Love is Painful

Remember These Words

Travis's POV
My alarm alerts me with its regular buzzing at 6am.  I groan, dreading school which is in two and a half hours.  The buzzing of the alarm makes my head throb and my ears sting.  I press my pillow up close to my ears tightly and smack the alarm clock to cease the anoying buzz. 

I stretch out on my back, staring up at the ceiling mindlessly.  Nothing good will happen once I leave this bed.  Father will find some reason to abuse me, Mother will watch, petrified with fear, and school will be absolute shit.

"Travis, get down here for breakfast!" I hear my Father shout angrily from the kitchen downstairs.  I heave a deep sigh, not wanting to go downstairs.  I squeeze my eyes shut tightly, visioning the worst.  Father finding out my sinful secret and disowning me, or worse, abuse that leads to a fatal injury.  I shiver at the thought.  Maybe I deserve it.  My secret is so wrong and disgusting.  It's not the way I should feel.  It's not the way any boy should feel.

I slither out of bed and wriggle into a pair of gray pants.  I slip a clean pink sweater over my head and jog down the stairs.

I enter the dining room.  Father sits at the table burried in his bible, reading glasses slightly tilted on his pale nose.  Mother stands in the kitchen leaning over the oven, removing a tray of warn buttered biscuits and setting them on a cooling rack.  "Morning, son," Father says, not even looking up from the bible.  "Morning," I mutter under my breath, heading toward the kitchen. 

I grab a china plate from the cupboard and pile it high with biscuits with gravy, crispy bacon strips, and poached eggs sprinkled in pepper.

I set my plate on the table in the spot across from Father and begin eating.  Mother joins us at the table, but doesn't eat.  I've noticed she hasn't been eating as often or as much as usual, and she appears skinnier. 

I manage to make it through breakfast without conversation with father, and therefore, abuse free.  I walk over to the hallway and remove my green vans from the shoe rack.  As I'm lacing them up, Father hollers at me. 

"Travis, get in here!"

Oh my God.  Oh my God.  Oh my God.  Please, please, please don't be something major.  Please don't let this end with a fist plunged inside my stomach. 

I enter the dining room.  Father stands towering above me, bible in hand.  What now?  He looks me dead in the eyes, and then speaks in a low tone.  "Remember the words in this," he says, shoving the bible at my chest and making me gasp for breath.  I eye the bible.  Leather cover, metal edges, dusty yellowed pages, Father's initials engraved in the leather.  Father shoves it at me.  "Take it with you," he groans through gritted teeth.  "Remember what it says.  Obey it." 

I shove the old leather book on my backpack and head out the door, starting my journey to school.