I'm Not From Earth - 5. Five

f i v e

The open door poured a torrent of light from the hallway, throwing his father's figure into an imposing silhouette.

All thoughts of fixing things disappeared from Rover's mind, as he stood rooted to the spot.

His father took a step in, shedding the silhouette, and the moonbeams sought out his face. His hair should have been swept to the back, but the night of booze disheveled his style. His once blond hair was now silver, but his eyes still shared the same stunning blue as his son, though while Rover's pulsed with electricity, his father's were two flints of ice. In his left hand he held an empty Martel Cognac bottle. Drawn to his full height, he too, was just under five-foot-ten, but Rover felt like he was far taller than himself.

They stood like that for awhile, seconds passing slower than hours, more painfully than years. Then, his father spoke.

"I was dreaming."

Rover blinked, startled by the words. Dreaming? His father never started conversations like that anymore. The last time that he did was when Rover was seven. Could that mean his father had actually come up here to talk?

"I was dreaming," his father repeated, his words distinct and barely slurred, but his tone croaky and possessed. He slowly closed in, and Rover found himself involuntarily backing up.

"About what?" Rover said, his words thrown out abruptly when his back hit the wall, successfully halting his father's progression. There was a pause, in which he seemed to think about his son's words.

"About your mother," his father said, and his chest heaved with a long sigh, eyes misting over. "About my wife. About her long, silky hair, and deep hazel eyes... about how she smelled of roses and the sea..."

With every other word that rolled out of his father's mouth, Rover's heart sank in perfect harmony.

"... about how beautiful she is when she smiles, about how her eyes crinkle and -- and you have her smile, you know that son?" His father's expression darkened, but the grin stretched tighter across his face. The contrast clashed horribly, and he was a laughing devil. "You have her cheekbones, and her bloody red lips. But you're missing her brains, you know that? She was a smart one, she was. She was smarter than you, even though you both had good grades. Good manners. She taught you manners, you remember right? Do you?"

A respite between hissing words, then a deep, commanding echo. "Do you?"

"I do," Rover answered, his voice trembling.

"I was dreaming good dreams about your mother and you and I," his father said, and his eyes were drowned with sadness, "and you woke me up. Did mother not teach you to not drop metal clocks in the middle of the night?"

"Y-yeah..."

Rover glimpsed a hurtling fist, then a flash of stinging pain exploded in his left brow.

Smack!

His head snapped backwards, colliding with the stone wall behind. Warm blood streamed down his jaw. Sparks danced in his vision.

"Lie!" His father spat. "She didn't teach you that, sonny. She taught you not to lie."

Rover fell to his knees as his father threw an elbow into his stomach.

"Lie! Lie! Lie!"

And then it began, the worst of Rover's nightmares. Ceaseless began the blows, one after the other. Falling in his chest, against his face; working to break him, to tear him, to segregate his sanity bit by bit. His lip snagged on a flying fingernail, a deep crack resonated through his side. Each strike followed the other, the hard surfaces of knuckled skin and bone inflicting punch after punch of pain.

His ears filled with shouts, his nose drenched with blood, and he threw his hands in front of him as if he could stop them from coming. His nails flipped where his father's pummels tore through Rover's attempts. And amidst it all, a lucid interval flooded through Rover's mind, and with a bloodied hand, he instinctively caught a hurtling foot, slower in its progression than the rest of the blows, and screamed:

"Stop!!"

A shocking respite. Rover shuffled to the side, disoriented, and fell against the wall behind again.

"Stop?" His father repeated. A cold laugh. "If a rat screamed stop to a cat, you think the cat would turn away to search for another meal? You think if a moth screamed stop to the spider, it would untangle its prey and let it go free? You think if your mother had said stop to her tumour, it would've crawled out of her ass and died in a puddle on the floor? This will stop, if you can fucking stop me."

A whump as his father raised his heavy bottle and took a swing. Rover raised his hand to shield his face, but the force was enough to shatter the glass. A dull snap and gnarling pain in his palm. Staggering and head throbbing.

Father uprighted himself, paused like a butcher surveying the best way to cut the meat, this time brandishing his broken bottle, and then lunged.

This time, Rover was prepared.

With a burst of hidden strength that he had found -- the instinctual portion of his brain that the violence had unearthed -- he caught his father's leg in mid-swing, yanked it to the side, and tugged with all his might. A deafening thump of bone against granite and a yelp as his father landed flat on his back.

Rover pulled himself up, and without a backward glance, ran.

Ran from his room, ran down the cold stairs, ran across the sweeping floor; past the glorious chandelier, past the guards that shouted at him to stop. He tugged on his shoes, pulled open the door, and rushed into the darkness of the night.

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