[Chap.1of2]
He knew what was coming. He wasn't stupid, and in any case, his scars would never let him forget. As Johnny Cade made his silent way from the Curtis' to his house on a too dark night in the bad part of Tulsa, he had to force himself to walk faster, to get it over and done with so he could simply sleep... Something he hadn't done in a while.
Normally, he'd sleep in the lot if he had already slept once that week at Pony's house, but what happened to Ponyboy ensured he wasn't going to fall sleep there comfortably for a while. Just remembering made Johnny shudder. He supressed the thought of having it happen to him, and of no one being around to help.
Arriving at his front door, hands shaking as he pushed it open, he hoped maybe, just maybe life would forget about him long enough to-
"Hey, fucker!"
No such luck. Drunken footsteps originating from another room beyond his sight loudly made their way to him. Things were bumped into, some of those things crashing to the ground and making a loud noise that made the dark haired boy jump. He considered hiding, running out the front door and going back to the lot- as terrified as he was sleeping there after the incident- simply to avoid this.
As he pondered his options, time ran out, and all hope of escape was lost. The figure, finally appearing at the opposite end of the room, beer bottle in hand, rose to full height. The man, his own father, squinted about the floor before they finally met eyes. Johnny opened his own impossibly wide.
"What are ya doin' in ma house," a hacking cough. "I s'ought I kicked yer sorry ass out!" his father barked.
Johnny didn't say anything. A half full beer bottle hurtled past his head, and he gasped, stumbling back.
"You fucker... Spilled my beer! I'll kill you!" The older man jumped on him, landing a hard punch to his gut, knocking all air out of the unprepared boy's lungs. Another punch to his jaw, and Johnny heard it crack, tasted blood burst from his lip. One to his eye, and it swelled upon contact.
He was given no time to react to the sudden onset of pain, sudden escalation of his father's anger before he felt himself being picked up and thrown against the nearest wall. He saw stars, and was made aware that any chance of regular breathing at this point was gone. His back killed, felt like his spine was crushed against the force, shrinking into itself in a grotesque fashion.
He lay on the floor at his father's feet, and his head throbbed so painfully, so achingly bad, he was blinded by a hot white light. He didn't see the shoe hurtling towards him, only felt it when it made contact with his stomach. He yelped unwillingly, and curled in on himself, coughing up blood.
Johnny wanted to sink into the floor when he felt the first of hot tears staining his swollen face. He knew his dad was smiling above him, proud of his work.
Everything seemed to be okay for the next minute as an uncomfortably loud silence fell over the two. Johnny was choking on it, wanting any thing at all to break it, until he was pulled to his feet by his hair and, by his neck, slammed and pinned to the wall the beer bottle struck earlier. He groaned, knowing surely that some organ, or several of them he didn't know the name of had burst inside him.
A punch was thrown to his ribs, and he heard more cracking. He could have screamed from the intense pain racking his body. He didn't.
The intoxicated man leaned in close, breathing hot air over Johnny's face that smelled so badly of beer, he coughed and kept coughing from the intense sensory overload. "I asked ya... What are ya doin' in ma house?"
Johnny's tears fell freely now, his body in spilliting pain, blood draining from his face, his stomach, his mouth, and he thought, he's drunk, is all, if he wasn't he wouldn't do this, he just doesn't recognize me when he's drunk...
He felt himself being let go slightly, only to be slammed against the wall again. "Well?!"
Johnny's answer was a whimper, a groan, but never a scream. Never a beg for mercy. And as punches once more connected with his body and his face, his neck strangled by the hand pushing him against the wall, Johnny thought of Dally. How Dally wouldn't take this. How Dally would never be in this situation in the first place. And the thought of seeing the tough hood again pushed Johnny along, as it always had.
He was starting to see stars again when the older man finally got bored and dropped him on his legs on the ground, shuffling off into another room, mumbling obsceneties along the way.
