Her Mysterious Ways

Chapter 9: The Flashback

"Grandma, It's time to get up! We've got to get to the doctors in an hour!" I yelled at my grandma from the kitchen. Gracie was already in the school bus on the way to school, and I was making breakfast for my grandma before her doctors appointment.

"I'm coming dear. I just need to find your mother. Where is she?" My grandma fretted. She was always trying to find someone that was long gone.

I walked into her room to see her pacing her room nervously."Grandma. She's not here, remember? She left." I tried to say it like it didn't mattered, but I just barely got it out.

"No. She was just here yesterday. She didn't go to the grocery store, did she? Only god knows we need some groceries around here."

"Grandma," I pleaded, "she left. She's gone. She's not coming back,okay? She left us." Again, I tried to keep all of my emotions in, but my voice cracked at the end. She noticed it and remembered that my mother wasn't here, and she wasn't going to be there ever again.

"Oh yes. Sorry Cole. I forgot again." She gave me a look of pity and put her hand on my shoulder.

"It's not your fault. It's okay. Really." I tried to smile but she looked unconvinced. Still, she just shrugged and walked out of her room and into the kitchen, leaving me with nothing but the memories.

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As soon as we entered the hospital, the smell hit me right away. That smell was the worst reminder of the past. It almost brought me to tears when the flaskbacks started.

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It was four years earlier. Snow was on the ground and Christmas was approaching. Families walked around town laughing and singing Christmas carols. It was a happy time for all families but ours.

He was drunk at the bar and my mother was at home nervously pacing the kitchen floor anxiously waiting for him to come home. The baby was sound asleep in her room after hours of trying to calm her down. She had a really bad fever, and the lack or heat flowing into house due to trying to cut back electricity costs because of his drinking problem didn't help.

I just sat there at the kitchen table, my stomach in knots. I didn't want him to come home. I knew he would be drunk, and when he was drunk, things broke and people got hurt. My mother got hurt the most, and I couldn't bare to see her like that again. It was too much for a twelve year old to bear. I just couldn't handle it. I told my mother that we needed to run away, just Gracie and her and me, but she couldn't. She told me that it wouldn't work and that we were better off where we were.

That's when he walked through the door.

You could smell the stench all the way from the kitchen. It made me gag and cough, but he kept walking closert and closer to me, so my fear drowned out the smell very quickly. His footsteps were loud and heavy, and his breaths were staggered. There was a look in his eye that I will never forget. It was pure hatred. My mother but her lip, but made no move to help me out of fear since she knew she was next.

"Hello there, son." He boomed. I was sure he was going to wake up the baby. "You know what I was thinking?" I shook my head and looked up at his big frame. There was no doubt that he could kill me if he wanted to. I was just a scrawny kid, and he knew that.

"No sir." I answered quietly.

"I WAS THINKING THAT YOU NEED TO PULL YOUR OWN WEIGHT AROUND HERE!" He slammed his giant fist on the table and it cracked. We all heard it too. I cringed and so did my mom, but we both held all the words and emotions in.