Thud! I landed hard on the ground. Bam! I could taste blood in my mouth. Bang! Everything went black.
I woke up in a dark alleyway. It was late, maybe ten o'clock. I snuck out of the alley and looked around. Nothing looked familiar. There were two people walking outside, barely visible on the dimly lit street.
I remember seeing Duane and his band of goons cornering me on the street. I remember trying to escape, only to be thrown to the ground. They always picked on me. I could always put up a fight. I was pretty big, But they had numbers. And they also knew that there wasn't a single person I knew that could help me.
I started walking in the general direction of home. If you even can call it much of a home. My sister (Catherir or, Cath, as I call her), my dad, and me. Well my dad doesn't really live there. He will come in drunk and tired late at night from the bar. But whenever I wake up in the morning he is never there. I'm not sure exactly where he goes but I can tell at least sometimes he is somewhere gambling. Because whenever he comes home he either comes with a lot of cash or no money at all. He rarely ever talks to us, and my sister and I have learned not to talk to him.
When we were little, he came home really late, like twelve pm. We heard him come in and had asked him what he was doing and he lost it. We never really found out and we both got beat. But I can assume that his night had not been good.
I make enough working at the corner store as a cashier to be able to feed Cath and me regularly and have decent clothes. We only barely scrape by and sometimes go to bed hungry. But somehow we have gotten used to it and have accepted it as how life goes.
I finally found the corner store and was able to make it back home from there. To my surprise my dad was already home and asleep. I went into mine and Cath's room to find Cath laying on the floor. I moved her onto the bed and slept on the floor myself.
She always made me sleep on the bed. She said it was more comfy and I would sleep better there. I would let her fall asleep on the floor and then move her to the bed when I was sure she was asleep. And eventually I would fall asleep myself.
