Megan's Pain: A Drake and Josh Story
By Polk Polkster
"YOU FILTHY FUCKING SLUT!" the empty whiskey bottle shattered across the kitchen's tiled floor, "I'LL KILL YOU!"
"You're drunk, Richard!" Audrey cried, stumbling backward toward the corner, her arms a flimsy cage guarding her from her husband's explosive temper.
"I know what you've been doing," he whispered, his large, muscular hand sliding slowly up her throat and toward her jaw, "I'm not a fuckin' idiot."
Tears poured down her face, "Nothing happened, Richard! Nothing!"
His eyes were bloodshot and furious, staring at her then in those few frozen moments. His jaw clenched and his hand followed, squeezing his wife's moist, red face and throwing it to the ground, to the hard tile and the broken glass.
"DAD!" his screaming pierced through the writhing silence that had only yet been challenged by soft sobbing as he lunged to stop his father from harming his mother any further.
But his hand could not reach Richard, not before his face was battered to the ground by a single, powerful swipe of the old man's palm, "NOT NOW, DRAKE!"
Drake, collapsed on the floor, felt the blood that leaked through his nose and his lips, "…dad…" he whispered in astonishment and disgust.
"This ain't your business, boy, you stay out, you hear? " His breathing grew heavier as he stared at his only son, at what his rage had brought him to. But shame, rationality, all of those elements of the most intimate sort of humanity were strangers to him now, flung far from his mind by jealousy and drink.
"…leave," she sobbed, "leave him alone…" Audrey clutched her bleeding face, now speckled with shards of brown glass slowly sinking into tiny mounds of dampened flesh.
"Get up," he turned to her, "GET THE FUCK UP." He grabbed her by her hair and pulled her to her feet as she shrieked, "You think I like this?!" he snarled , "You think I like seeing my wife running around behind my fucking back with some fat faggot weather man?!"
He waited for an answer but fear had paralyzed her.
"What… what did you think would happen?" he clutched her face, contemplating his next brutal act.
"You're a fucking pig!" Drake slowly scrambled to his feet, wiping the blood from his face, "L-leave her… leave her alone…"
"Or what, big man?" Richard loosened his grip, letting his wife drop to the floor like rag doll, "What are you gonna do?"
Drake's fists tightened, the flames of his rage fed by his father's vicious teasing, that profane smile that burned like cigar embers digging their way into bare skin.
His father's footsteps, slow and heavy, shook the house as he walked over to his son, his eyes peering down at Drake's shaking, frail form. "What?"
Drake's bottom lip trembled, his gaze locked with his father's; a stare so malicious it flooded his body with fear, with desperation.
"I thought so." He smiled, striking the side of Drake's face like a brutal thunderclap, mashing flesh to bone to floor, knocking the boy back to the ground and onto the liminal threshold of consciousness by the brunt force of his knuckles.
"…please, it's an emergency…" Audrey whispered into her cellular phone, desperately trying to overcome the painful choking of her own sobbing.
"What the FUCK—" Richard exploded, bursting back towards his wife.
"I-I…" she sobbed.
"YOU WHAT?!" he screamed, "WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
"…th-the… police…"
Richard's eyes drifted towards the ceiling as he sank into the gravity of the situation. He looked about him, at the broken furniture, the bloody stains and the shattered people. He contemplated his life, now ruined by his own hand, by his wrath at a wife who could not help but meander under the vacuum force of his own absence, at a son who'd grown to hate him for what his pain had brought him to. It was over. Soon the police would swarm and take him away. There was no forgiveness, no redemption. He sauntered to the living room, resting his head against the stairway banister.
Suddenly, like a subtle breeze, the kind too soft to tear petals from their stems but strong enough to carry fallen ones across tattered fields and sullen meadows, a fledgling soul cried out to him. Megan, his only daughter, had hidden herself in a darkened corner, rocking back and forth, burnt by the overwhelming flames that devoured her father. Shallow breaths quickly made their way in and out of her tiny lungs, her eyes entirely unfocused by emotions too wild to be contained or understood. So she shut down. Richard looked at her with sympathetic eyes, knowing all too well the stranger that was feeling. As their eyes locked he muttered, "You're just like me, you know."
And so they stared at one another, as the police beat down the door and dragged him to some forgotten corner of memory. It would be years before she'd realize that what he'd done to her then was more damaging than any blow, for the wound that he had wrought would fester on long after her mother's and her brother's would heal.
"Walter…" Audrey whispered into the phone, "…I need you."
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