Ten & Levan

11. Eleven

LEVAN

I splash cold water on my face once, twice, thrice, a hundred times. And yet each time I look up into the mirror I see red, I feel my blood come to a boil, I hear my heart roaring in my ears with the piercing silence to accompany it. I don't see me. I see the Levan who loathes his father, who wants to beat his father to a bloody pulp, a black hole to suck him up, and a hurricane to rip him away from this house, this city, state, country, this fucking globe. I'm the Levan who wants there to be not a trace left of Davis Emery.

My hands are still shaking, my breathing is still labored, my face is still heated, my eyes are still wild; I'm still feral. Hell knows I'm doing everything in my power to not go back out there, into his room, and beat the soul out of him. I bet he won't remember it tomorrow morning. He can drink all the alcohol there is in the world, drive his drunk ass into a sewer and lounge there for the rest of his life for all I care. I do not give the slightest flying fuck about him or his habits. I wouldn't even bat an eye if he didn't come back home tomorrow. But what he did tonight made me completely lose it. He brought a twenty-something, drunk girl into our house. I swear I would behave if I wasn't this Levan that I am right now; the outrageous, the grizzly, the hulk.

He has never brought any women home before and I thought he was a broken man, a man who loved his wife too much, and that is partially why I never fought him back. But I did today, I guess there's a first time for everything.

I punched him straight into his face so that his crooked nose can finally break. The girl flew off screaming into the streets, having become surprisingly sober. His punch came flying into my face, my jaw, my ribs. A few kicks in the right places and I was pile of red on the floor, seething. He told me that I'm wasted effort. He told me to get out of his house. He told me that he can't stand to see me anymore. Finally, some truth poured out of his filthy mouth. And then he stumbled back into his room and shut the door out.

"Are you okay?" whispers Ava. I look into the mirror; she's standing at the door of the bathroom. I gulp, she gulps. Then I splash my face one more time and start wiping it with my blood-stained shirt.

"Yeah," I say and decide to take the shirt off. I can't wear it anymore, it smells like blood and it's so pungent that I want to throw up. My nose is still bleeding, no wonder. I watch Ava slide into her room quietly. I sniff, testing if it's okay to breathe through the nose yet but when I smell blood instantly, I decide on using my mouth for as long as I can.

I dump the shirt into the bin and make my way across the hall to my room. There I pick out a crumpled black shirt from a corner of my cupboard and pull it on. I look at myself in the mirror again, my face is black, blue and yellow; cut, wounded and bruised in so many places that I'm starting to resemble a graffiti I saw on a building on my way to school. In conclusion, I'd be camouflaged if I were out in the wild.

That's when I hear the doorbell ring. By the time I make my way downstairs, it has rung more than once. Nobody visits us at this time of the day. Well, nobody ever visits us at all, not even neighbors. They are all well aware of my father's outbursts. And nobody actually even cares about two almost orphan kids living in their neighborhood. That's exactly why I'm not surprised to find Ten standing at my door, where she shouldn't be at all.

She exhales in a rush and enters my house without so much as hello. My heart starts to drum thunderously. This is wrong, she shouldn't be here. I don't want her here. I want her to go away. Why won't you go away, Ten?

"Ten?" I say, shutting the front door as she continues toward the kitchen area. I'm endlessly chanting a 'what the hell' chain inside my mouth. She can't just barge in like that, can she? Did she forget anything here? I need her to get out right now.