No Mercy For The Child.

The slamming of a hard, brittle door. Pounding footsteps that drew nearer with every breath—they sent tremors up and down my spine. I dashed into my closet, slid the door shut behind me and stood there, hoping he wouldn’t sniff me out.

He always did though. I thought when I was younger that he could smell the fear, smell how it stained the air. Our house always smelt like fear. It was sickly sweet, like roses wilting on a humid day.

I wasn’t in the closet even a second before he burst into the room. The smell of alcohol and something I could not identify lingered behind him, clung to his clothing like strands of cobweb. Through the crack in my closet door I could see his musty face, small pricks of greying beard lining his powerful jaw.

I saw him turn and start towards the closet, and I scrunched my eyes shut so I didn’t have to see the savage lurching motions he made as he moved towards me.

The next thing I knew, I was dragged out by my long tendrils of hair. I remember shrieking for my mother, who I knew was in the next room. She wouldn’t come. She always was such a coward.

He beat me then, as he had many times before. His fists rained down on my face, and when I turned away, my back.

“You don’t fuckin’ dump the milk out!” He roared at me. “You useless fuckin’ brat, I’ll take yer head off!”

“It smelled bad!” I screeched in terror. I tried to hold my arms up in a futile attempt to shield myself. “It smelled bad! It smelled bad!” I cried it again and again. I cried it for what felt like impossibly long currents of time; there was no end to the sound of knuckle cracking upon my body.

A few days later, I was outside in the backyard. It was spring time, and despite the chaos and terror that invaded our home each evening, the yard was green and peaceful. When I breathed in, I could taste the rain on the air. I could smell something sweet—I thought it might’ve been all the flowers budding.

The smell of flowers is nothing like the smell of fear.

I was standing on the porch, inspecting my face in the reflective surface of the sliding door. It was swollen and pink, one of my eyes adorned a ring of dark purple, and there was a little cut on my lower lip. When my teachers asked me about all the damage, I could see the concern rippling from their faces. For some reason, concern made nervous. So I pulled my chin up and with a triumphant smile I said, “I got it wrestling with my older brother.”

A downright lie.

As I watched myself, my chin quivered a bit. Tears were welling up and spilling down the contours of my face. I licked my lips and tasted the warm salt in them.

When I looked at my tiny dejected face, I felt ugly. And I felt like I could do nothing right. Something inside me, something that now I cannot decipher, told me that everything was all my fault. My face had crumbled, and in a fit of anger I stomped off the porch in search of something heavy.

Even blinded by anger and frustration at every injustice that had ever befallen me, my hands still managed to locate a fist sized rock, rough and sparkling in the sun.

I hurled it at the porch door. It shattered. And then I ran.