My dad’s on the ground bleeding and it won’t stop coming out of his ears and nose, he’s not moving at all. He came home late last night and slammed the door and knocked over the blue lamp in the living room. He shouted a few bad words and I heard the refrigerator shake the bottles inside when it slammed shut. My mom came down the steps, crying, and I heard more shouting. Then I heart the slap sound I hate more than anything, it always makes me cry. I just wished I could make him stop, and I got a terrible headache and then everything went silent.
We’ve been in this apartment for four months, we had to leave the last place because dad owed someone money, he always owes someone money. I don’t even care anymore where I live but I hate moving so much. Every time we move I lose some of my things. The first time I lost my stuffed frog, the second time I lost my robot and then my jet. I don’t want to move again, I only have a few toys left. When the police come, it means we move, and I lose something I like.
My dad is on the carpet, a thin line of red is shiny on his face, going from his ear across his cheek down to his mouth. His eyes are open, so he looks awake, but he’s not moving at all. I’ve seen this in movies when the bad guys die many times but not outside of the TV. I saw photos online of real dead bodies before, and that’s what dad looks like. It looks different than sleeping, it looks like he’s a machine that’s been turned off. I hid in my room before my mom came in and put her hands on my shoulders and stared into my face and started talking.
She looked excited and sad, her eyes were shiny above the red mark on her cheek. The marks always start pink and then change to yellow and purple, it usually takes a few days, and then they disappear. She always tells me to tell people my toy tripped her when she gets them, but I only have a few left and I don’t want to lose them, so I say it was the cat. Nobody knows about the cat, not even mom or dad.
It wasn’t our cat, it was a homeless cat in the alley near our old apartment. A man was yelling and trying not to fall over as he walked. He was talking to himself but I couldn’t understand him, he wasn’t speaking English or at least not well. His face was red like dad’s face at night, and he yelled at the cat that sleeps near the dumpster. He yelled at it and kicked it and I just wanted him to stop. I got a terrible headache and the noise stopped, and eventually sirens got louder outside.
My mom was telling me we had to go away again. I told her I don’t want to lose my toys anymore, and she started crying and hugged me close and she smelled like flowers. She told me to put them in my red backpack and she promised she would get me new toys once we get there, but I don’t know where there is. She told me we were going to take a bus, but first I needed to close my eyes. I knew she didn’t want me to see dad on the floor, but I wanted to. I wanted to see his big eyes and red lines filled with chunks coming from his ears and his nose. I wanted to see that my dad won’t wake up and he won’t hurt my mom ever again.
Submitted December 06, 2017 at 02:34AM by darrylhaste http://ift.tt/2B1WPTt nosleep
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