Page 1 of Voracious

Saint Petersburg

Dima

fourteen years old

A loud bang pulls me from sleep and my side aches from the pressure of breathing. The door I passed out in front of is still closed, and I push it open enough to put my head through to check if the sound has woken Katya. Her eyes and forehead are the only thing I can see as she holds the covers over her face. But they relax when she sees me. The shouting starts again, and I try to keep my voice low, so they don’t know she’s awake.

“Lock the door, okay?”

She nods her head too fast, and it looks like she’s playing hide and seek with the covers staying in the same place.

All the shouting and banging gets louder as I close the door, waiting for the lock to slide across before moving. They should just kill each other instead of screaming about how much they want to. Dragging my feet to help or be their audience, my father locks on to me. His lip curls up and he uses our existence for his verbal blow.

“Who are you going to protect today? Your whore mother or the father who gives you fucking everything?”

I don’t protect either of them. I break them apart. The deluded idiot doesn’t seem to understand that though.

It’s a waste of time to argue with them but I still do it, never learning my lesson. “You’re going to wake Katya.”

You know, your youngest child, the little girl who shouldn’t have to listen to this like I’ve had to.

As always, he rages. My mother stands behind me when he takes a step forward, screaming into my face, “Do you know what she did?” He whirls around, screaming at my mother, “Tell him. Tell your son how fucking desperate you are!”

My hands automatically come up to block his fists that raise with his temper. It’s instinctual to sway as he reaches over me, and my head is knocked to the side from the force of his elbow as my mother screams behind me. Her fingers tighten around my t-shirt, the collar choking me as she physically uses me as a shield, so she doesn’t get hit.

I fell asleep to my parents in the middle of one argument, and I’ve woken up in the middle of another, for fuck’s sake. My body is fully awake, but my hip is tender from the hard floor and the pressure of being in the middle of them has me fighting back. I push against my father’s chest so I can breathe, but he turns his rage on me.

I speak before his fist can connect with more strength than I can feel.

“I’ll call the police.”

I expect him to step back, but he laughs.It’s not joyous or happy, it’s condescending as fuck and then it dies, stopping as soon as it started, and I know that darkness in his eyes means I’m dead. He follows me as I bolt to the side to reach the phone on the wall beside the kitchen door. A thud hits the back of my head, pushing me away from salvation and I just run. There’s nodestination or thought in my head as I run through the hallway and leave the house with him chasing me.

As long as he’s behind me, the bigger the distance will be between his anger and Katya. Our mother made her choice, she picked this prick to have children with. She’s decided to stay here every time he beats her, and she screams in my defense for once.

“Run! Stay away from him, you bastard.”

I look over my shoulder to check my brain has processed it correctly, and she manages to close the gap between them and fights him.My steps falter, my feet slowing me down, because she fights him. For once, she isn’t hiding behind me.

My father is a large man, but my mother is clung to his back, screaming at me to run, while he tries to shake her off. My brain joins in the screaming, telling me to run back not forward, to turn around and help her. But my legs carry me forward through the loop of the houses until I reach the woods neighboring the back of our house. It’s silent and smells like shit with people using it to walk their dogs, but I breathe it in and lean against a tree. The rough bark scratches my arms and for one second I just breathe in silence.

My heart is beating too fast from running that I turn my head as I step forward. It echoes through my chest, mimicking footsteps, and I take off in a run again needing to get back to Katya. She won’t stay in her bed long and she’s been protected from their violence so far. I refuse to let it touch her when she’s innocent and happy. The first thing I notice when I open the back door to my house is the silence, my house is never silent. It’s colder too while my skin burns from running.

I look through each room as though I don’t live here, expecting to find my parents arguing but there’s nothing. Katya’s head pokes out from her door as I check my parents’ bedroom. She never fucking listens or waits for me. Going to her beforethey come back in to start the next round of their fighting, I pick her up and put her back in bed.

“Stay here, I’ll be back.”

Tears stream down her face and she clings to my t-shirt not letting me leave.They turn to sobs and she’s hyperventilating. For fuck’s sake, I can’t do everything. Her breathing doesn’t calm down as I stroke the back of her head because the adults can look after themselves. She’s still clinging to me, but she manages to choke out, “There’s blood outside.”

We’ve both scrubbed the red liquid off the walls before, painted over it when it leaves a brown tinge, but there’s never been this much fear in her little body.

I keep her hugged to me and slowly walk through the still too quiet house until I reach the window at the end of the hall. It’s a crime scene, an actual murder as my father keeps punching the head of a woman three houses away from us. He’s in the middle of the road, there’s blood covering the window of a car closer to us, but he holds the woman up and continues driving his fist into her face, uncaring that anyone could see. I freeze as I mechanically bring up my hand to cover Katya’s eyes. He’s finally fucking done what he said he would and killed our mother, because of me.

Sirens sound in the distance and I move without anywhere to go. Katya’s only six. They won’t let me keep her, we’ll be separated, and she’ll end up in one of those places where they beat the shit out of her. My mother always says it’s my job to protect her, I’m her older brother.She said. Not says. Because she’s dead.

The sirens get closer, more of them mixing together as I pack a bag full of any warm clothes I can find and grab Katya’s teddy. She doesn’t let go or stop crying as I try to get her dressed. My tone is too harsh as I give up and pull her coat on.

“You need to be quiet, okay?”

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