「 𝘽𝙚𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙪𝙡 𝙎𝙘𝙖𝙧𝙨」

Chapter 2 - Bandaged Knuckles

I gasped again as a boot rammed itself into my stomach. All the air left my body and I choked trying to get air into my body again, as I heard the crunching of the glass underneath my father's feet as he left the kitchen.

Finally, I stopped trying to hold my head up from the floor and it slammed down, making my eyes roll into the back of my head and everything go black.

・☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・

When I woke up the birds were chirping, and sunlight was flooding the kitchen that I was in. I lifted my hand and felt something sticky. Blood was coating the palm of my hand and the area that I was laying in. I stared at it.

This cannot be healthy. 

I slowly tried to stand up, trying to bare the pain as I gripped onto the wall pulling myself up. I had only been punched a couple of times, but my back ached with the force I had been pushed into the fridge and my arms and back had cuts on them from the shattered glass on the floor.

I stumbled down the hallway into the bathroom, turning on the shower and sitting briefly on the side of the tub I squeezed my eyes shut trying to block out the pain. When I opened my eyes, I stared down at my blood covered palm. The blood was rich in color, and it would have been a mesmerizing color if I hadn't known that it was my own blood, and how it came to come out of my body.

Eventually I stripped from my clothes and got into the shower.

The hot water running down my cut-up skin did not feel good, nor did the pain that filled my stomach and chest, but I endured it, I knew that after I showered and cleaned my cuts, I would feel a lot better.

I changed into some sweatpants and a hoodie and then crawled into my mattress on the floor, pulled up the comforter to my chin, and let myself rest as sleep settled in.

This was the healing process.

* * *

I remember waking up a couple times, mostly from pain, and sometimes the sunlight would be flooding through my room, and it'd make my eyes flutter open in annoyance but I didn't actually get up out of bed until the sun was steadily shining through my windows and I couldn't fall back asleep.

I groggily rolled out of bed but was interrupted by a sharp pain in my chest, and I suddenly remembered everything that had happened; it felt like I was being hit with a bus almost. More carefully this time I slowly rolled out of bed, the pain increasing so much I almost couldn't. I looked around for my phone and when I finally found it I looked at the date: Friday, the eighth of October, seven twenty-three. I did a double take at the screen, and my eyes doubled in size. How was that possible? It was Wednesday when I came back from the gym.

I groaned and tossed my phone back onto my bed, and slowly, and oh, so painfully I stood up and limped towards the bathroom.

My bruises were horrendous, they were a deep blue and purple, with green towards the edges, and I knew this was the worst they would ever look. The longer you had a bruise, it would start turning more green and yellow. The yellow was a sign that it was healing and would hurt less and less as time went on. But with a bruise this bad I knew that it wasn't going to turn yellow for a long time. After I had gotten dressed into another pair of sweatpants and another hoodie, I started my journey to school.

Walking to the bus stop and to school was torture; I hadn't wrapped the little cuts on my back and arms in a plaster or band aid of anything, so they stung as the rubbed against the materiel of my hoodie. My bruises ached every time I moved or walked, and I yearned to go back to the small comforts that even my dingy bedroom and lumpy mattress on the floor would provide.