"Ow, dammit," Joey Wheeler muttered as he gently touched his cheek. He looked in the mirror at his reflection. The deep red mark on his face would no doubt be a bruise by school tomorrow. He sighed. That meant Yugi and Téa were guaranteed to ask about it. He had told them so many times that he got into fights that he wasn't sure why they even bothered to question him. It was apparently just part of their good-friend nature.
He sighed again. An' I'm lucky to have friends in my condition, he thought. Especially friends so loyal. They ended up being his one and only escape from the hell he lived from day to day.
The throbbing pain had now spread up and into his whole head. It's time like dis dat I wish we had some ice in 'is damn house. He rubbed his head a little. The pounding was especially bad around his temples. That was the worst part about the beatings. They didn't just hurt when he first got hit, they lingered for a long while afterward.
Unfortunately, ice was a luxury that Joey didn't have. The tiny refrigerator in the shoddy one-bedroom apartment had died almost a year ago. No one had been hired to fix it, and a new one was as out of the question as the ice was.
At the thought of the fridge, Joey felt his stomach rumble angrily. He hadn't eaten anything since yesterday, when Yugi had shared half his sandwich with him at lunch. The only thing in the cupboards here at Joey's home was a half a package of Saltine crackers. Not very appealing. Nor did Joey revel in the idea of venturing out beyond the locked bathroom door.
Suddenly, there was a sharp banging on the door. "You'd better get your ass outta there..." a slurred voice said. Joey looked at the source of the sound with a mix of fear and resolve.
"Why, so you can gimme another red mark on the face?" Joey shot back.
"'Cause if you don't I'll make you bleed!" the voice yelled. Then there was the sound of breaking glass, and a loud thud. Joey wondered if his father had finally passed out yet or not, but he dared not open the door to check. He'd been done in by that trick way too many times, and the deep scar on his shoulder blade was a constant reminder of that...
He was twelve at the time, and his father was rock-bottom drunk, as usual. Joey had locked himself in his bedroom, but his father was angry enough to be pounding incesnantly on the wooden door. It was bound to break soon enough under the barrage from the football-player sized man, and Joey looked around desperately for another way out. The apartment was on the third floor of the building, so jumping out the window was a little out of the question.
Then the banging stopped. Joey thought maybe his dad had given up, and he cautiously wandered to the door and cracked it open. Just that crack was enough to let his father through, who barged in and brandished half a broken bottle in one hand, slashing wildly at the terrified child. Eventually, his father landed a hard smack across joey's face that sent him to one end of the room, landing him hard on his stomach and knocking the wind out of him. His dad then took the opportunity to dig the jagged glass into Joey's back, causing a gash that took three weeks to seal and another two for new skin to grow.
Joey put his hand over his shoulder under his shirt. He could still feel it: the raised, bumpy, disfigured line of skin across his back. He had marks similar, though not as severe, on his lower back, left thigh, and down his right leg. It made him think of all the times Yugi, Tristan, and Téa had asked him why he wore pants in the middle of summer. He honestly hoped they never found out the truth. He hated being pitied.
Then again, he also hated the idea of not being able to defend himself. He almost wished that he had been sent to jail. It would have been a lot easier to deal with punks in the pen than it was to fight his dad.
It had been twenty minutes now since the sweet sound of silence had began in the apartment beyond the bathroom door. Joey walked over and near silently unlocked the door, pushing it open barely enough to see through a crack between it and the wall. His muscles tensed, ready for whatever may greet him. All that did was the loud snores of his unconscious father. Joey heaved a sigh of relief. In response, his father stirred slightly, and Joey froze in terror. After a moment that stretched into a millennium, the blonde-haired potbelly on the floor slipped into a dead silence and stillness.
Too bad he ain't really, Joey thought. He looked around at the general ransackedness of the place, and his heart sank again. He tiptoed his way over broken glass and around toppled bookshelves, finally arriving at the door. He patted his jacket, searching his pockets. Then he spied what he was looking for on a table back across the room: his keys.
"Shit," he muttered quietly. He could open the door easily without them, but if his dad woke up and found he was gone... Joey didn't feel like risking not having somewhere to sleep tonight. He started the treacherous journey back across the room. About halfway, as he was trying to squeeze between a table and the wall, his foot caught on the leg of a chair, and down he went with an echoing *THUD*.
"What the hell...?" a groggy voice asked. Joey's father picked himself up off the floor and spotted Joey down for the count.
"You little shit..." he said. Joey looked up, and his eyes widened in panic. He sat up and tried to free his leg, just as his father ran over and shoved the table at him. The edge caught Joey in the chest, pinning him to the wall and knocking the wind out of him. As Joey struggled to take a breath, his dad grabbed an empty bottle off the table and swung at Joey's head. In a split second Joey pushed the table away enough to duck under it and cover his head, shattered brown glass pelting his neck and back. When he felt the last shard glance off, he shoved another chair out of the way and started crawling out as fast as he could. He got out from underneath and stood, but just as we was going to break out into a run, something caught his jacket and threw him backwards. He landed on his back on the same table he had been aiming for in the first place, and in one swift moment snatched the keys and jumped off. He stood still, facing his father. The two were staring at each other like a boxers before the first punch was thrown, appropriate in a sick way.
No punch was thrown, however, as Joey's dad dropped and shot his leg out, swiping Joey's legs. Joey fell to the floor on his back again and knocked his head on the edge of the table. A trickle of warm goo traveled down the side of his head, down his cheek, and came to rest at the corner of his lip. He lifted his hand and defiantly wiped it away with his thumb, still staring down his...opponent. When his dad went to kick him in the side, Joey rolled away and shot up to his feet. His dad grabbed for him again, but only succeeded in tearing off the green jacket as Joey bolted out the door and slammed it behind him. Luckily, Joey knew that his dad was far too drunk to try to follow, so he was pretty safe for now. He slid down the banisters in the stairwells to make his getaway faster, and ran as fast as his legs would carry him out of the building and as far away as he could go.
He felt his legs pupming rhythmically: one, two, one, two; his heart pounded in time. His breaths grew ragged and shallow, and his muscles sang out with blinding pain, but he would not, he could not, stop. Not for anything. He glanced behind himself to see if anyone was following him, and ran straight into a tree, knocking him back on his butt. Ok, maybe he could stop now, especially since the pounding in his head was severly messing with his vision, obviously.
He sat himself on the curb of the street, still panting. Soon, those pants turned into deeper, more sporadic breaths, and Joey buried his face in his hands. He was sitting just outside the circle of brightness from a streetlamp, where the dark was darkest. No one would see him there. No one would notice him and his tear-stained face. No one would hear the choking sobs coming from his throat for a long time afterward.