All of the King's Men.

All of the King's Men, Chapter #Two.

Author's Nonsense: I have no idea what I'm doing. Her name got changed. Bear with me. This doesn't even get mildly interesting until like chapter four.

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Chapter 2.

The smaller of the two boys hid his face against his mother’s chest—he spent a good fraction of his life like this, wrapped up in her arms, scared and shaking and trying to hide from the world. It was one of the things he hated himself for. It seemed he was always in a pitiful state, this night especially.

            Bluish-purple marks dotted his arms like the spots on a dog. His lip was split almost directly in the middle, and smearing crimson across his bottom teeth. The same deep red liquid was trickling from a cut on his forehead, part of his dark hair now sticky from the stuff. The skin had been broken by a hit to the face, not with any kind of sharp object, only a hand—just in case you were wondering.

            The little boy grimaced as he pressed the cut against the soft blouse his mother was wearing, staining it with same scarlet that was currently staining his front teeth. He was crying. The woman swayed softly, and ran her soothing fingers against the boy’s soft hair, being sure to avoid the sticky, bloody bits. He had the same black hair as she did; although he could have had the same as his father’s—since it too was practically the same exact color as hers—but she liked to think it was her own.

            He looked up at her weakly, through pale blue eyes that were now pink and puffy from tears. She shushed him gently, and kissed the boy’s nose, who winced as he instinctively bit down on his busted lip to stifle a sob. The woman, his mother, carried the shaky, crying mass into his bedroom, and sat him tenderly down on the bed. She laid a paper thin cardigan over his shoulders, covering all of the new bruises on his thin arms. Concealing the things that needed to stay hidden, this was something that the younger boy had become a master at during his time in the big brick house with expensive everything, if nothing else, he knew he could do that right.

            His mother eased herself down on the bed beside him, pulled him into her lap, and pressed a cloth to his forehead. The scrawny boy winced, and then pulled his lips back into a thin line—it was only pain, there were much worse things in the world, weren’t there? The boy’s lips quivered, and his mother pulled him tighter in her arms.

            “It’s alright…” She whispered, her cool fingertips running against the boy’s face as wisps of black hair fell down into her own. “I’ve got you. You’re alright now…”

            The thin woman pulled the cloth from her son’s forehead, attempting to hide the blood stained cloth from the boy’s field of vision. He sighed faintly, wondering if his mother even knew what had happened. Of course she did, his mother wasn’t a stupid woman, and he wasn’t sure anyone could even be that stupid. She had to know the magnitude of the situation, which only led the feeble boy to ask why she hadn’t tried to do anything, and he was fully aware that he didn’t want the answer to that question.

            Still he was grateful for her warm embrace, which always came unfailing during these times; no one else offered him that, so naturally he was grateful. In a few minutes, she would lay him back in bed, and pull the covers up to his chin. She would tell him that she loved him, and to never forget that. He would nod sleepily, the throbbing and aching and bleeding finally getting the best of him, and ensure her he wouldn’t forget, and she would lay with him until he fell asleep, sometimes even for the whole night, but she would never speak a word about these moments.

            They were everything but uncommon, these moments, and just seemed to become another part of the house and its residence.

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