Promises From Broken things

T H E N

   I live with my uncle after my father died 4 years ago. Now the first day James Ruzial hit me was the day after Dustyn and Axel left for New York City. It all started when I dropped a plate, and the moment it shattered to the floor is the moment the world stopped spinning. The small inclosed kitchen was filled with hot water vapor, and cigarette smoke, and He had been drinking. Like a lot, a lot. This was a side of him I never knew when Dusty and Axel were around.
      James looked up from the news paper he was reading and, the second he saw the pieces sprawled out across the floor he had lost all the humanity I had known him to have.
    "I'm so sorry James." I cried as my hands began to shake. It  seemed as if the plate crashing down set off an alarm. Getting up from the table snuggled in the corner of the room he stomped hard against the ground. 
     1, 2, 3, 4 steps he stood in front of me, his breath reeked of cigarets and booze a smell I will never forget. His long crooked nose just inches away from mine, this man I had lived with since my dad had passed away just a year ago was now towering over me And huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf he was.
        He huffed and puffed, his eyes burning into mine, looking at me like I was a waste of his precious time. Was I? My eyes darted from the white porcelain on the floor to his wife angry eyes. The burning and spinning of my head mixed together making it hard to focus on anything. My breathing had hitched and All I could hear was my heart in my ears. I stepped backward, not even realizing the glass that managed to in bead itself into the heal of my foot. There was a monster to focus on that would roar any second.
     I was all the way backed up against the small corner, and there was nowhere else to go. Dusty walk through the door, I silently begged to myself hoping to god no tears broke free from my eyes.  Axel save me. I begged so much that I could almost see him coming through that door, splinters flying everywhere. Him not believing his eyes when he sees James this way. A demon draped in human skin.
Then he did it, he slapped me.
     And when he did, when he slapped me it felt like lightning hit my face, not just because it stung but because I felt something, I saw something. I didn't feel the sadness swelled up in my veins, or see the open cabinet as my head slammed into it. What I saw was James in a ball, a very small ball, he must have been 10 no older than 11. He was in a corner of a very dark room with paint peeling from the walls. With 2 windows both covered by very ripped brown curtains that didn't seem to do their job. Tiny James was rocking back and forth with his head dug into his knees.
"It was an accident, It was an accident." He repeated over and over again to himself. I felt him waiting for his dad to get home for his punishment to begin. The punishment for breaking a lamp that lay shattered in front of him.
What in the world did I just see? I stared at the yellowish counter top as blood ran down my forehead, and into my open hands. My mouth was agape out of pure shock.
       "Damn kid, ain't nobody taught you that soaps slippery." His raspy, cigarette scented voice floated into my ears and up my nose.
  I didn't know what it was that I saw all I knew is that it wasn't me.
    "You broke a lamp." I said holding my cheek with shaking hands.
Shut up Nix. Stop. Talking.
    James stopped cold in his tracks, bottle crashing down. Shimmers of brown glass was added to the white porcelain laying on the floor. There was no noise coming from him, but his his heavy breath. His shoulders suddenly straightened up shaking violently.
"What did you say kid?" He spoke still not facing me. Suddenly I felt very small, I didn't move a muscle given everything in my being telling me I should run. That I should flee, that I should somehow turn invisible to everyone and everything. Yet that was a power I didn't have.
Dusty please
   Axel...
I realize that I've been thinking too long because he has now turned around fists clenched into stone.
"What. Did. You. Say?" He roared.
"You br-." I wasn't able to finish my sentence before stone hard fists came into contact with my face, stomach, and everywhere else. And each time his flesh met mine I saw him. I saw young James getting the crap beat out of him.
    Each pause that James took from hitting me, there was nothing just me on the floor face to face with blood smears and Snow White glass.
Each fist was his father hitting him, And in the end, in the end of all this pain. Of me begging Dusty or Axel just to walk through that damn door and save me somehow. He picked me up by his bare bruised hands, knuckles white around my throat. I saw someone other than James. I saw Grandpa Ruzial holding his son up to the window saying,
"Speak when your spoken too boy." Gasping for air, I realized I wasn't myself at this time. I was not me. I was a 10 year old boy gasping for mercy from his father. I am none other than the man that threw me down to the ground giving me one last kick to the groin.
    My body in agony, pain screaming from every inch of me. Tears mixing with blood, mixing with beer. My blurred vision seeing brown leather boots going out the front door. He left me lying on the ground to clean up this mess. Dusty, Axel. I held onto the thought of them through all of this.
     That day I wasn't sure of what happened, I wasn't sure what I saw. But what I do know is that it wasn't me. It wasn't my memory. It was James. 2 very different, but similar things happened that day, an introduction to the next 6 years of my life, and a secrets that I'd end up keeping for a very, very long time.