Broken

It was another typical day. Well, typical for me. I was on my way home from work after another long day of chasing around merders and doing paperwork. I walk into my home only to be met with the stench of alcohol.

My father had been drinking again. The same thing had been happening since I was fourand my mom died. I came home to my father, dead-drunk, and he yelled at me and beat me until he got bored. I start to quietly walk to my room staying right by the wall hoping he wouldn't take noties me in his drunken state. It had never worked before but it was worth a try.

"Clara, get back here right this instant!" he yells. I swallow hard then start the walk back to him, ready to take whatever he had in store for me tonight.

"Yes, dad?" I ask, standing in front of him trying to act like I wasn't tarrafide by what he was about to do to me.

"You're the reason why your mom died! You're the reason our lives are so messed up." He yells.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I was ever born." I reply, looking down at the floor so he couldn't see the tears falling.

"We would be better off if you died!" He yells as lifts his hand and smacks me, hard across the face. I take a step back and slid down the wall. I put my hands over my face as he continues to hit me. I stay still and don't try to get up or fight back. I know that doing anything would only make him more angry. He ends up getting bored and stopping after about a half an hour.

He walks away and I get up thinking he is done. I quickly find out how wrong I was. He throws an empty beer bottle at my head. Luckily, no shards get stuck in my head but pieces of glass impale the base of my right arm. He walks over to me, picking me up and throwing me into my room, locking the door. I go to my bed and sit down, curling up in the corner.

My stomach was begging me to feed it but I couldn't comply with its wishes. I was working late on a case so I didn't have time to eat at work. I start to pull the glass shards out of my arm. After I'm done, I lay down under my thin blanket and fall asleep.

I get up early the next morning with a crushing pain in my head where my dad had hit me. Ignoring it, I pull on my uniform, which covered most of the scratches and bruises I had got from last night, and try my door finding it unlocked. I get out of the house as quickly and quietly as I could.

I get to work and eat breakfast at the mess hall. I start the walk to my office pulling down on the sleeves of my uniform to make sure that they hid any signs that would clue someone into what had happened last night. I sit down at my desk looking around to see that I was the first one that had arrived.

I start on my paperwork trying to keep my mind off my headache. I was doing my paperwork at half my normal rate because it hurt whenever my arm so much as grazed the table and my head wasn't helping much. When my coworkers started to arrive I knew it wasn't going to take the long for someone to notice that something was off. I didn't talk much but they all knew me for being speedy with paperwork, but it did take them more than fifteen minutes for one of them to notice.

"Clara is something wrong? You seem a little off today." Sierra, a coworker asks walking up to my desk. She was in her mid twonties and had long back hair down to the small of her back. Her voice seemed to boom around the room but no one cared to look over so I assumed it was just my pounding headache.

"I'm fine just didn't sleep to well last night." I say back to her. That wasn't a complete lie. I hadn't slept well. I was up late trying to get the glass out of my arm.

" I think it's more then that. You have been trying to not touch your arms to the table all morning." She says grabbing my arm as I flinch in pain. She pulls up my sleeves only to see the fresh cuts along with scars and bruises. "If all that's wrong is missing some sleep then what are these?" She asks as I pull away and pull back down my sleeve.