continue of Bitter Kiss

. . . she did the first time she saw him. She was the only friend the young boy had, the only person who gave him love.

Days flew into weeks, and months turned into years. When the man would come home late from a night of drinking at the pub, the child laid in his bed unable to sleep, only hearing the muffled cries of his grown father. He could hear the sweet confronts his mother tried desperately to offer to her husband, though he wouldn’t take any. Sometimes the man would push the wooden door open, yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs. He didn’t understand what happened. What went wrong? This terrible demon child could only be a curse from God, that could only fall upon the womb. The hurt child stared at the darkness in his room, as he heard what his father said, he pictured the man staggering, swaying drunkenly, pointing a finger at the child’s mother, while these vile things slurred out of his mouth.

Many nights this happened, soon it became a daily occurrence. As the child grew into a little boy, he felt the love between his mother and father displace, then die. The only love he knew was the love his mother gave him.

The leaves changed from luscious green to rusty orange, as was the grass now a dull yellow. The wind banged the shutters against the house, as the rain began to set in. In the seventh year of this boy’s life, on October 28, the man came home drunk, as he did every night. But, that night was different, the boy could feel it. Through his bedroom window, the boy watched the man, before he came into the house. He stood outside in the street, staggering around, cradling a bottle of liquor. The rain made his brown curls stick to his forehead, and the wind matted the rusty leaves to his legs. Tears were running down the man’s face, every once in a while he would stop, hunch down close to the ground and bang his fist on the brick street.

Finally, the man came into the house, the boy’s mother was waiting by the door, to help the man to bed. The wooden door flew open, banging against the wall, the man stepped inside and smashed his infant bottle of liquor on the floor. The boy’s mother went to the living room, the man followed. Pointing his finger at the women, he said a single word, that drove shivers through the boy's’ spine, “You.”

The boy’s mother stuttered, “I... .I... I didn’t do anything.”

“You cursed, evil women, you gave me a devil, not a son. A devil!”

In the darkness of the boy’s room, he heard the pain, the crying, the torture he had inflicted upon this family. It didn’t stop that night, it all began. Outside his bedroom, his mother laid near death at the hands of her once a fairytale prince, but now a mere stranger. And the prince sat crying, in shock, repeatedly asking himself what had he just done?

The boy shook under his covers, his eyes darted around the darkness of his room, waiting for his mother’s voice, or signal that the fight was over. All he heard was the distant whispers of a man talking to a person on the other end of the telephone, asking for an ambulance immediately. The boy had convinced himself that it was all just a dream, and he fell into a deep sleep. The next morning, when he awoke, he went to . . . {to be continued}