She needed someone to hold her.
Blood trickled from her feet.
It pooled on the floor.
Sharp pieces bit into her thighs.
More blood pooled under her.
Memory flooded me.
I was twelve years old.
I curled into the fetal position on the floor. A harsh kick landed on my lower back. She was wearing pointed heels, which made the pain worse. I tried to use my hands to block my head in case she kicked me there again. Where was Cade? He didn’t normally leave me alone when she was home. Especially not when she was drunk and high like this.
“You were supposed to clean the bathroom, you worthless little shit!” she screamed at me, spittle flying from her mouth.
I knew better than to respond. It didn’t matter that I had cleaned it already. Nothing I ever did was good enough for her. If I tried to say anything in my defence, she would only kick me harder.
I tried to make myself as small as possible, as if curling into a tighter ball would make me simply disappear. I knew why she hated me so much because she told me all the time.
“You are a bastard, Killian. Your whore of a mother is dead, and you're lucky we took pity on you and didn’t leave you at an orphanage.”
She also would threaten to drop me off at the said orphanage in the same breath.
When she hurt me like this, I liked to picture my birth mother. Had she been beautiful? Had she been kind? I often compared Cade’s face to mine, trying to determine what features he got from our dad, and which I got from my mom. My eyes were more hooded than his, and my brows were thicker and more arched. My nose was narrower and sharper. We had both gotten our father’s square jaw and masculine features.
I tried to envision my mother. In my vision, she had jet-black hair like mine, ice-blue eyes, and a kind expression. I had never seen a photo of her; I didn’t even know her name. I had askedmy dad once, and he backhanded me, saying never to bring her up again. He reminded me that Daphne was my mother. But she wasn't.
I had no mother, certainly not Daphne.
She hated me from the moment she saw me. She lacked maternal instinct, but what little she had she reserved for Cade and Cade alone. All she saw in me was her husband’s infidelity.
Another kick landed higher on my back. I prayed she wouldn’t aim for my neck or head. I tried my best to stay still, like an animal playing dead. She would eventually grow tired of me and wander to the kitchen in search of another glass of wine. While she was pouring it, I would find a place to hide until Cade got home.
Her relentless abuse eventually slowed, as her breaths grew ragged and shallow from exhaustion. The drugs and alcohol had made her body weak and fragile, causing her to look like a gaunt shell of her former self. Pure rage fueled her during these abusive episodes, as she channeled the energy and stamina stored in reserve to punish me for existing.
One more kick to my lower back landed before she stumbled her way to the kitchen.
I used to lay there and unleash the tidal wave of tears which gathered within me, but those tears had long since dried up, and I couldn’t stay here any longer, needing to find shelter from her. I had several hiding spots I deemed safe, and I scrambled to make my way to one of them before she returned. Pain radiated through my limbs as I moved them, begging my body to carry me to safety. I would be many shades of black and blue tomorrow.
My closest hiding spot was in the attic, behind an old wardrobe, which had been long forgotten and blanketed withdust and cobwebs. I had to pull down a cord, which released a rickety wooden ladder that led through a small panel in the ceiling. The ladder was heavy to pull back up once I had climbed it, but I couldn’t risk her discovering me.
Sometimes I considered leaving the ladder down, hoping she would follow me. She was so drunk and uncoordinated that there was no way she wouldn’t miss a ladder rung, fall, and hopefully break her neck.
I often thought about ways to kill her and stop the torment. Cooking oil on the bottom of her shower floor, which would cause her to slip and hit her head. A small push to her lower back as she drunkenly stumbled down the stairs, or a dose of drain cleaner in her wine. It would have been easy, and even easier to frame as an accidental fall or slip considering her alcohol and drug abuse.
So why didn’t I?
It was simple: Cade.
My brother was the reason I never killed her.
He hated her as much as I did, sometimes more, after seeing the evidence of abuse on me. But despite that, in the rare sober moments that Daphne could mother, Cade lit up, starved for her affection.
In ill-forged attempts to redeem herself for parental neglect, she would often love-bomb him with gifts, praise, and attention, skyrocketing his hopes, before returning to her benders and abandonment. Still, he had rare moments of motherly love, something that I would never have. Despite his denial, her death would haunt him and a way I wished on no one, especially my brother.
I knew what it was like to lose my mother, even if I never knew her. It was a void that lingered and a wound that never healed. It wasn’t just the absence of her love, but the end of possibility. There was no possibility of my mom reading me a story before bed, cooking me soup when I was sick, or hugging me when I needed comfort, because she was gone.