Social Casualty ( a 5SOS / Luke Hemmings Fanfic )

~ Chapter 1 ~

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU ??!" She screamed as she repeatedly struck me across the face. I could feel my face heating up with the blood that must have risen under my skin.

The pain was excruciating, but it always was.

All I could think about was how I'd hide the bruise tomorrow at school. That's all I could f*cking think about. It's all that really mattered. If someone got a whiff at what was going on at school they wouldn't care a bit about me, or even worse, they would go to the authorities.

I'd heard from old friends what happened as soon as social services got their foot into the door of your life.
They wouldn't leave.

It was Sunday night and I'd been packing for the geography trip the next day. Nervous flutters filled my stomach as I remembered everything I needed to do before I left. Anne had unloaded a mountain of work for me to do around the house last minute and I was going to have to battle through the list that night if I had a chance to go. I'd left things too late, again, and I wondered how many times people would have to shout at me to finally remember.

Sh*t. I almost forgot.

If I was gonna go, I had to wake up early....

And I was going no matter what.

I'd saved up all the money I could and now I had a ticket out of here, for three days, but still.

Freedom.

"ARE YOU DEAF !!??? OR JUST F*CKING STUPID?!!" I bit my tongue to physically stop myself from replying. It was my big mouth that had gotten me in trouble in the first place, also the thing that always made situations like this worse.

Plus, she'd think it was a reason to hit me harder and feel better about it. I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of feeling less guilty in her messed up head. She really didn't deserve it.

Snap. Break. Pain. Blood. Everywhere.

It carried on for a while longer, but there's no way to tell how long. I could never tell. In these moments , time was either a saviour; all the hits rolling into one so fast I barely registered what was happening until it was over ,when I ended up sleeping in a pool of my own blood. Or it could give me hell, every punch and slap or kick feeling as if in slow motion, like in the movies when the hero/ine had enough time to fight back. An option I could never take. Hopefully, my skin would have gone numb by then, just like my mind had been the last few months.

Today, it felt like time had stopped, as if there, right then I was frozen in time, a snapshot of my life. And it sucked.

"ARGH" she screamed finally, frustrated that I wasn't responding. She let go of me, sending the back of my head crashing into the corner of my desk, and stormed out, kicking my vintage mirror on her way out.

Again, like in slow motion it wobbled then fell to the floor, smashing into thousands of tiny pieces that sprayed around the room. They all glimmered in the light and I just stared at them, as if willing them to assemble themselves back together. The mirror had been the only thing in the whole of my basically empty bedroom that I'd let myself get attached with.

I'd found it in our loft, standing alone surrounded by boxes and boxes of junk. It was beautiful and must have been an air loom of the previous tenants. Not tainted by my messed up families hands. I'd dusted it off and brought it into my lonely, plain white room only furnished by my single bed, a vintage white table that could barely support the weight of my pencil case and a wardrobe with the little clothes I had all organised into colours and occasion. The bare white walls hadn't been touched since we'd moved in, probably because I hadn't planned to stay so long. I could imagine posters of my favourite artists, and maybe even some of my artwork hanging on them but this wasn't my home. If 'home' was a place where you didn't, couldn't feel safe, then I didn't want one either.I rested my head on the side of the table, which groaned under my weight, and glared at the door. My mind was elsewhere, like always. I couldn't get my thoughts to join up or make any sense. If I imagined my mind, a great mess of colored string going everywhere is what I could see with some smudged dark areas here and there.

I could feel a headache coming on so I staggered up to open the window as far as I could then lied down on the cold, hard floor in a fetus position.

The cold winter air blew in, scattering pieces of regarded paper around the room, most of them stupid poems I'd written and school letters I'd managed to hide before she saw them.

Sighing, I rubbed my hand over my face. Feeling a substance on them I moved my hand into sight, shocked to see a mixture of water and blood. I cried so silently now a days I could never tell if I was anymore. The red did also scare me though, I must have had a cut somewhere , but it wasn't like I could check in the fragments of broken mirror laying in the corner of my room.

Shaking my head, I curled up tighter in my baggy sweatshirt and sobbed into sweet oblivion.