Skylocked

Chapter One - Childhood

"Mom... Mom! God damn it..."

Ember grit his teeth, eventually groaning out of frustration. He pulled his backpack from his shoulder, tossing it upon the coffee table. The teen climbed atop of his mother's limp body, her mouth agape as she laid upon the sofa. He sat on her lap, his hand gripping her chin and erratically shaking it left to right.

"Mom! Wake the hell up!"

His attempts however, would be in vain. His mother didn't even let out a groan nor a twitch, causing Ember's brows to furrow, the pit in his stomach only weighing down further. He frowned, releasing his mother's chin to raise his hand in the air. The teen took a deep breath, shutting his eyes before swiftly throwing his palm against his mother's cheek.

The woman's eyes shot open, revealing a pair of mossy irises passed down to her child. She let out a shrill scream, causing the boy to flinch as his mother fled forward, slamming her forehead against her son's. Ember harmonized to his mother's cries of pain, stumbling back off the sofa and collapsing onto his back against the aged wooden floors.

"How could you hit your own mother?!"

"Mom, you just headbutted me!"

The two yelled at each other in unison, Ember sitting up and sinking his head downwards, forehead buried in his palm while his mother held her reddening cheek.

"What the hell would your father think of this, huh?! Assaulting your own mom in her sleep!" She continued to yell, sweeping her feet over the couch to sit properly, glaring at her child with knitted brows.

"You weren't sleeping! You were practically  comatose from the two bottles of wine you downed last night! And we have a meeting with my school counselor, which I'm sure your drunk ass conveniently forgot." He hissed out through his pain, hand gesturing to the empty bottles sitting beside his bag.

"Fuck you. You are lucky I even entertain your selfish dreams. You need to go somewhere that teaches you some respect, not some aviation school for you to end up like your father. I don't know why he ever encouraged his own son to throw himself into danger... I guess now we know who you got that stupidity from." She spat back, her words harsh but her tone quieting down as the woman slowly came to her senses.

Ember sighed, lifting his head from his palm to gaze at his mother. The woman's auburn curls were disheveled, some of which already knotted up from being unkept for who knows how long. She wore a simple black tank top with sweatpants of the same color. The lady was in her early forties but the trauma that had ensued over the last couple months already had aged her past her prime, fine lines of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips.

"Mom, can we please just get to school. I really don't need the back and forth. Today is important." He insisted, having already grown into his mother's abusive words. The woman hadn't been the same since Ember's father had gone missing a few months back and while that fact had long crushed the boy's spirit, he no longer let it distract him from his aspirations.

The teen was right. Today was the day they'd find out if Ember qualified for his scholarship. He had known that the money his father left behind was running thin. This was the boys only chance to go to the school he loved, to actually have the freedom he craved without it being at the expense of his dad's money. It'd be an oppurtunity to give him and his mother the life his father would've wanted.