Bonded by Blood

E L E V E N

"Why are you walking like that?" My father interrogated, trailing his eyes down from the nervous look on my face to eventually look directly at hands behind my back. "What are you hiding?"

My heart began to pound as I rapidly looked down in fear without any courage to respond.

"You worthless little scum you-" He immediately rushed towards me and latched a painful grip on my arm, spinning me around to expose the bouquet in my hand. "Wasting my goddamn time, what is this!?"

My lips wobbled as a fearful sheen quickly came across my eyes. "It's for mother!" My voice shattered the moment he snatched the assortment of flowers away from my hand, making me let out a fearful whimper as I watched him observe it with disgust. "T-The neighbor gave it to me for Mother's Day."

He quickly snarled. "What is it with you and flowers, huh?" He aggressively pointed them at me, my breath hitching as I watched a few petals fall down to the floor. "You draw them, you smile at them, you've even asked if you could grow them in the past and now you dare give them to your whore mother!?"

"Please, it's to show my respect for her!" I hysterically spoke as he swung the bouquet with every delivered word, eventually making me drop down onto the floor to collect the petals that kept falling in disarray. "Stop it!"

"Stop!?" That seemed to have set him off as he rapidly raised the bouquet and repeatedly swung it on the top of my head multiple times. "How about you stop being such a goddamn faggot! How about that!?"

"I beg of you, please!" I resulted to beginning as I tended to the aches that reverberated on the top of my head. "All I want is to give it to her for Mother's Day."

"You wanna have something to give!? You wanna show respect to your mother!?" He eventually stops hitting me, only to retract the bouquet back before his chest to turn it horizontally. "What about showing it by being a man for once!" He tightens his grip around the flowers before proceeding to snap them in half.

"No!" I immediately let out a distraught yell that echoed around the room.

"She's gone because of you." He ruthlessly throws them back at me. "And no amount of flowers would ever change the fact that you should've been the one that died in that accident!"

I was speechless, a void forming on my stomach just for it to be filled by a shattered heart. I brokenly cried at the sight of the beautiful flowers completely ruined before me, the flowers I was so excited to give to my mother.

"You're cleaning all of this up once we get home." My father brutally continued without an ounce of mercy. "Now get your ass up and go to the car-if you keep me waiting you'll be snapped next!"

My emotions were a mixture of everything I had wished to become numb from; pain, shock, anger, and sadness was all that enveloped me. I cried my reddened eyes out as a lump had formed in my throat, making it harder for me to breathe as I struggled to get back up. 

I eventually limped my way towards the front door, sparing a final glance at the ruined flowers before walking out and attempting to silence my wails on the back of my arm.

Although I knew I deserved all the cruelty I was facing for everything I've done, I still couldn't help but wonder just how much more I was willing to take.

I'm sorry mother.

The ride to the cemetery was eerily silent, almost suffocating, since I had to share such close proximity with my father for what seemed like an eternity. A soft, mellow song was playing in the background, just enough to maintain the fragile borders between my father and me. The last time I was in a car, I was a version of myself that I'd never be again.