Short Stories

For the Hundredth Time

I dodged his punch and yanked him against the locker holding him by the collar.

I felt anger  running deeper through my veins, taking control over my body. I felt my increasing heart beat  as the seconds passed slowly.

Clenching my hand into a fist, I started punching Liam on the face until his nose bled. I could stop myself but a part of me wanted to beat him until he gave up. Liam had bruises all over his face by then and decided to stop fighting back when a few hands held me from behind and pushed me away.

"Care to explain Joe?" My principal almost shouted. I was brought to his office and Liam, taken to the school's infirmary.

"He came at me first, talked ill about my personal life,"

He basically bullied a girl and when I interfered, he told me that I had to fight him to save the girl. When I tried to talk him out of that he said, "you are just like your father, a coward," which made me lose my temper.

"Instead of coming to a teacher, you decided to act on your own. Do you realize you could have done some serious damage to the boy?"

But I didn't, I thought.

I stayed silent until he finally stopped talking, his last words before dismissing me were, "you are suspended for 2 weeks Joe, I will talk to your mother."

I walked home as slow as I could that day and when I arrived, I found my mother waiting . She looked at me with disgust, I could tell, and stopped me as I went to climb the stairs. A few things happened after that, my mother seized my phone, made me clean the house, and locked me in the attic until midnight. She also restricted me from my meals that day. Honestly, I was not surprised, this had happened before, the attic felt like my own room by then.

I played a few memories of my father in my mind while sitting in the attic, going through my old toys that he bought for me.

I hated him for leaving us, for leaving me in this cruel mess, alone. My mother changed after he was gone, she did not want to see me anymore, did not pay for my school and completely detached me from herself. I doubted that she would realise if I had not gone home for a few days. I blamed my father for all that. I could leave if I wanted, and lived with my grandparents, but it did not feel right.

She was cruel to me, but I was worried that she would shatter if everybody left, like I shattered, when she left me all by myself and when my father committed suicide.

And I realized, maybe for the hundredth time, that my father was a coward but I was nothing like him.