Jupiter's Moons (Rough draft/purely for editing)

Chapter 2

I was down in the living room and kitchen area before Lia could even stand up.

Pictor was lunging at my father, but I grabbed the back of his gray shirt and flung him back. "Pictor! What the hell!"

"He came home drunk again." Pictor glared past me, his nostrils flaring. A bruise was forming on his right cheekbone, and he didn't peel his eyes off of whatever was behind me.

Well, whoever. And I knew exactly who.

My dad was laughing, loud and hard. He had a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and from the shards of glass on the floor and the brown liquid around his feet he must have had another before. "You stupid son of a bitch!" He cried, angry through his hysterical laughter. "You made me spill my beer!"

"You-!" Pictor cried, ready to break through of my grasp and lunge again. I grabbed firmer on his shirt and slammed him back again.

"Don't you dare." I whispered. "Remember last time? You want that to happen again?"

About once or twice a month, sometimes more than that, our father came home drunk. He stayed out all night gambling and drinking and spending money we didn't have. It was part of the reason we were as bad off as we were. Dad was generally a bad tempered and cold man- well, he had been, since Mom died. But when he was intoxicated, he took it out on all of us.

It was particularly hard on Pictor, who was old enough to remember how things were before when our father wasn't like this. And Pictor had a temper too- he got especially passionate about things, and when something like this happened he tended to get smart-mouthed and involve himself too much. He plainly couldn't help it. This normally resulted in him getting beaten up and kicked around. Last time this had happened, Pictor had a black eye for two weeks and could barely use his left arm for almost a month. He still had some problems with it.

He glared at me, and tried to shove me off. I was stronger though, and also held the higher authority. "Get upstairs, and you and Lia stay up there. Am I clear?"

He glared at me a full five seconds before pulling free of my hands and walking up the stairs.

I turned to face my father.

"Ah, Carina." He said, an amused look on his face. "You always were the more responsible one."

"Yeah, and I'm clearly more responsible than you. Again, Dad? Come on! You know we don't have that money!" I winced as he took another swig from his bottle.

"It's your fault we don't have this money." He said, drinking again.

"My fault!? How is you going and spending all we have on alcohol my fault?"

"If you hadn't spent all that money on your sister, maybe we wouldn't be in this problem."

"That's not true, and you know it. Besides, that was years ago." When Antlia was six, she got really really sick. We can treat most sickness ourselves with store-bought medicines and a few household remedies, but this time Lia was really sick. We had to call a doctor and get her special prescriptions. It was hard on the whole family- except for Dad, maybe.

"Sure it is. Y'all are brats." His words were low and slurred together.

"Dad- just get out of here. Go lay down. You have work in three hours. Pull yourself together, or else you won't have any money to go buy your drinks." I said, disgusted. I went to walk past him to get a rag and the broom to clean up his mess.

He grabbed my forearm. "You think you can tell me what to do?"

"Get your hands off me." I glared at him, a bit of fear spiking up inside me. I was a strong girl, and I could definitely do some damage if he tried to beat me up, but he was by far bigger and stronger. There would be no way I'd win- and no one to stop the fight except Pictor, and I'm not even sure he would be able properly intervene.