blood must have blood

I was seven-years-old when I first awoke to the sound of shattered glass and frightened screams. Quickly, I jumped out of bed and blindly ran towards the light pouring out from the cracks in the door of my parent’s bedroom. I was now standing witness to a scene, a nightmare I had not dreamt of before. There stood my father, holding his hand in a threatening grip around my mother’s neck as her face cringed in pain. I ran towards them, helplessly trying to fasten his fingers tightly wrapped around her. With ease, he shoved me away later flinging my mother to the bed. I was bewildered, the man who sung me lullabies and promised me the world was now the cause of my hatred. After that incident, many more came, but my mother chose not to leave based on false lies of repentance. She wished for me to love him and forgive his alcoholism, preaching,

“This isn’t the man I married, I know your father will change his ways.”

How could she have been such a fool? My father was a drunkard, plain and simple and he was not going to change from his wicked ways. He was older than his true age. Years of drinking had robbed him of his youth. His breakfast consisted of whiskey with little food eaten in the form of salted crackers and cold wieners from a jar. He would sit on the ripped fabric, barking commands to my mom, while never leaving that filthy couch, only to buy more alcohol.

Every Sunday, we would go to church and represent a Christian family. Sundays were the day she was allowed to feel beautiful, only being permitted to wear her finest outfits. I would watch her smile and greet everyone telling them,

“God will continue to bless you.”

Why would she say that, when living in hell? From the outside, it was a perfect marriage. She was forced to hide her purple ribs and her bruises that ran across her leg. She was forced to be silent when feeling every pain with each breath she took. At eight-years-old, I knew only of anger, not comfort. Our home was a cage for her body and in her depression, her body became a cage for her soul. One night I was awoken by my father. He guided me to the living room, and the smell of smoke and beer followed his footsteps. It was oddly quiet, and then I saw it. Our eyes met, I wanted to run up and save her, but I couldn’t. It was like my father knew what I was thinking because I felt a firm grip on my shoulder. She was helpless, and I could not watch. My father made me watch, he held and positioned my head, to watch the one person I loved, get her life sucked out. Each time the rope got tighter, amounts of blood would stream out of her eyes, her body was lifeless. Death was not kind. It snatched where it could, taking people who were too young and too pure. From that day on, I longed for the day that death would capture my father.

It has been nine years since my mother’s death and I am now seventeen. In those years, I was restricted from leaving the house, due to my father’s fear of his secret being exposed. I became his new wife, obeying his demands of intercourse and food. If I did not compel I would be stripped naked, forced to face the white wall, while being lashed by his belt one hundred times. I stood before my father watching him sleep on his favorite couch. My anger began building up steam, burning me on the way out. I detested him, he brought up fear, hatred, and temptation in me. Suddenly, his eyes opened in bewilderment and for the first time, his eyes did not reflect darkness. I stood there, my mind taking me back to the nights where I laid in my bed listening to the sounds of fighting, crying and glass shattering. Where I would slam my face into my pillow, trying to block out that same noise. Where I would wake up and see a trail of spots of blood that lead to the bathroom knowing what was behind the door. Lastly, to where my childlike mind believed that if my mother left, I would leave with her. Then it hit me, she is dead and he should be too. My hands pulled the trigger, the bullet hitting him in the head, propelling him backward unto the couch. My father did not realize that people and situations fade away, but memories do not. Good or bad, memories are all that we have.

A brisk of chilled air sent shivers down my spine as I sauntered to the front entrance. I motioned my body towards my father glaring at his lifeless body meticulously laid out on the blood-stained fabric couch. His head rested on its armrest closest to the farthest wall where my one-hundred whips of cane would occur. His left leg was elevated on the armrest closest to me and his right arm dangled over the couch, revealing the AMT Hardballer pistol beneath his hand. The years of torment was now all over, he was finally gone.

I turned the wooden door knob and for the first time, I stepped outside. Rushes of anxiety filled me with each step. Each breath I took the hot, thick air coated the inside of my throat. In the midnight of the starlit sky, the house looked just like any other in the district, the only difference was the horrors within these walls. All the houses were composed of red brick with a peaked roof of slate. The window frames wooden with large flakes of white paint lying like dandruff. My movement ceased when I reached the wooden gate. I did not know where my future held, where or who I would turn to. All I knew was unlike my mother, hope awaited me on the opposite side. I pushed through the gate with a sigh of relief knowing that the pain of my mother and my pain is going to be buried with my father.

This is freedom…


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