His Willow

Chapter 18

Warning: Disturbing violent flashback to start, you have been warned. 

The sounds of two creaking footsteps sounded around the crooked two-story home, the home where nightmares were bred and demons resided, sitting on their thrones of whisky bottles and cigarette ash for the carpets.

The young Willow resided in the small closet at the end of the hallway, below the broken stairs. Willow pressed her face up against the thin miniature doors, peaking through the tiny gap as her peephole, watching to see if her demons were roaming the halls and causing destruction in their path.

Willow was shaking violently, her breaths ragged and that familiar burn scolding her throat, reminding her of her place in life, beneath everyone else.

"Come out come out, sweetie; daddy wants to see you." That all too familiar baritone voice boomed around the halls and shook the shattered picture frames on the walls, the same picture frames that would contain the fake stock image of a family, the image that already came in the frame and purchased by thousands of people. They didn't have any family photos, so that picture had to do, trying to make the home look more normal and less derelict.

Willow always dreamt being apart of those fake families, even if it was pretend smiles at least they looked happy.

Darren Brown. By day he was an average worker, attending the back office for his local pub, doing the admin side of the operation. However he had a nasty habit of robbing them of their stock, not that the owners knew of any misconduct, after all, Darren Brown was a punctual worker, having a clean record and a family man. This was Darren's persona, the story he gives his few colleagues and ten friends on Facebook, a husband and a father of one, his Willow.

By the end of his shift, entering his home after a long day at the office, Darren turned into his real character.

His violent and abusive tendencies could only be pushed down for those few hours he had to work, that was the only time he wasn't causing pain, directly at least, after work hours was a whole other side to the young father.

Every day after five o'clock sharp, Darren has the same routine, a routine Willow has studied to great lengths.

The bottle of whisky will be ready on the doormat at his arrival, ready to be consumed immediately. His next course of action is greeting his cheating wife, who has had a headstart on her bottle, chugging away at the bronze liquid while a reality show was blaring on the television obnoxiously loud and the only light available in the room. While they would drink, fight and smoke, Willow would be hiding in her shadow anxiously, wondering when her father or mother would strick, when the memory of their daughter crosses their drunk mind and make them angry, angry at her existence.

"WILLOW COME TO ME NOW!" Darren roared, his angry thuds shook the floorboards above Willow's closet, the dust and dirt filtering through the cracks in the floor and coating her hair, getting it dusty and matted.

Her heart was racing, the belt was dragging against the floorboard, and she could hear the clink every time it fell down each step, making the panic rise and rise till she couldn't breathe and her heart stop, terrified of the pain to come.

Willow knew he would find her, even if she ran to another part of the house, he will always smell her out, her angelic aura was hard to miss.

"Found you."

The little doors were ripped off their old hinges, and Willow was launched forward, her head smashing against the wall in front, knocking her senseless for a few moments.

"No fight? IT'S BORING WHEN YOU DONT FIGHT CHILD!" Darren screamed, kicking Willow in the stomach and flipping her over, a trail of ruby red blood already forming in his path of suffering.