Hideaway [h.s]

141

"I can't be here. I'm not sitting in this dark pit for the rest of my existence." I shake my head, changing the subject.

"You won't." She says immediately, pointing to somewhere behind me.

I look at her for a moment before turning my head to see it wasn't the black darkness behind me- It's was a bedroom, a bedroom I know too well.

I turn my head back towards Elizabeth to see she wasn't there anymore and the darkness over there was also gone.

I was standing in the middle of the brown walled bedroom that had two small beds at either end with children in them. The walls were covered in chipped paint and holes. The boy was coughing abruptly into the pillow, the girl had her knees tucked to her chest. My breath became faint when I realized these kids were us.

I watched my younger self sacredly cough up a storm, his hair was sweaty and his skin was pale.

"Please stop." I say to my younger self, walking up to his bed but no one acknowledges me.

"Please." I say again, knowing what comes next from my memory of this moment.

When the door banged open, I turned my head to Axel standing there with an enraged look on his face- my heart racing like he's going to come at me. I haven't seen that motherfuckers face in years.

"No!" I shout at the sight of Axel barreling in and ripping my younger self out of bed.

"He can't hear you. No one can but me." I turn my head to see older Elizabeth standing next to me again, keeping her eyes on the abuse going on in front of us.

"How can we make him stop!" I shout as I watch my younger body get dragged down the hall, subconsciously I follow.

"You can't, this is in the past. Theirs nothing you can do to alter it." She follows me out to the hallway, watching Axel scream at me as my six year old self yells in panic.

"Then why the fuck am I here!" I shout at her, not meaning to raise my voice but I was panicking.

"So you can see a bit more perspective." She doesn't yell back, she just stays calm.

"What perspective?" Right as I say that, I hear a door open behind me. I immediately turn my head and see none other then my mother, running out of the room with tears in her eyes.

She runs right past us like no one is there, a bruise under her eye and a cut lip.

I watch her run towards the kitchen, my eyes wide because I never remember her running out like this. Even though I never saw her because I was in a basement at this point.

I immediately follow her down the hall to the kitchen, confusion welting my brain as my hands shook.

As Axel threw Elizabeth in the basement after me and slammed the door, I saw my coke head mother push him in tears, her fists pounding against his chest.

"He's sick! Let them out!" She screamed in tears.

He immediately pushed her back so she hit the ground hard, a gasp leaving her lips.

"Don't you fucking touch me whore!" He barked at her, raising his foot back his to slam it into her stomach.

I flinched at the hit to my mother, my eyes wide as I'm watching this happen. She cried out in pain, her small body to weak for a hit like that. He picked her weak body up from her body arm, throwing her down the hallway towards the bedroom.

"She was trying to help us, she didn't want to see us get thrown in a basement Harry." Elizabeth says as they both disappear behind the slammed bedroom door. I stand dumbfounded in our old grungy childhood hallway.