Elder Scrolls Drabble

Sweet Dreams

 Words: ~1600 somethin'

"You sleep rather soundly, for a murderer."
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  A gasp, a sputter of breath, followed by coughing and wheezing, as the boy 's pale delicate body shook like the fall leaves, sounded throughout the room. Small, fragile digits grasped out for the dirty sheets and gripped tightly, desperately trying to hold onto reality; his mind slipping into darkness as the cold fingers of death clutched at the boy's soul. His young rounded face, as white as the coming winter snow, contorted into an expression of pain with each inhale, his weak arms trembling as an agonizing fever racked his entire body.
 
Thump. Thump. Thump.

The banging on the wall had come from his parents room. The strong, calloused fist of his father rapping against the grubby oak wood separating his room and theirs. Not shortly after, its companion, a muffled almost indistinct shout, followed suite.
 
"Shut up in there! I'm trying to sleep you damn brat!"

Even still, the boy coughed and gasped, trying and failing to take the most needed air into his lungs. With every passing second, the boy fought what seemed like an interminable struggle against his illness, and as it stood, nature currently had the upper hand. The serene silence that had before filled the night air had scurried away, replaced by the sounds of illness and the muttered curses of the angry devil next door. Lucien knew that his father was coming for him, but no matter how hard he tried, he just could not keep his coughing fit at bay.

Crash

The decrepit door was almost ripped from its hinges as the plank was slammed against the wall, letting loose the animal that it had so poorly held back. The man held up the leather belt, brandishing it high above his head and brought it down forcefully to smack against the boys bare back and atop his fragile skull.

"I said shut up! You deaf or somethin' boy?!" Every word spoken was followed by another three wips. All the while, Lucien chocked on his desperate cries for mercy between his horrid coughing. He would have tried to run, but it was that he was far to weak to dodge his father's attacks, let alone out run a grown man.

So he took the beating, like he did all the others. With every outburst of the man he called father, Lucien was beaten closer and closer to death, but it seemed that fate had another use for him, as all of his prayers to the gods for his death to come already had gone unanswered. And where was his mother? Lucien had grown accustom to her hesitation to step in and save the distraught boy. If she had, she too would have been beaten.

That was five months ago. When Lucien's mother was still drawing breath. The man had gotten drunk, ran out of money, and came home to find more. Of course, there was none.

He had not been happy.

A small movement in almost a blink of an eye. Effortless and efficient. Snap. And he watched from his hiding spot inside the wall as the last piece of hope he had fell to the floor with a thump. Silence.

He could almost hear the blood flowing through his veins. The smashing of his heart against his chest, he feared, was too loud. He was terrified that he would be caught, but he could not tear his eyes from the scene before him, now forever painted in his mind. His mother's pale lifeless body he could see through the horizontal grate covering his pathetic sanctuary, and next to her, not a foot away, his father's boots. His small brown eyes followed up as much of his legs as the wall would allow, and thanked whoever was listening that he could not see his father's face.

"I need another drink." Came a deep gruff voice from above him, and then the hollow wooden clunking of boots as the man stepped carelessly over the dead woman and walk out the door. Minutes passed. All was deathly still.