Antiquities: A Short Story Collection

Alter

                                                                                       Nathan

"Dad?" I cowered. My eye throbbed and I could feel it swelling up.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" He slurred at me, waving his liquor bottle around.

"Sam, you're drunk." My mother inched towards me, her hand extended. She trembled, keeping her attention on my father. Her fingers beckoned me.

"You don't know that!" He shouted. His voice was like loose gravel. The rage in his bleary features was like sparks. They flew out of his irises and landed on anything they could break. 

I cringed and covered my face when he threw the bottle at my mother's head. My hands were too small to cover me. She shrieked and I heard the bottle shatter. The pieces skittered across the hardwood. Some of them leaped onto the kitchen table. Glass was the only thing that ever gathered around that table.

"Stop crying!" My father demanded. He snatched my arm and yanked me to my feet. He shook me so hard I saw stars. I wondered if he could see the life leaving me.

He shook the tears out of my eyes. My father didn't think crying suited men. He threw a hand across my face when I couldn't stop the salty moisture from rolling off my chin. A beating always went hand in hand with his drinks. The familiar taste of blood ran over my tongue and I stifled a gag.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Begging did nothing. It stirred the venom in his hands and encouraged them to hit me more. I didn't know what else to do. 

"Shut up!" the back of his hand made a loud smacking noise as it collided with my cheek again.

"Mom." I cried out, knowing full well my mother wouldn't brave him again to help me. I didn't blame her. Numbness washed over me and I went limp in his hands. I must have blacked out. When I opened my eyes again, my cheek pressed into the floor. My nose bled, my eyes watered.

"Hunter." I whimpered into the floorboards. The house creaked around me, and I wondered if my neighbors could hear the commotion.

Hunter was always my only hope. He was my father's source of alcohol money. That money was the only reason my father had decided to foster. He was two years older and the only one in the house that had stood up to my father.

"What?" My father lifted me by the collar of my shirt. If the fabric gave out, I'd still have to wear it to school. I could feel his hot, whiskey breath on my face. It made my stomach turn.
"Hunter." I sobbed. Panic made my voice crack. "Hunter. Hunter."

"Stop yellin'." My breath caught in my throat. My father shoved me away and I hit the wall. The pictures all jumped on their nails and one of them crashed to the ground. A thick crack split the middle and my mother's smile distorted. I sank to my knees. This house had plenty of broken parts. Some had been collateral and some were old and loved at some point. I imagined they were all sick of this.

"Dad" I reached up, dazed, and caught a stream of blood running down my chin. I recoiled at the sound of the door slamming into the wall. It hung, dismal on rusted hinges. Those damn hinges had outed me more than once. Standing in the doorway, seething. All traces of softness were gone. He had the confidence of a man, and the body of a child.

"The hell have you been?" My dad looked up. He had a special kind of distain for Hunter.

"Hunter." It didn't matter how many times I moaned his name. Even the syllabals rolling off my tongue felt safe.