Short Story

She lay in her small bed with her large, doe eyes screwed shut and her tiny head pushed into her pillow to try muffle out the petrifying screams her mother was letting out. Her arms clutched her tattered teddy bear tightly to her chest and tear tracks stained her pretty face. She lifted one hand to pass it through her knotted hair and cover her ear. She couldn’t stand it. Every night it was the same. Her small 7-year-old mind could not understand what had happened. A year ago it had been all beautiful, she remembered walking through the park in front of the house they used to live in with one arm outstretched to hold her mother’s hand and the other to hold her father’s. They had walked down the path where the tree tops cover the blue sky, her favorite, and they had taken her down to the playground where she had played with the other children whilst her parents had sat down on a near bench watching her with proud eyes and sharing delicate, affectionate touches. Then she remembered the fighting, the smaller food portions and the hunger she had felt every night going to bed, then came the biggest change for her, moving house, they had left the comfortable two-story detached home for a very small cramped apartment, then came the long waits for her father to come home, the constant worrying of her mother from not knowing where he was, soon followed the 2am screaming and the finally came the beatings. She had never witnessed one as her mother told her to stay upstairs and not come down under any circumstances but she knew, every morning new bruises peppered her mothers battered body, her need to not make any noise as her father was sleeping and she was too scared to wake him up, but the worst was definitely her mother’s sobs just after her father went to sleep. The sound of her mother’s broken heart crying out for help, for love was never return as her father’s heart had turned icy-cold. He did not love his family any more turning into a drunken bastard who hit his defenseless wife. The small girl wanted to know why, why he wasn’t like he was before, and that was something no one could answer. Not even I knew what possessed humans to change so radically hurting the ones they had loved most and promised to keep safe. I left the small girl in her room but not without giving her a feather like kiss on the forehead. She was asleep now, at peace until she woke up next morning and would have to tip-toe around the house once more before being sent off the her public primary school to be around other small children and more importantly safe from the very own creature that helped create her, her father. I gently closed the door behind me and silently walked the small corridor to the stairs her father was attempting to climb in his drunken stupor. He stumbled once more on the last step causing him to trip over his own two feet and fall flat on his face at the top of the stairs. My eyes fell to the floor to watch him struggle to get up, once he succeeded he grabbed on the wall making his way to his bedroom. Half-way there he double over, spewing the contents of his stomach all over the already stained floor just before passing out on the floor under the door way to his room. I shook my head in distaste at the state of him. How could someone stoop so low? I made my way down stairs and walked through the tiny living room that doubled up as a dining room. I got to the kitchen to watch a skinny, battered woman wince as the applied some ice wrapped in a dirty kitchen towel to the side of her ribcage to hopefully lessen the pain of the bruise that was surely going to appear there tomorrow. She looked up to face her own reflection in the mirror sobs escaping her chapped lips, as she couldn’t even recognize herself in the mirror. She slowly fell to the floor, curling her knees and wrapping her arms around herself to cradle her own body as her loud obnoxious sobs racked her weathered body. I gently stroked her hair knowing she wouldn’t feel a thing. I whispered in her ear coaxing her to stand up again, and walk to the police. I knew it would be pointless though, she still loved that man, no matter what she did she still had hope, hope that he would turn back to how he was before, but there was little to no possibility of that actually happening. Hope was funnily enough one of the last things humans let go of. I sighed and once again bent down the caress her cheek before standing up to my full height, spread my wings and soar up into the heavens.