The room was bleak but for a single light fixture on the farthest corner. It’s pale light illuminating only a small section, leaving everything else in murk. Fingers of shadow clawed silently around the room, a bare wooden tomb with only a small tattered sofa and two chairs to show any sign of occupancy. Cold. Dank. The strong stale stench of mold and urine claimed the air. The flickering of the light swept through the rotted, cracked floor, trailing away into the abyss. Dead, until the silence was broken by a sudden creak and a shrill loud enough to shatter glass.

A man paced across the floor, clenching and unclenching his fists, his gruff face veiled in hate, and his eyes fired with that infamous dark and intense gaze that conveyed his authority and power.

“You stupid child! I will show you to obey me!” he bit out.

“NO! Please. Dad, don’t hit me. I’m sorry. Please, don’t,” a small boy pleaded, in a strangled whisper, his lips trembling with every word, and his body stiff with dread.

The sound of slapping and punching echoed in the room—fist meeting flesh, until with every hit the murderous rage slowl

“I love you, Kyle. I’ll always love you,” the woman’s voice vowed.

Kyle averted his face and sighed, a heavy sigh, his eyes trained on the ground. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s hard…when you have a parent who does nothing but beat you. All you have is thinking.” He ran a shaky hand through his tangled hair and for a brief moment his eyes hardened like green glass. He looked up at her. “Thinking is the only thing he can’t take from you and pawn, and the only thing he can’t stop you from doing.”

Fear flickered in Kyle’s eyes. He grabbed a chair and flung it towards his father, turned without waiting to see if it hit him, and ran out into the empty, desolate, familiar night; he would not die under his grasp, not this night, not ever.

And then that night, the night he turned seventeen, the final night…

Some topics in this essay:
Blood Beaten, Startled Kyle, III Kyle’s, Cold Dank, Please Dad, Isn’t Kyle, , Kyle I’ll, I�” Kyle, worthless piece, tattered sofa, slowly rose, forever i’m, towards kyle, straight floor, kyle’s ear, change father, beaten spoke, “i love,