Johnny simply sat there for a while, his face a bloody mess, the one eye not swollen shut shining with yet unspilled tears. Blinding pain pushed him in and out of consciousness. Blood stained his clothes, bruises forming a ring on his neck where the hand had been. He could only taste, could only smell the ugly punctuation of copper.
A nail not supporting a picture frame, not having any use at all dug into the skin of his back. It felt like an insult to him after that horrific, yet familiar scene.
Deteremined not to pass out there, he, with a great deal of effort, picked himself off the ground. His innards seemed to slide and bang into eachother inside him, and he let out a sharp gasp. Johnny paused, hoping his father didn't hear him. He didn't.
Walking was a challenge. His legs seemingly dissappeared underneith him. He needed sleep. Slowly but surely he dragged himseld upstairs to his room.
His bed was uninviting. The sheets were thin and dirty, springs poking out from his matress any place where a body would touch. It was good enough for him. It was all he was good enough for.
He stumbled through the piles of garbage and dirty clothes that he had no idea how they got there since he rarely came home at all, and finally laid himself down. A spring punctured his hip.
As he folded himself into the recovery position and tried to knead the pain in his legs away, he tried to shut his brain off. He couldn't.
Johnny thinks a lot. He thinks more than people give him credit for, possibly even more than Ponyboy does. He doesn't think Pony actually thinks. He thinks he stores information, and reads them off at the correct time.
At that moment, Johnny was thinking a lot. He thought of his stomach groaning in hunger, his already stained enough bed sheets becoming damp with blood, his heart beating erradically from a fear he wouldn't admit to. He thought of why his dad would get so narcotized and hurt him, how he could have become such a dissapointment that his father felt like he needed to do those things. He thought a lot about Dally and a little less about I never hear of Dally's parents, and one drunk night where Pony told him Dally killed his own parents with such a conviction you'd think he was there, watching as the hood slaughtered his poor family without a second thought.
More importantly, though, Johnny tried not to think of the pain.
And he slept.
Not for long, though. Three hours later, in the final stages of the night, a loud crash awoke him. The first thing he focused on wasn't that, however. At first it was the pain in his head. The awful pain. And he sat up, very slowly, rubbing his temples. He was covered in a thick layer of sweat, his bed sheets twisted around his legs.
Only when the pain dissipitated slightly did his attention fall on the noise. Cautiously extracting himself from the covers and swinging his legs over the edge of his bed, he tried to stand. He couldn't, and when his legs gave out, he fell back on the bed, whimpering when the tender skin of his body slammed against the bumpy surface. His hands once again flew to his head.
And suddenly, he realized the gravity of his situation. Once more unfocused on the sound, he saw his arms bruised and bloodied, the skin blue and crying puss. He pushed himself up, and lifted up his shirt. To his amazement and horror, he saw purple. Not bruises... Just purple. It was lathered across his ribs, over his stomach in a circular pattern. And the color wasn't on him, it was in him, pushing up against the roof of his skin. And blood was there, too. Crusted and brown now, stuck to him. He let down his shirt.
And then his thoughts settled again on the noise. He forced himself up, and grabbed the jean jacket he had taken off the night before. Ignoring the pain was, as well, familiar to him. He silently exited the room, and made his way halfway down the stairs on a limp before stopping.
His father had fallen asleep. On the floor. Over piles of glass beer bottles, now broken and useless under him. Johnny breathed a sigh of relief, and continued down the stairs, leaving that damn hell house.
Once outside, he didn't stop to assess his developing injuries. He kept walking, knowing if he stopped the pain would get worse. He walked and walked for an hour before stopping to think.
He needed to find Dally, he would help him. Dally always knew what to do, always knew what was best. He pulled his coat tightly across him, not realizing how cold it had been just a few hours ago, and set out to find his tow headed hero.
He only made it to just after the lot before passing out on the side of the road, arms drawn across himself, double salt trails still staining his face, red still running from his wounds.