it.
“You killed my mom,” I whispered. A feeling of loss pierced through my heart, and I had to blink back a mixture of tears and rage, my hands tightening so hard around the bat that my fingers hurt. “You killed my mom!” My voice was louder this time as the pain and the anger tried to consume me.
I felt like the Hulk in one of those Marvel movies, unable to control what was going through me. My vision narrowed until all I could see was my father, who was saying something, but the blood rushing through my ears drowned his voice out.
“You killed my mom!” I screamed and charged at him. “You killed her.”