Ungifted

02: Pain

Jo:

Pain was the only word on my mind as the blows to my abdomen and face continued on for what seemed like ages of continuous beating. While laying helplessly on the cold, linoleum floor of our kitchen a small, wet bead of blood could be felt dripping down the side of my face before another hit to my eyebrow split the gash open even wider. The once small trickle of blood quickly turned into an intense river that was streaming down my cheek. The thick, red flow covered my right eye and temporarily blinded it with the dark liquid. "Shane! Stop," my worthless mother's cries were muffled through her whimpers and sniffs somewhere in the background behind the drunken, massive machine of a man that laid blow after blow into the right side of my body, intensifying the shots of pain that coursed through my nerves with each punch.

Eventually, as exhaustion finally took its toll, each blow got a little weaker until finally I opened my eyes out of their previous cringe to see through my left, unbeaten eye my mother's jackass of a boyfriend staring down at me with a drunken grin and an empty beer bottle that he must have snatched from the kitchen island behind him in hand. "Bitch," he slurred before hurling and shattering the beer bottle against the wall behind me, only about a foot above my head. My face once again twisted into a cringe that only made him chuckle as the glass scattered all around me on the linoleum with a soft twinkle. Then, he stormed through the house and up the creaky, wooden stairs, slamming the bedroom door that belonged to him and my mother shut with a bang and mumbling a vast array of curse words along the way.

"Baby, I-I'm so sorry. You know how Shane gets," my mother looked down at me with her scared, wide eyes that held no sympathy for me, but instead a blank desire to feel wanted and loved-- a desire so strong that she would rather watch her one and only child suffer day after day, than feel once again like the way she did after my dad left us. Her blank eyes held nothing except a vast, endless pit of emotionless blue. The only emotions she ever did show anymore were ones of helplessness and terror, and it was getting old.

"I'm f*cking sick of you making excuses for him," I shot back aggressively as I scraped myself off of the floor, wincing as pain shot through my battered head. I found myself clumsily wandering over to the tiny closet with a toilet that we call a bathroom.

"I am your mother, Jo. That is no way to talk to me," she squeaked quietly as I continued my stumble across the kitchen and she followed like the emotionless shadow of a person she was. The tone of her voice was much more indecisive and timid than the tone of most mothers when they use that classic line.

Silence was the only sound to fill the air as I glanced in the small, circular mirror to assess the damage done by my mother's douche of a boyfriend, poking and nursing my injuries in the process.

My injuries weren't too bad, I guess. Nothing fatal from what I saw. A short, jagged gash ran right over my right brow and was bleeding heavily, turning the blonde hair of my eyebrow to a bright red-ish color, nothing that a butterfly bandage couldn't fix, and a welt, that I knew would only get worse and lead to a large bruise, was forming to the right of it on my temple. Because Shane was left-handed, the left side of my body scarcely held any injuries, but my right side was usually littered with bruises. I continued to look over my minor wounds as my mother continued to stare at me with her usual blank, helpless expression.

The silent treatment must have worked. By the time I had finished examining my wounds and was about to grab a wet washcloth from the sink in front of me to clean the blood, my mother had vanished.

"A normal Thursday night at the Peters household," I muttered to myself as the repetitive, circular strokes of the white cloth washed the dark, thick liquid down the metal drain of the porcelain sink.

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I stood peering down the silent, empty hallway at June who was scrubbing away aggressively at the dirty floor on her hands and knees. Her body and loose, brown braid rocked back and forth with each scrub.

"Need some help?" I asked as I approached and knelt beside her, grabbing a sponge from the bucket of filthy water in front of her.

"That would be great," she muttered as she continued to wash the floor in front of her.

After what seemed like only a few moments of intense cleaning, the job was almost halfway done when the twin bitches, Kayla and Savannah Flaine, decided to torment us as they strutted past in the close quarters of the silent hallway.

"Oops, sorry." Kayla sounded anything but guilty as she intentionally kicked over the bucket of filthy water. Both June and I watched as the water slowly made its way down the hallway, contaminating and ruining all of our hard work.

June's face turned a bright red as she shot onto her feet, cursing wildly. She would have tackled Kayla right then and there if a muscular, dark figure, whose face I couldn't make out in the dimly lit corridor, wouldn't have jumped between the two . "What do you think you're doing, June?" the deep voice of the figure asked firmly. "Do you really want to get stuck washing this floor for the rest of your life? She's not worth it."

Kayla and Savannah walked away hurriedly, most likely more scared of the boy that just saved them than the girl who wanted to kill them both.

All three of us watched as they made their way down the corridor and disappeared into one of the rooms at the end of the hall.

Through a few moments of awkward silence, I couldn't stop thinking to myself, "Please don't notice me. Please don't notice me." Oh great.

As I knelt on the floor, the boy looked down at me with his almost-scary big, brown eyes and I recognized him almost instantly as Jay Irvine.

Thanks for reading! Please remember to vote and comment if you liked it. The plan is to update every Saturday, so the wait shouldn't be too long if you are looking forward to the next chapter!