One Thousand Sundowns [RYLEY AU]

~The Sixth Sundown

The house was deadly silent. It was already silent but it was always scary. It never felt normal – even though this had been going on for years on end, Ryder was certain it would never feel normal for the house to be this silent.

The only noise half of the time was the walls creaking and the possums in the roof, running around during the night and scratching on the floor of the attic.

Ryder didn't like the silence one bit, but he was scared to break it. He didn't want to speak up in the silence because he was just... scared.

That's why as he sat in his room on his bed with his legs crossed, he dared not make a single sound. His breathing was the only the thing audible in the quiet house and to him, it was far too loud for his liking. He wished he could make his breathing quieter, but he was so frightened. His room was dark and he couldn't see anything either, except for the small slither of light creeping through the closed blinds.

He wanted to go to the cliff to see if Marley was waiting for him there, but he didn't want to move. He wanted to wait until his parents had already begun to get drunk before he had to leave (he was fairly certain that they were probably passed out but he couldn't take the risk of waking them up... he didn't want any more bruises on visible parts of his body.

He could feel the bruise on his face slowly appearing – it was still throbbing and it stung every time he placed his hand against his face. His Dad had hit him so badly last night and still this morning, everything hurt.

Ryder let out a sigh as the curtains moved slightly and made the light move around the room. He cowered backwards against the wall, his head resting against the Star Wars poster he'd stuck there years ago and hadn't had the time to take it down because he was too busy worrying about... everything going on in his life.

The light stopped moving around the room and everything went back to the normal state – completely quiet. As things went back to how they were, Ryder relaxed and let his arms fall by his sides on the unmade bed. Ryder let out a loud sigh and ducked his head to put it between his knees. His back began to hurt as he bent over. He let out a quiet, pained whine and sat up straight again, his eyes squeezed shut.

His bones ached and his muscles throbbed and he wanted nothing more than to just end the pain like he had the night before but he had to see Marley and just apologise for being out of line, and he was hoping she would apologise to him too – for being nosy, of course.

He didn't want her to see the bruises on his face or the cuts but he knew that she would see them – he just prayed that she wouldn't question them. After all, there was no school to blame for the new bruises. Marley knew about the people at school, but she didn't know about home.

She couldn't know about home. No matter how bad things got.

If Marley found out about one more thing in his life, things would quickly turn bad – Ryder knew it was just going to happen if she found out about his home life.

Ryder scanned his eyes across the room and hastily touched the ground with his toe. The ground creaked only slightly, but the noise quickly disappeared. He let out a shaky sigh and squeezed his eyes shut as he put his other foot on the ground and stood up straight, his legs shaking.

He took a few steps forward and the house remained silent. Ryder's heart began to speed up as he took faster and bigger steps past the bathroom and to the stairs which led down to the kitchen, next to his escape route. He went around the back of the house when trying to escape in the morning, because it was easier to climb over the fence and land on the pile of cardboard as opposed to having to cross the lounge room.

He ran down the steps on his toes and darted towards the closed glass door, sliding it to the side and running to the side of the house where the wheelbarrow was stacked up on top of a bunch of bricks.