VALERIE

Sixty One

Shutting the front door Valerie creeped into the large corridor that led down to the main living room, her heart slowed down as her brain was attempting to catch up with how she was truly feeling.

And at that moment, she was feeling bitter numbness.

It was late and all she wanted to do was sleep what Nick had said away but even that would be impossible due to her rampant insomnia.

Reaching the living room she casually flipped on the lights and almost had a heart attack when she noticed her father sitting a few inches away on the upholstered antique arm chair, a small tumbler glass of what was possibly bourbon in his trembling hands, he raised his head exposing his unkempt facial hair, red runny nose, tired bloodshot eyes with accompanying dark eye bags sitting underneath and undone dark hair sticking to the sweat on his face.

He was still in the flithy olive suit he had been in for the last few days, Valerie could clearly see the lapels of it stained with liquor, while the torn white wife beater he had underneath exposed the small curly flecks of his chest hair.

Valerie swallowed the lump she had in her throat before speaking, "Hi dad." She managed to say timidly as she didn't want to look him in his dead eyes.

Her father didn't reply but instead took another drink from his bourbon, he savored the taste he had become oh so familiar with.

Valerie watched in fear as she knew what was coming. She had been living with this type of fear for almost a year and it still hurt her.

At least she was feeling something.

Smacking his lips obnoxiously he finished the liquor inside the whisky tumbler before staring at the now empty crystal in his hands. His eyes flickered to his daughter who was frozen.

His eyebrows knitted together, lines forming on his forehead while his lips contorted into a frown and the wrinkles around his eyes became more visible.

"It's late."

"I know, I was going to be home sooner but mom told me to stay longer and-"

"You're late." He repeated sternly whilst moving the tumbler around swiftly in his gruff hands.

"Dad it isn't my fault, I didn't even want to go in the first place but mom sai-"

Her sentence was cut short when the glass tumbler hit her on the face and then fell onto the hardwood floor where it shattered into millions of tiny pieces beneath her, Valerie who dropped her clutch in the process raised her hand to her left eyebrow that was stinging when she felt the warm sensation of blood coming from it, she lowered her hand to look at her index finger, using her thumb she rubbed the red fluid around until it was deep into her fingerprints, staining the small curvy patterned lines in both her index finger and thumb.

George was breathing hard, getting even more frustrated by the moment.

She was trying so hard to hold back her tears. Crying just meant he'd do something else to make her cry harder.

"I'll come home on time." She mumbled in a broken voice as she was trying to walk away only to have he forearm gripped fiercely and then pulled back, George who was holding his daughters arm stood up quickly from his chair, knocking it over.

He lifted her arm high above her own head and glared down at her. At the moment she was still in fear but she couldn't let him know it.

"Let go." She pleaded only to have the side of her face slapped by his free hand.

"Don't talk back to me!" He shouted shaking her around like she was a bag of trash, the taste of blood and saliva accumulating in her mouth by the second.