Prolouge

The boy with the ice-blue eyes ;]

So we lay our head down,

tune out the noise,

avoid all the others,

patch up the voids.

 

Nothing ever changed around here, nothing. I woke up at the same time, to the same noise that I always did. Though now, the screaming of my parents seemed more like white noise than anything else.

 Always the same.

I kept my eyes shut against my pillow and tried to block the noise out so I could get some sleep for once. Dad had been coming home drunk lately, like he used to. My earliest memories were those of Dad coming home in a drunken rage and punching a hole through the door, or screaming at my Mom to ‘go ahead and call the cops.’ Not that it ever worked.

 I cried when Dad tried to barge into the house, slamming into the door when he found it dead-bolted. I cried when the police pulled up with their blue lights flashing. I cried when Dad screamed at my Mom and when she screamed back. I sobbed even harder when my brother, Axel, wrapped his arms protectively around me to pull me away when Dad took down one police officer and two more lunged on top of him.

I shook my head violently to clear the awful thoughts from my head and wrapped my pillow around my head. Things were going down the drain again, like they always did. Dad would come home from a ‘successful’ year at rehab, and things would be great for a while. When I was younger, I saw our family as normal during the months when Dad was sober. I made him go everywhere with me, just so I could tell the other kids that he was my Dad.

Nothing was normal around here, though. You could practically feel the tension under the surface of our ‘normal’ lives. My Mom, Axel, and I would wait for the disappointing day that Dad walked in reeking of booze. Dad would wait for the day that he could resist no longer, though he felt guilty, but he would care less and less as the shots went down.

“C’mon, we’ll go for a walk to the park!” Dad smiled as he said it, and I smiled back.

“How old are you now, Gabby?” he asked.

“Six!” I giggled back, though I now wonder if he really forgot, “You know that, Daddy!”

“Yes I do! But I wanted to make sure you were a big girl and could make it to the park with me!”

“I can, I can!” I jumped up and down with pent up energy as he slipped my backpack over my arms.

“Daddy…” I hesitated, slowing down some on the side of the road. “We aren’t going to the park!”

“Sure we are hun! We just need to make a quick pit-stop!”                    

“Oh where?” I questioned, always the curious one.

“The gas station. Aren’t you thirsty?”

“I guess…” I quickened my pace, anxious to get done so we could play at the park. If only I had known, there would be no trip to the park that day. If only I had known that my Father planned on using me as a mule for his alcohol that day, and that we wouldn't return home until well-after dark that night with my Dad using me as a crutch in his drunken stupor. His words still rang in my ear after all these years.

“Don’t tell your Mommy, Gabbs. This is our special secret, and we don’t want her knowing how thirsty I got.”

Over nine years later, and things hadn’t changed a bit- though my brother seemed to care less. I heard the sounds of my Mom striking my Dad across the face, and I knew there would be no sleep for me tonight. I sighed as I slid my window open and pulled on my Chacos, ready for a night on the streets. I had no regrets about leaving during times like this-even if my Dad was an angry drunk, he’d never hit my Mom.

I dropped down to the ground and pondered for a minute on knocking on my brother’s window to invite him along, but decided against it in the end. I walked anywhere and everywhere, trying to decide on a place to sit and rest until dawn. I finally decided on heading to the playground, as there were several cozy places to sleep there.

When I finally got to the top of the hill that looked down on the playground, I had the feeling that I was being watched. I looked around, suddenly frightened, and gasped when my eyes clashed with another pair, ice-blue. There was a boy sitting on the swing, and he was smiling at me.

 

Reviews

[AmeliaMae]

Wow, my dear, this is very very good! I can't wait to read the rest of your story. :)