Never Backing Down

Never Backing Down

“Stop it!!!” My voice wasn’t loud enough, they wouldn’t stop fighting, my vocal cords were strained. It felt like a thousand needles were jabbed into them, the few words I was able to mutter were weak and broken. I couldn’t do anything now but watch helplessly… as my brother was beaten. His face looked like a hideous monster, his arms were like hills bruised badly. Why wouldn’t the savage just stop, maybe this would be our last night. The last night �" I can’t imagine the end �" no it couldn’t be but… it was too late.

My brother bashed the man’s head with a glass lamp and made way to towards me. His face was battered and bloody, his brown hair was ruffled from the fighting. His lower lip was torn and bleeding. Yet he spoke with a muffled tone. “Sarah… go, get away from here… go!”

I felt my hands turn ice cold as my heart plummeted into a deep freeze. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do anything, I was in shock. My eyes locked on the man, watching him search for something like a crazed animal. He blew through the living room table and wooden book dresser. Heaving everything up and into the air, books, glass, picture frames thudded as they pounced against the wooden floor.

My brother reached for me, catching me off guard. Taking hold of my chin drawing my eyes to his, only his left eye was open, the other was swollen. “Sarah! Listen to me…”

The man in the background thrashed with his arms and yelled, till he found a glass bottle of scotch whisky. Yelling at the top of his lungs like an ape. “Gah! T… it is my… bob scotch…” He spun his head like a circus wheel for a few seconds. Till his eyes landed on me and my brother, he stopped hollering like an animal. He started walking sluggishly towards us calling out our names. “Sar… Sarah… come to daddy… Johnny… com…”

Me and my brother stared at him hesitantly for a few moments, then my brother looked back at me. “Get out of here! Please Sarah, don’t let him get you again. I’ll…” Johnny was taken by the shoulder by the man. He tried to break loose but the man had a strong grip over him. Johnny thrashed trying to break free. “Go! Sarah, go now!” Johnny was thrown back onto the floor landing hard on his crooked back.

The man came closer to me with his right hand open. “Come closer Sarah… daddy… need some… su… sugar…”

I still couldn’t move yet, my mind was rushing thoughts all over the place. My legs and arms turned numb and ice cold. I was like rock, I just couldn’t do anything as this man came closer to me.

“Come here…” His voice squeaked with a broken pitch.

Johnny struggled to his feet, yelling as he got up. “Uh… No! Leave her alone!!!” Getting to his feet, he bolted towards the man. Tackling him into the wall where a hunting shotgun laid. The whisky bottle flung into the air and crashed with a grinding sound, as the glass skidded across the floor.

The man pinned at the wall roared like a T-Rex and hammered Johnny in the spinal cord, my brother belched and coughed. Being winded for a few moments, the man slammed Johnny in the chest with his bulky knee. Kicking Johnny into the air as the man stumbled from side to side, dazed from his drink. Johnny obliterated a small glass vase that was half broken on the floor.

The man chuckled and came over Johnny. “You weak boy, I should… a… kill… you long… ago.”

Johnny only crawled over the floor as a small puddle of blood filled his back wounds. Small cracks of glass popped like corn in the microwave with each move he made. Yet he kept fighting to stand.

I tried to help him, running on top of the man’s back. Digging my nails into his face and chest, I thought I had him. Screaming out loud as I tried to take charge of the situation. “Leave my brother alone you w***e!!!”

He growled like a grizzly and jumped back against the wall, the force of his weight against mine winded me. I felt my back bones pop and crack. The man moved forward as I slid down the wall over the hunting shotgun. My lungs struggled for oxygen, my entire body ached in pain all over.

He chuckled again and turned around and looked at me. “Did you really think…” He stuck out his forefinger towards me, waving it in a small invisible circle. “you… and your punk a… brother could stop me… wow. Yawls’ are… really something…”

I felt the shotgun nudged under my legs as my head bobbled up and down, I began to smell a faint nasty and sour aroma just briefly but then it left. While my brother got to his feet once more. I started to reach for the shotgun as my father slowly walked towards my brother.

“And you… just don’t… quit now do… you. You would… been a good… man… but look at ya. Slob… fighting me… nothing you are now… huh, you gonna die now boy…”

Holding the shotgun in hand, my arms shivered viciously. But I held it chest level, calling out the mans name. “Gliss… leave my” My breath fell short of words, I took in another breath. “Stay away from… him or I’ll…"

“You’ll what… shoot… coward…”

My fingers started to squeeze the trigger slightly as Gliss turned to face me.

“Go… ahead… do it.”

I watched my brother stand to his feet just barley, still struggling to stand. He started to fall over to the wall, using it to help lift himself up. Stumbling from the exhaustion and blistering pain, I knew I needed to buy him time to recover. But I could end it here… take a life… no I couldn’t. I couldn’t think straight, killing a man… wasn’t right. I knew I couldn’t do it… no, even after everything that this man had done to us.

“What you waiting for?” Gliss was only a few feet away from me now. Still taunting me as I fought myself mentally, I just… just couldn’t think.

Johnny mustered a few words in silent. “Don’t… Sarah… please…” His exhausted voice hummed in my ears as I held the gun.

