Dark Passions ✔

Chapter 19: Broken

The memory was disturbed into a murky black and grey, but the distant crying still rang in his ears. Nothing hurt more than the emptiness inside his heart. It didn't matter how long he was beaten for until someone had caught them and stopped it. But the boy who had collapsed on the ground never fought back. He didn't feel the need because he'd just get a bloody eye or lip in return for his attitude.

Beer bottles, feet or fists were used on him, and he lost count how many times. But the boy never lost count of the amount of times he sat alone in his room praying to be free from this pain. All alone he had taken the beatings, but the thing he detested the most was when his siblings got involved and took the beatings for their little brother. His siblings that suffered the same loss had also suffered the same abuse.

Never once did he forget what he was told over and over again. That he was the cause of their family's fall into complete and utter darkness. He was the cause of his siblings' pain and their suffering.

Kill yourself, he thought to himself. Kill yourself. Be free. It whispered in his head like a melancholy ghost that had tormented the boy all his life. But he never gave in, although sometimes, the pain had numbed his soul to the point of death.

The boy had felt death and it wasn't because he had been beaten, his bones broken or crushed; his hair pulled and ripped; his lips bloody; his teeth gnawed together so they wouldn't break; his eyes swollen from tears or blood- he never knew, but that never killed him inside. What killed him was his brother would sit by his bed mending to his wounds and crying until they fell asleep at sunrise. What killed him was the morning when he couldn't go to school because it would raise questions to something even he didn't understand. What killed him was the looks he got when people asked if he was okay, but he smiled and reassured them, rather than crumbling in their arms and showing them that he was broken, lost and even exhausted.

The boy never let anyone know his pain because no one would be able to fix it- fix him. It was all a fool's dream, that he once thought he could recover and live a peaceful life. He wasn't blessed with that, and it was proven when his mother was taken from him. If he didn't deserve a mother than he didn't deserve anything. He was a murderer, a murderer of a woman who had protected her family but failed to protect her last-born child. But he never resented his mother, it was the opposite for him. He felt closer to her than anyone else because she had never left his memory or his thoughts.

But it was never to be expressed to anyone. The boy wasn't allowed to utter his mother's name, otherwise he wasn't allowed food because his stomach had been badly beaten to point that he couldn't stomach a crumb or drink. So, he kept it all locked away. He kept his love and longing inside his heart, locked away for no one to tarnish or call unworthy.

No matter how many nights passed when he was called impure or a mistake. The boy didn't pay attention. He paid attention to when his siblings sat with him and told him the stories of what happened at school, because his legs hurt from being stepped on, beaten and bruised or broken. The boy smiled and laughed with his siblings and friends who were beaten too when they protected him, but they fought back regardless. His siblings would scream and curse at their father. But the boy never saw the point because their father would find a different way to torment him.

Words cut deeper than his fists. Sometimes, the boy preferred when his father grabbed the metal fireplace poker-stick to make him yield into submission, because the beatings didn't last longer than an hour and healed in a week or two. But the words cut his skin raw and burned through his mind, they imbedded so deep that he felt himself merged by its fatal, bitter truth.

Many said to not let it bother him; to get back up and fight; to kick and scream. But the boy had no desire to do that. He knew that if he didn't take his father's rage all to himself than someone else would be the target. And the boy would never let anyone suffer because of him. He already lost his mother, he wouldn't lose another even if he had to die in their place. No one would die for him, no one would be in pain because of him. No one...No one...