“Joey, please,” Mam wailed.
“You’re getting slow, old man,” I sneered, as my fist made contact with his jaw. “Or else I’ve just learned all of your moves off by heart.”
“Teddy, please don’t.“
“You think you can beat me?” He staggered forward, both arms swinging with fists that felt like concrete blocks when they made contact with your flesh. “I’ll fucking end you, boy.”
“Oh my god, stop it now, both of you!”
“Not if I end you first,” I roared, spearing his huge frame to the kitchen tiles. Not an easy thing to do when he outweighed me by at least five stone. “Prick!”
“Yeah, Joe, fucking kill him!”
“Shut up, Tadhg!”
“D-don’t, Joe. He’s not w-worth it!”
“Shut up, Shannon!”
“Tadhg, go up to your room now!”
“Mammy…make it stop!”
“Dada ow-ow.”
“Can you hear them?” With my hands around his throat, I squeezed with every ounce of strength I had inside of my body. “That’s your family, asshole. And they’re scared shitless of you.“
“Little cunt!” Reaching up, the bastard fisted my hair and dragged me roughly off his chest. “Think you’re a full-grown man?”
“Joey!”
Now it was my turn to have my airwaves restricted when my father’s beefy hand clamped around my throat.
He didn’t need to use two hands to strangle me, either.
Not when his hands were as big as shovels.
Throwing one good punch, he connected with my eye-socket so hard that I felt the vibration down to my toes. “How’s that for a taste of your own medicine, pretty boy?”
“Teddy, please stop!” That was Mam. “He’s your son.”
“You might have come from my prick, but you’re no son of mine, boy,” he sneered, and then added insult to injury when he hacked up a phlegm ball and spat right in my face. “Little fucking mammy’s boy is all you’ve ever been!”
“Teddy, please!”
“Shut up, whore!” Dad roared. “Or you’ll be next.”
“Fuck you!” I tried to scream, but it only came out as a strangled whisper.
Sitting on my chest with his full weight pressing down on my already deflated lungs, my father continued to taunt me.
“Come on, tough man, fight back.”
Bucking wildly beneath him, I tried to throw him off me, but I knew in my heart that I never could.
Dizziness began to engulf me then, joining the burning in my lungs, as my muscles spasmed erratically.
I was losing consciousness, I realized, and then, all of a sudden, the pain just dwindled away.
The pressure in my eyes and the fire in my throat evaporated.
Just let go, a voice in my head urged, it’ll all be over if you just let go.
I let my fists fall to my sides and did just that.
SPECIAL_IMAGE-images/svgimg0003.svg-REPLACE_ME
“Joe?”
When I came to, a little while later, it was to the sight of my sister’s face, as she lifted and pulled at my eyelids.
“It’s me, Shan!”
Another finger in the eye.
“Can you hear me?”
Feeling like I was about to hack up a lung, I grabbed at my throat, as I coughed and spluttered violently.
Drawing air into my lungs, I quickly dragged myself into a sitting position, and leaned against the fridge for support.
“Oh, thank god!” Kneeling beside me, Shannon leaned in with a tea-towel and pressed it to the piece of skin above my left eye. “Are you okay?”
Still coughing and spluttering, I held up a hand to ward her off, while I focused on dragging air into my lungs. “Where…is…”
“He’s gone to bed,” she whispered, shuffling closer so that her small knees were pressed to my thigh. “I’m so sorry.”
“No…your…fault.”
“Oh, god, Joe.” Sniffling, she leaned forward and wrapped her small arms around my neck. “I love you so much. I’m so sorry he did this to you again.”
I didn’t return her hug.
Couldn’t if I wanted to.
Worn to the bone, and breathing ragged, I took my time catching my breath before I asked, “Where’s Mam?”
Shannon looked down at the floor.
“Shan?”
“Upstairs,” she squeezed out, pulling at a thread on the side of my pants. “She had to coax him off you.”
With sex.
Yeah, I needed to get out of here.
I couldn’t be in this house tonight.
If I had to endure the sound of him grunting and groaning from behind a closed bedroom door, I was going to crack.
“Joe, don’t go,” Shannon begged, hurrying after me, when I climbed to my feet and staggered to the front door. “Please don’t go anywhere.”
“It’ll be grand, Shan,” I choked out, not looking behind me, as I bolted out the door quicker than I’d come in it. “You’ll be safe.”
Now that he got his pound of flesh.
DO YOU HAVE A DEATH WISH?
MARCH 5TH 2004
AOIFE
I was in foul form when I got home from work on Thursday night.
Aside from the fact that my poor toes had been annihilated from spending six hours crammed into a pair of heels that deserved to be thrown into the nearest fire, I was soaked to the bone, too.
None of that would have bothered me, though, I reluctantly admitted to myself, if he had just shown up.
Joey had promised to walk me home after my shift finished, and I had waited outside the pub for over an hour, until the cold got the better of me.
In the end, he never showed, and I ended up walking home alone in the pouring rain, which wouldn’t have been so bad had my company showed up.
Since then, I’d sent him a couple of text messages, but had heard nothing in response.
Because I was dealing with Joey and not Paul, I found myself in unchartered waters.
When Paul hadn’t answered my texts or calls, I’d never given it a second thought.
When Joey didn’t answer, it made me want to curl up in a ball and rock.
Pathetic as it seemed, I’d grown ridiculously attached to the boy who refused to put a label on whatever it was that we were doing.
I didn’t push because, for the first time in my life, I was afraid to lose.
I didn’t feel like I had the upper hand in this relationship, with the advantage being he held my heart in his hands.
If Joey left, if he walked away from me, it would hurt.
It would cripple me, and that was a worrying realization.
I’d given so much power over to a boy who refused to call me his girlfriend.
No, instead, I was the friend he liked on an exclusive basis, but nobody could know.
Fuck my life.
Deciding to crack open the books, for once, I managed to complete a decent amount of my homework and overdue assignments for school, before I eventually sacked the books off for some Seth Cohen.
At least, when I wanted to see him, all I had to do was switch on the television.
Curled up in a ball on my bed, with a mini pack of Crunchie bars on my lap, I rewatched The OC for the hundredth time.
Dozing off a little after eleven, I slept restlessly, tossing and turning for most of the night until I was fully awakened around half one in the morning by the sound of knocking.
Laying perfectly still, I listened in the darkness as the knocking continued on my window, growing louder and then dwindling off for a moment before picking back up again.
Pissed off, because there was only one person that I knew could scale a two-story house, I threw the covers off and stalked over to the window. Pushing it open, I leaned over the sill and glared down at the bastard balancing on the roof of our garden shed like he was Houdini himself.
“What?”
The moment he realized I was up and looking at him, he quickly tossed away from him what I hoped was a cigarette butt, but knew in my heart wasn’t.