I pressed the shotgun trigger as Gliss reached me, but I was too late. He knew I was going to shoot, he dashed out of the bullet fire. I just missed him, as the kick of the rounds sprayed out of the muzzle with a faint mist of black smoke. My chest punched in from the force of the gun, I was put under the radar of just living. Feeling the slow and fractured heart beats pounding as I slowly breathed for a few moments. Gliss kicked the gun out of my arms, they gave way without struggle as my arms swung over with the weapon. Gliss lifted me up with his left hand by the throat, taking me off my feet. Strangling me as he brought me to his eye level, I saw rage and something else. As if he was afraid or something… but that was quickly extinguished. Before I knew it the bright lights of the room went dark and cold.

I could only feel the dizzy twirling of my body going round and round in a circle. Building momentum until Gliss sling shot me through the door. The wooden door creaked for an instant and came off the next. I saw the twilight stars in the sky for a few seconds as I soared through the cold air. The next thing I knew, I plummeted into the damp mud outside. Rolling around like a dog on fire like a rag doll, coming to a sudden stop. Facing the house where I called a prison, I saw a narrow and small light. Where two figures stood at the doorway, one having a small stick like tool, as the other had just fists. They clashed with one another, swinging everywhere behind the door. Till a sudden bang shot out loud.

My vision slowly blurred and receded into fuzzy colors. My body was exhausted and worn out, the next thing I knew it was over. Like a dream come true, but who had won. I wasn’t sure until I saw who came out the next day.

Johnny’s voice sprang out with a joyful sound. The birds whizzed by through the mountain like trees, chirping their songs to one another. “Are you ready to leave this place? This prison yet Sarah?”

I looked at him with a faint smile. “I still remember everything that happened in that house. Why was our father like that? Why was he such a bad man?”

Johnny made his way over to me from his Ford Truck. Wrapping his arm around me, pulling me in close as he gazed out and over the house. “I think he was just absent minded, nothing at all, I mean…” He paused for a moment then continued. “It doesn’t matter anymore, it was the past. You have to let go, stop daydreaming about it."

I felt a small cringe of frustration brewing inside me as I felt he was trying to shut out the past. “I can’t, you can’t, we can’t ever recover from this. He raped me and you, beat us, abused us in everyway possible. And…”

“All that stuff that happened was for a reason, not by accident. It may be bad and horrifying but look at where we are now. We have come back from this, we have recovered. Together we can make it through this, its been ten years since that night. Don’t let it ruin our lives now.”

“What happened to mother though, I mean all those things he did to us. I never in my entire life seen mother. I will forgive and move on if you tell me what happened to her. Did she have anything to do with what made him go mad?”

Johnny removed his arm from my shoulder and walked a little ways out from me, itching his small beard.

I knew he was hiding the evidence about what happened to her. “What happened to her. Please Johnny tell me.”

“Well… how about another time, lets just drop this conversation for the day. We’ve seen and remembered enough of the past already, okay?”

I walked just behind him, hitting him in the arm. “No tell me!”

He turned over to face me with a bitter face, as he rubbed his arm. “Fine.”

“Well?”

“When you were by the hunting gun did you ever pick up any fowl smell, any small hint of it at all?”

I thought about it, remembering just a really faint moment when I smelled a hint of a bad aroma. “Yes, why, what does the smell of some old gun have to do with what happened to mother?”

“It has everything to do with her death. That was her that you smelt.”

My face squinted in shock and surprise. Yet I still didn’t understand how it was related to her death. “Wait what? How does a gun…”

Johnny waved both his hands at me in frustration. “No not the gun, but the rounds that were shoved into the gun, those bullets were mixed with her ashes.”

“Your kidding right?” I sort of chuckled at the thought of something so insane.

“When you shot the gun you saw a faint mist of black smoke right?”

“Just barley, I can’t remember.” I raised my voice as I turned my back on him walking away. Starting to believe what Johnny was telling me. “You can’t be serious about this.”

“He burned our mother long ago, when we were just kids. That’s why she was never apart of our lives. Each of those bullets were mixed with gunpowder and her ashes. He used her remains to remind him of who he was."

I felt the cloud of denial casting over me as I sat down over the dirt ground in shock. “You can’t be right. How would you even know?”

“I know because he told be just before he died. He told me in the last few words he had left before his last breath. He told me, that she was the reason he was so crude, because of what they did so many years ago. Something that made him so mad that he would burn her alive and use her for his gun. That’s all I know about our mother, but there is something that happened so long ago and I don’t know what happened.”

“Well… lets find out.”

Johnny came to me, looking at me as if I was crazy. “I thought we were putting the past behind us?”

“Johnny! If we are ever going to be able to carry on with our lives we have to know. For ten years we have had nightmares of that one night. Maybe, just maybe if we find out the truth about everything then we won’t have to suffer the past anymore.”

He just shook his head as he looked at the dirt ground.

“Even now our father… Gliss is abusing us mentally. I won’t back down now and let him haunt me for the rest of my life. Neither will you! We must know, it’s worth the risk of knowing the truth. Instead of suffering for the rest of our lives.”

“Your crazy but okay. Lets find the last piece to the puzzle, then we can be freed from this. Together right?” He smirked.

I smiled at him as we reached out hands. “Together.” He lifted me off the ground onto my feet. “Now lets get going. Shouldn’t be that bad nor hard, nothing else should get in the way of finding the truth.”

Author's Note

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