Volume I: Forged

Chapter 11: Broken Children

Punz really wished Fate had been nicer to him and his brothers.

He listened to his mother scream at Ponk for dropping the basket of eggs, even though it was the goose's fault for chasing him, and kept chopping the wood.

It would only be worse if he stood up for his twin.

Bad things always happened when they banded together to face their parents.

Punz had no wish to revisit the basement.

He paused for a second, stretching out his back and brushing his damp bangs out of his face. The blister on his hand had long since turned to a callous, which he was more than thankful for. Forlornly, he took a look at their yard.

They were surrounded, on all sides, by fields, for miles. Past the fields—nothing but woods.

Past that—Punz wasn't for sure. He and Ponk had tried to run for it once, but they had wandered for hours and never found anything in that forest. Their dad had eventually found them, huddled under a fallen tree crying their eyes out, and promptly dragged them back. Their parents had been so sweet and kind for a week before they were back to being beaters and yellers.

Then Purpled had been born, and the twins couldn't run with him.

He was so little—

And so stinking innocent it was adorable.

Now, the kid was playing against the house with some sticks Punz had found for him, his pile growing as Punz kept supplying him with chunks of bark.

The yelling from the house ceased and Punz automatically went back to work, a tiny spike of fear driving into his heart to join the iceberg that had long since frozen any love for his parents.

Even Purpled, naïve as he was, hesitated in his play.

Ponk stomped from the house, fury in his eyes but his face carefully controlled. Punz just caught the red marks on the underside of his left arm.

"No dinner for two days," he whispered to Punz as he started helping with the wood.

Punz nodded discretely, his rhythm not failing, though his chest burned with a dull anger.

"We could run," Ponk continued, hefting a piece of wood someone of his age had no right to even look at, much less pick up. "Purpled's big enough, and we kinda know what we're doing now."

Punz's swing shuttered for only a second before slamming into a piece of wood. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Purpled bite his lip and go back to his play.

The kid would never snitch—Ponk and Punz were more his parents than their actual parents would ever be. It was Punz he went to when he hurt himself, or Ponk when he broke his toys. He shared their bed, and clung to them in his nightmares. They were the ones that listened to him prattle on about cows and space and his favorite color for which he was named—a name Punz and Ponk had given him themselves when their parents had shown no interest in a third child.

He was growing up surrounded by a fragile shell of love, when hate and abuse were so close—

It was so dangerous to run—

But this was the third time this week their parents had denied one of them food. Yesterday it was because Punz had forgot a bowl in the sink. Two days before, Ponk didn't sweep the bedrooms.

How much longer before their parents started denying Purpled food? The poor kid already sported a bruise on his arm from when their mother had hauled him off to bed two days previous. How much longer till their father backhanded him? Before their mother took the belt she oh-so-loved to use on his hands?