Colored Full of Trauma

The Runaway 💛

Prologue 1.

The first person you'll meet is certainly one full of trauma. Which off the bat is already fun, huh?

His name is Tommy.

Tommy is as of right now, in his 20s.
He's a smart ass, a delinquent, and most of all, still has a soft caring heart. But that's not the timeline we'll be talking about right now. I want to introduce you to what Tommy used to be. (Let's say 10 years old)

He was a good kid, always sweet to his mother. Every day he would come home from school with well, average grades, but that didn't matter to him, he was proud to show his mom them anyway. And when he did show her?

"Mommy, mommy look!"
Young Tommy shouts with a wide smile, hidden by the piece of paper that he's holding in front of his face.

"Aw look at that, your math..."

Inspecting the paper, she notices the many mistakes.

"Hey Tommy, do you know what 12 + 12 is?"

He looks at her with a nod, clueless.

"Okay well, how about this."

Tommy's mother kneels down onto the carpet, and gestures for him to sit down next to her as she grabs a shoe box sized tote full of cars, and a clear sealed bag filled with lincoln logs from the bookcase next to them. Instead of books, it's covered in all of Tommy's favorite action figures, Legos, stickers, you name it.

Setting the tote on the floor and opening it up, she lay all the cars down. 24 in total.

"Okay so, let's move 12 cars into THIS garage" she says, rolling them into a small square that she quickly made out of lincoln logs. Moving them slow enough for Tommy to count each one.

"And then we buy 12 more cars... How many cars will we have in total?"

Intensely, he stares at them as his finger bounces around.

"20..."
Four quick whispers are heard under his breath."
"24!"

"Good job!"
She says, high-fiving him.

"Now, I want you to tell me why you put 15 on your homework."

Tommy looks at the page for a few seconds.

"Well, I wanted to make the problem easier. So, I had 12, then I added a 1, and a 2, which is 3! So 12 + 3 is 15!"

His mom chuckles to herself, then looks down to meet his eyes with a pat on his spikey blonde hair.

"We've got a lot of cars to play with."

As you can see, they enjoyed the day after school together. When not playing toys with him, they'd often go to the park and chase each other for hours.
Their life during the day was perfect. It was just at night that the problems occurred. The "problem" being Tommy's father. And this is where it gets kinda depressing...

He would show up at 6:37 (Tommy kept track) most nights. Enough time for him to get off work, pick up a 6 pack, and drive home. Some nights Tommy and his mother were lucky because he would go to the bar and not get home until far past midnight. It was like a full day for the two to spend together. But those days were usually bittersweet, since he'd typically be more pissed off when he got home.

Tommy would watch as his father hurt her in front of him. He hit Tommy a lot too, but only because he would always try to step in and help her, but Tommy's father was stronger than him, and as much as he tried, the little boy could never protect his mother as much as he wanted to.

One night, he came home drunker than they've ever seen him.

Tommy looked up to see his father's hands around his mom's throat, grip growing tighter as the bitter rage grew.

A sparkle from the chandelier above reflected into Tommy's eyes as they met an old wooden chair behind his father.

With no hesitation, he kicked one of the chair legs, snapping it off. Then, with it in his hands, he ran up to them. Tommy tried to use it to stop him, but it only backfired, hard.

A kick to the boy's face sent him falling back onto the floor. But it was worth it to see his dad's hands leave the frail, bruised neck of his mother's. Even if it was only to pick up the chair leg.

As the wooden club hit Tommy over the head, he nearly went unconscious.
Then, the 'man' swung down on him harder, in the stomach this time.

(Mom!)
He cried internally.

As she took frantic breaths behind them, Tommy tried to crawl away.

It didn't take many cracking hits on Tommy's back for his most inner instincts of fight-or- flight to kick in. To the point that he couldn't even think, he had to run, but he couldn't escape his father's grasp. And even when he did, the chair leg swinging onto him was enough to stop him.

Just when it seemed like Tommy's lasts breaths were being drawn, his mom came up from behind his dad and shoved a small wooden piece into the side of the asshole's neck!

"Tommy run!!!"
Was the last thing she said to him as they shared a look into each other's eyes.

(Please, don't make me.)
He wanted to yell.

But he knew, that all his mom wanted was for him to leave.

So he nodded, and bolted for the door, hearing his mother scream behind him.

But he didn't stop running.
He got halfway down the street before his father stepped out of the front door with something in his hand. He saw him try to throw it at Tommy, and it nearly hit him, but as it got close, it's as if the wind started pushing Tommy faster. A glass bottle broke behind him as he started soaring down the street, barely moving his feet to run. His adrenaline was going faster than he was, nothing made sense.

He finally stopped moving when he tripped over a curb a few blocks away. The fall knocked him out, and he didn't wake up until the next day.

When he finally opened his eyes, he was surprised to see a sunrise, but even more confusing were the pair of rollerblades on his feet.

"How did these get here? I didn't put them on?" He thought to himself.

Little did he know, Tommy was just growing into his newly developed ability.

To Be Continued.