nice

☽

Ashley’s hands gripped her upper arms.

There were no good days, anymore.  There were the bad days, and there were the days she dreaded the bad days.

This was a bad day.

“Bitch.  Making me look stupid in front of my friends!?”

His fist went out.  He grabbed Ashley’s mother by the hair, and she quailed, hands curling up at her chest.

“Come on!  Say it again.  Aren’t you brave enough now that we’re alone?  Say it!”

“Please,” Ashley’s mother said.  “I’m sorry.”

“Come on!” he shouted the words in Ashley’s mom’s ear, twisting hair in his hands.  Ashley’s own hands twisted around her upper arms, gripping.

“Okay, okay,” Ashley’s mother said.  “Will, let’s- we’ll put Ashley to bed, okay?  She doesn’t need to be here, she’s scared.  Then, we can talk, okay?  We can talk about anything you want.  I’ll say anything you want.”

“Anything you want, anything you want!  Okay! Okay!” Ashley’s dad mocked, still so loud that Ashley winced with every utterance.  It had to be worse for her mom- his mouth was almost pressed against her ear.

“Please,” her mom said.

“Please.  You can’t even sound normal.  You sit there and act like you’re smart.  You sat there as they laughed at me, smiling that stupid fucking constipated cow smile of yours!”

Her dad pushed her mom, and she fell against the bookshelf.  There were more papers and folders on the shelf than books, and everything went flying into the air.

“Stop,” Ashley said, quiet.

“I’ve got to go into work tomorrow, you know that?  You know they’re going to bring it up.”

Ashley’s mother stood, swayed, then went straight to Ashley.  Her dad’s back was turned.

She ushered Ashley toward the back door, and with the way she shielded Ashley with her body, Ashley could only feel what was coming, not see.

More violence.  More hits.  More things knocked over, in the dining room now.  Ashley made a noise of the sort that little kids made.  She was thirteen- she wasn’t supposed to make that kind of sound.

“Shut up,” her dad said, pointing at her.  “Don’t move.  You need to know this too.  Respect matters.”

He kicked her mom, once, twice, again.

“Over the name of a fucking book,” he said.

He aimed a fourth kick for the face.  He didn’t usually hit the face.

“Stop,” Ashley said, without realizing she was saying it.

“You can be quiet,” he said.  He kicked again.  “You don’t get a say until you bring something to this household.  I go to work, I earn, I do most things around this house because this twit-”

Kick.  Ashley flinched as her mom did.

“-is too incompetent to do any of it properly.”

The kicks kept coming, and Ashley felt a feeling of horror creep over her.

Ashley looked, then scrambled off to the side.  She reached the fireplace in the living room where things had been scattered everywhere, and grabbed the first handle she could.  It was the shovel, for the ashes.  She pushed it aside, heard her dad coming, and grabbed the poker, an L-shaped bit of metal with a spike on the end.

She spun around, holding it up and ready.  She set her jaw, trying to sound tough and sounding anything but.  “Stop it.”

He approached, stopping just out of reach of the poker.  “Don’t be stupid.”

He took a step forward, and she was reactive enough that she swung.  But he’d faked her out, stopping mid-motion.  She tried to swing back the other way, but it was too slow, too late.  She hit him, but it didn’t do anything.

Then he had his hands on the poker.  He tore it out of her hands.

His hands gripped her by the hair.  She fought, scratching, kicking, pulling away until it felt like her hair would tear free of her scalp.  She did everything and it felt like doing nothing at all.  She punched, and he caught her hand, squeezing her fist inside his hand until her knees buckled.

He was taller, all the people on his side of the family were.  He was stronger.

Ashley had nothing.

He moved her head into position and then let go of her hand to strike her across the face.  She made another little-kid sound as she fell against the couch and she hated it, she hated that she wanted to curl up into a ball and make only those sounds.  She hated that it wouldn’t do anything either way.

He bent down and picked up the poker.  She watched, trying to swallow and find the breath to speak.

“First time I’ve had to lay a hand on you, Ash,” he said, and he sounded so sad.  “You pissed me off, scratching me like this.”

She clenched her teeth.  She tried to stand and she wobbled.

“You pissed me off!”

Again, with the painful shout.  She dropped back down to the ground.

“Are you going to smarten up, make this a one-time thing?” he asked.  “Answer me!  Don’t go mute on me like she does.”

“I don’t know,” she said.  Her head hurt where he’d pulled at her hair.  Her mom wasn’t moving much, and seeing that hurt more.

“That’s not an answer, Ash,” he said.  “Come on.  If I’m going to hit someone with this, is it going to be you, or is it going to be her?”

The poker smacked against his palm.

She hadn’t made things better.

“Come on!” he shouted.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and everything went cold.

She opened her eyes, and they opened beyond the edges of her eyes and they kept going.

She saw emptiness, desolation, destruction, a… bowl of cereal floating in milk, without any milk.  The ‘cereal’ was shapes she couldn’t wrap her head around, because they seemed to go on forever.

She could pull back, and she realized she was thinking on too small a scale.

She was thinking like a person and to wrap her head around this, she needed to look down on something far larger.

A sphere, cracked like an egg and cracking further, all in slow motion, with energy glowing through the cracks.  Her awareness loomed above it all.

As slow as it had been, the moment she realized it was a planet, time caught up and everything moved in fast motion.  The planet became dust and debris and there was nothing left behind.

She closed her eyes until they fit inside her eye sockets again.  All went away, except for- for that energy that she’d seen and felt.

Ashley could almost hold it in her hands.

She raised her head and she faced him much as she had with the poker.  He had the weapon now, and he approached.  He said something and she didn’t hear anything at all.

He shouted something and, before she could register it, she lashed out, hand going out, the energy releasing from her arms, traveling down to her hands.

The hand he’d crushed spasmed as the energy ran through every damaged part, until she thought her hand might come apart in pieces.  The darkness escaped, loud and chaotic, and with the pain in her hand, some went wide, striking the fireplace.  The force of it knocked her off her feet, into the table beside the couch.

But enough struck him.  It caught her father’s lower chest, his pelvis, his legs, the floor, the hand that held the poker and the poker.  It twisted away everything that it touched, and flecks of her father were scattered across the living room and into the dining room.  Bits of her dad splattered her mother.  Bits splattered herself.

His upper body fell.  His jaw moved, but the eyes didn’t.

She stared over at him.

She felt so cold inside.  None of it seemed real.  Meaty bits of her dad were flowing out of his chest cavity.  Floorboards had been ripped up and splintered and lots of the bloody bits were sloughing off into the holes.

Bloody bits were sloughing off of her.  She wiped at one with her hand, and something snapped across her hand, pinky to thumb.  The energy slapped her across the head, loud and blinding.

Hair whipped around and settled.  A white lock lay across her face, and she didn’t dare touch it in case it happened again.