The Flower Effect

Chapter two.

I tasted blood even before the next hit reached my face. My head banged against the tiled floor making my ears fill with the sound of rocks grinding together, breaking. I felt my teeth chipping and biting into my lips causing more blood to leak out of my mouth, pooling to the floor.

" Worthless"

Hit.

"Piece"

Kick.

"of"

Another one.

"Shit!"

He did a double jab causing a stabbing pain to erupt from my stomach making my lunch launch onto the floor. My vision swam with black dots as I coughed up a turkey sandwich stained red with blood.

He scoffed in disgust , "Clean this up. I have guest in an hour. Don't you dare show your face."

I shut my eyes soaking in the pain hoping it wouldn't take so long for it to go away this time.
My ears rang as the house was then coated in silence, after he left slamming the door, reminding that I was alone. I pushed myself up slowly trying not to move so much, the jabbing in my sides was a clear sign that yet another rib had been at least fractured. Another day in a living hell.

I already felt myself healing, bones rearranging, bruises turning shades of black and blue, swelling already going down as I wiped the blood off the floor.

It was my blessing and my curse. It took away the pain, but also the evidence that it was even happening and gave him the chance to kick me around again. Who would believe a girl, no less an eighteen year old, was beaten daily by her her birth father without the evidence? The law would sweat it under the mat as another case of emotional teenagers gone crazy for attention.

•

Laughter and clanking sounds drifted from below to my room where I sat on my window seat as I sat staring at the starry night sky. The warm night air whipped across my face, eyes closed I thought back to the simpler times of when mother was around. Things were better, happier than right now. Death does that, it affects people differently and could even destroy worlds.

I could remember that day clearly. She was being wheeled in for testing, the doctors had found something attached to her lungs. I had always told her that those cigarettes were bad, I should have done something more to stop her. She smiled and kissed me saying that she was going to be alright and that we would out of here in no time. I believed her, she was my mother, she wasn't suppose to lie to me because she loved me. Kissing me on my blonde head the doctor rolled her behind those big doors and my dad held my hand tight as we watch our happiness go through the doors.

Mom never came home that night and from there were countless trips to the hospital. Back and forth. From school, to home, to hospital became the normal routine until it was just school and hospital. Dad wouldn't leave her side and I grew to be a distant memory to him as mother became his world. I was left at school for long times and having to walk home alone in the dead of winter in snow and rain. The memory of the countless beer bottles that increased as the night turn to day was still fresh in my memory and it should have been a warning sign, but a little girl doesn't think her dad would hit her.

The night of my Sunday dance class came and I remember my dad dragging me out the room in the middle of practice. The car ride was silent and the destination was known between us. My little feet slamming against the white hospital floor as I ran to catch up with him is still a sound that makes me cringe. One ninety four was the door and once we got there she was waiting for us. She laid in bed, her brown curls long ago cut for treatment, tubes strung up to her arms, and the steady beat of the monitor was the only sounds in the room. She was going into final treatment, she was coming home after she told me with the biggest smile on her face.  Another lie, another promise not kept. We waited. My father pacing outside the door, while I sat counting the footsteps that he made.