Twelve dollars.

Sarah pushed – no – shoved the front door in at the sound of shouting. Amber's voice.

She heard the musical notes of strings mixed with violent breaks and bashes, even as she was walking up to the house. Sounds that could only be coming from Seth's favorite guitar.

Seth wasn't drunk. No. He had to be at least shot up double on heroin if he didn't care about the damage he was doing on his guitar. Sarah cursed. He must've rain-sacked her entire dresser to figure out where she had hidden it, but now it didn't matter. Now she had to hold him down.

She had to… before Seth's inner demonic conscience would say it was fine to take on a ten-year-old kid.

The door was left unlocked –thanks to Drew's brilliant forgetfulness - and somehow, the living room recliner chair ended up tipped over, blocking the door entrance. It took a few shoves from Sarah's part to get in, hearing Amber's husky shouts of "I hate you" coming from the upstairs.

Oh God, where was Drew?

Sarah's eyes averted the living room towards the kitchen, looking for any sign of life among the mess. Beef bottles, soda cans, school books tossed in the sofa and a paused Super Mario Bros game left on the television. No Drew.

She cursed again, looking up at the ceiling as Seth's slurry voice chased Amber across hallway.

First things first.

Kicking the fancy black heels off her feet, Sarah held her breath as she hiked up the stairs in double time, holding onto the railing while she skipped steps to get there faster.

She noticed Amber's bookbag – the one she kept decorating with words like Green Day and Radio Head on whiteout – ripped at base, left lifelessly open with heavy books at the corner of the hallway. It had barely missed hitting the upstairs mirror by inches. Sarah couldn't possibly know under what circumstance Amber would throw her favorite bookbag at Seth in self-defense, but Sarah knew that this had happened just moments before she'd arrived.

Amber's voice was turning hoarse at the other end of the hallway, barely audible by Seth's grungy curses and the banging musical noise of strings.

By the time Sarah had made it to the top of the stairwell, she finally realized what had been receiving those violent hits of a guitar.

She realized it… when she saw her daughter crouched and cornered at the other end of the hallway. Her messy dark hair and hands were covering her bruised face, flinching even then as the towering mass of Seth stood over her and went at her with his broken, nor useless guitar.

"Seth! Seth!"

Nothing.

With every step it took for Sarah to sprint over to the other end of that hallway, she yelled at him. Seth didn't budge, not even acknowledging the other voice that was asking, pleading, demanding for him to stop whatever the drugs were letting him do. He was far too gone to give a crap, much less listen.

And the beating kept coming.

"Seth, STOP IT!"

She made it to Seth's arm, getting a good handle on the guitar that had long been parted into two.

But the man was determined to swing again.

"She fuckin' messed with it… she messed it up…" was what kept coming out of Seth's alcohol stench of a mouth as he turned to face whoever was stopping him. When Sarah saw his eyes, they were so blood shot red, they looked demonic. His arms jerked at the weapon of wood and strings. "I'm gonna kill her!"

"Seth, SHE'S A KID!" Sarah's voice cracked in anguish, but Seth shoved her to the wall to stop.

Even before she had regained herself, Seth was already turning to Amber once again.

"MOMMY!"

It was the last thing Sarah heard, before she threw her weight onto the man with the guitar, making him turn again in rage… and finally kicking him with all her might from the waist below.

He groaned in pain, but took a full swing with the broken guitar handle to the woman he barely recognized. She punched him solidly on the head, making his backside arch as it hit the stairwell's rail… and his weight threw him over… sending him tumbling down, down, down to the end of the stairs in bruises.

And Sarah saw him from the top, as he cradled his head and his left arm for a few minutes, then looking up at her all disgusted, yet confused. As if his inner conscience had no idea why his wife had nearly broken his good arm.

Sarah saw the emptiness in Seth's red, swollen eyes, and she did all she could to hold back tears.

She didn't even know where she had found the strength to speak.

"Amber, get in the car."

The little girl muttered something—

"Get in the car."

She scrambled herself up to her feet, muttering something else as she approached her mother.

"NOW, AMBER!"

Sarah could feel her entire body trembling along with her voice. She saw Amber finally comply as the little girl picked up her bookbag and dashed down the stairs, and Sarah followed behind… her eyes still locked with Seth's.

It was when Amber had grabbed her coat from the floor and stayed near Mom's side when Sarah began to speak again. She had another kid to look for, now.

"Drew?"

The one with the scrawny legs and the shy demeanor, who always managed to flee whenever things got remotely noisy in the house. The little one who chose to make friends with spiders in his closet, pretending to not hear the fights, the arguments, the occasional crash of a beer bottle against a wall.

"Drew, honey?"

Sarah didn't even have time to take her favorite blouse from the living room chair when she went looking for Drew. She shouted his name through the kitchen, clutching Amber's weeping-but-reluctant hand so close to her it felt like a belt. She peered into the kitchen looking at the mess of lego toys and unwashed cereal bowls now decorating the masonite floor.

It was Amber who heard him, first. His little breaths echoed from under the kitchen sink as Sarah went and opened the cabinet doors, watching him hug his little knees tightly… and sporting a fresh wound on his cheek.

"Oh God," Sarah placed a hand over her mouth, telling herself not to cry yet.

It was ridiculous to think it – as Sarah would later admit to – but she had once believed that Seth would never have a reason to hurt Drew. What would he ever do to provoke Seth? She wondered, as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.

His fear for the world was seen in his eyes.

Drew gazed sadly at his mother in the most frightened, tense manner an eight-year-old could do. The kind that made cats tremble under the sofas at the sound of thunder, feeling that at any moment, the ground below them would turn.

Slowly, she held her hand to a trembling little Drew and took him out of that mold-stenched cupboard, not hesitating to carry him like an overgroan toddler as she went to the kitchen wall to fetch the car keys. Amber clung to her side, her eyes still fresh from the bruises and the beating as they all glanced one last time at Seth.

A man who looked so abundantly confused in those layers of drug and piss, he couldn't even look at anyone straight in the eye. Not even Sarah.

She saw his face – so careless and hopelessly unaware of what had just occurred in this house – and she finally understood.

Reason had nothing to do with it.

And to think, she wondered in a curse, escorting her children out into the garage to start the car… that if she hadn't volunteered to work the bar that extra hour that night, she could've been there. At home. Protecting Amber and Drew from this monster who preferred drugs and alcohol over babysitting.

Twelve dollars.

She had let her children suffer the depths of Hell… for twelve dollars.

Sarah wept in the car, quietly, not wanting to wake the kids up as they napped their nightmare away in the backseat.

They spent those twelve dollars on soda and burgers, for the road.