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It started with words, as it always had. His father had come home from work that day, the loud clash between the large oak door and it’s frame shook the house and from then Jack felt dread pool at the pit of his stomach and claw up to fester at the back of his mind. The sounds were muffled by the four walls of his room as he attempted to quiet the fret that frothed and churned inside his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to ignorance. Then he heard it, the bickering, the spark that always lit the fire, the ocean that engulfed the hope he had of a quiet night, but he was only left to drown. He didn’t have to be in the room to know the all too familiar retch of alcohol that was a stain on his father’s skin and speech. The noise in the kitchen grew as Jack cowered into his bedsheets and shut his eyes, confused as to why two people who promised to love each other would cry and cuss and shatter bone like it was glass. The first scream of the night ripped itself from his father's mouth and it was chased by a feeble sob from his mother’s pale lips. It always came to this, no matter what she did, and he blamed himself really. Maybe, just maybe if he was never there, mommy and daddy would get along. The sound of a fist against a fragile cheek woke him from his thoughts and he felt the same pang in his stomach he always did. With a wail and more of the vile words his father slung such ease, he heard the door slam once more as it had before. In that moment, the air was too thick to breath and he drowned once more, deeper and deeper and his body wracked with a sob and time stood still for what was much much more than only a moment. He waited, waited for what felt like could be the closest thing he knew as safety, then used all the strength he had in him to go outside and see the aftermath of the battle that was only a fragment of the war that waged itself within the walls of his home tainted with the bitterness that stung his eyes and burned at his heart. He crept down the large staircase and saw his mother in a pile on the floor, the same woman who kept her head held high and captivated the room with all the charm and wit in the world, now helpless at the hands of what should’ve been her one great love. He tripped over himself to reach her. She heard the clumsy steps and tilted her head to see the sunlight that peeked through the rotting bars of the prison she had built herself, her sweet boy. He tried her hardest to compose herself, for if he were to see her broken, she would have failed at her greatest purpose, to keep him safe from the storm that raged on night after night. He reached the bottom of the staircase, the sight before him one of his mother trying her best to be that woman she painted on each day for the world. “Mommy,” his voice small as a mouse “what’s wrong, why are you crying?”. And if she had not been broken before, she had shattered at that. The weeping had turned to howling once more, this time loud enough to bleed out to every square inch of their home and tear her throat. That was enough to make him run to her side, legs unable to get him there fast enough, every small step feeling as though it was replaced by a light years' space. But finally he reached her, small arms enclosing around half her torso, face buried under the thick Mane of the same stark red hair that donned itself on his small head. A broken utterance of “I’m sorry” was the only thing she could force from between her chapped lips, unable to remember how or why it had come to this, having to explain to her little boy that this was the same man who was supposed to protect and nurture, was the one beating her with slurred words and bruised knuckles. “It’s ok, mommy, it’s not your fault, I know it’s not” though he was still too young to understand, to understand why this was happening, why none of the other little boys and girls flinched when their fathers approached them, why they didn’t come to school with little bruises marred on their arms, why they told of holidays spent with laughter and he couldn’t. But in that moment he knew that he wouldn’t be that man, he couldn’t be, not when he’d seen the pain and misery that followed his father like a curse, teeth bared and looking for blood. He knew in that very moment, clutched to his mother as if afraid to lose her if he let go, that he had to be good for her, get her out. He wanted to see her smile like she did for those crowds, but not only then, when she was alone, in the company of no one but silence. “I promise,” it was nothing more than a whisper the volume of a pin drop, but it was a feverish mission now rooted deep in his chest “I promise I’ll keep us safe”
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