A Series of Ephemeral Tales

ʀᴜɴ

Run: A Short Story

by Ysabella Susim

The breeze was no longer gentle, it blew fiercely, causing my hair to whip harshly at my face. Shivering, I pulled my coat tightly around me. There were dark clouds overhead, and rain began to fall. There was a distant sound of thunder, and it was cold. I picked the wrong night to do this. To run away.

    There are many reasons for why I ran, but they all rooted from the same problem, or rather, person. My father— or more accurately, his wife.

***

    She came home angry... Again. My brother didn't have a good day at school, and my stepmother  was called while at work. She gets angry when we bother her or our father, so this intrusion would not go unpunished.
   
    We were waiting in the living room, my brothers and I, when the door slammed open, causing us to jump. She scanned the room until her eyes landed upon my youngest brother, lighting with livid contempt. She made her ways toward us, hardly giving us  time to react before she hit my brother. We tried to scatter, but she caught us.

    Another blow was delivered, and my face stung. Then it was my ribs, and then my stomach, and then my chest, my head, my back. My heart. She didn't stop until I hurt everywhere and couldn't move. Until tears were running down my face. After me, it was my younger brother, and after him, my youngest brother. She never physically hit us, but words always did cut deeper than a knife.

    Our stepmother stayed in their bedroom, when she had finished, waiting for our dad to come home and pick up the pieces left of us. We hate her. He married her after our mom passed away, after he had grieved. It was after they'd married when the pain started. So much pain, never letting us heal from the loss because she tore into the closing grief again and again and again...

    ***

    There were so many things I would've done if I hadn't been too afraid to do them. There were many nights when I layed in bed and wished I would never wake up. There were so many afternoons spent cooking for them in the kitchen, wishing I could plunge the knife into my heart, because surely that would hurt less than what my father's wife would say to me if I left so much as a dirty dish in the sink. Then there are nights when I just wanted to run, but was too scared to leave my brothers with her, yet... I ran tonight. I ran tonight, and I think that I just might die, because the wind is cold.

    Still I run, however cold it may be, because surely it's not worse out here in the world than it is at home? Home, the one place I should feel safe, yet I am pushed into running from it. I stop running. What am I doing?

    I'd felt so brave when I'd run from the house, so full of adrenaline. Now, I all I feel is cowardice and stupidity, for what kind of sister leaves behind her baby brothers? What kind of sister subjects them to that kind of mental and verbal pain? I turn back, ready to return to my house, when the night suddenly brightens. No, it doesn't brighten, but there is light. I suddenly realize where I am. I'm at the train tracks, and there is light. The ground begins to shake beneath my feet. Thunder crashes, and the night goes dark.