Shifting Hearts **ON HOLD**

Enduring endless nights of very little to no sleep. Often hearing the voice of the person I despised, it was the voice that belonged to Luke, my Grandfather. Luke was yelling at my older brother, who was having trouble holding back the tears. Our Grandfather was once a good man until my brother and I were 5. That was when the impossible happened, our parents died in a terrible car accident. They were headed back home from a work party on Christmas Eve.
All I remember is Luke, my grandfather, getting a phone call at 2 in the morning saying that our parents got into a car accident and that we should come to the hospital right away. Luke woke us up and told us we needed to get in the car as fast as we could.
Luke was living with us because his wife died and he needed to be taken care of. He's my Dad's Dad. Once my parents died It was then, that he started spiraling downwards. He started to drink and to abuse us. Max got most of the beatings because he would protect me. When Luke would beat us, he would grab my arm and I would end up getting bruises from it.
He would lock us in cages. Pull my hair to lead me to where he wanted me to either the pole, cage, freezer, bed and from there he would starve us and beat us. He would lock us to a pole with chains so tight around my ankles and wrists that I would lose circulation so I couldn't feel them. He would also kick our stomach he did it to make us stop crying but that only made it worse, so bad to the point where it would cause bruising of the ribs and sometimes we'd get a broken bone.

It always felt like no one cared about us, our neighbors never called the police when they heard yelling. They would just yell at us to 'shut up' because they are trying to sleep. We couldn't tell any teachers because Luke told us that if we did we would get taken away and separated.