Scorched Hope .

Part 1, The Beginning.

Carson didn't know when his mother started to act like this.
It was so new, so sudden at the moment.
The panic in Carson's eyes, the rage in his mother's, the surge of pain.
He had tried to tune it out at first--the yelling that was thrown at him, hitting harshly like a spear--pressing his ears against his head as hard as he could to the point where he could hear his own heartbeat pounding as loud as the screeches that left his mother's throat.
Her voice sounded like nails to a chalkboard, a fork scraping against a glass plate.
She shouted horrible things to the likes at which Carson had never heard before, many he only understood later. He only knew that they were directed with pure malice, hatred he had never seen in his mother's eyes. She had never raised her voice much before, if at all.
Carson's ears began to ring as he pressed down harder with the heels of his hands. He fell to the floor, each breath he took as sharp as a needle.
He hadn't thought what he did was wrong. It was only an accident. Or was it what he said earlier?
But it seemed that a tiny accident among many others in the past led up to this sudden snap in his mother's mood, the hostility she had kept to herself bursting out suddenly in the moment. How long had she thought this way? How long had she been waiting to release these words, to stick them in her own son's back like tiny knives piercing through his skin?
How long had she been waiting to raise her fists?
Carson thought she was bluffing at first. He thought that she was just trying to scare him. He didn't know anything would actually come out of it.
It didn't hurt at first. It just came as a shock, something he hadn't expected. Then it dawned on him. It sunk in after a couple seconds of being on the floor, a bruise forming on his shoulder.
His mother intended to harm him. It was blatantly clear at this point. She didn't even try to hide the fact that she had wanted to hurt him for any longer. She could've at least waited until he was older. He was only 10.