Love at the End of a Liquor Bottle

Chapter 1

A pair of eyes were staring back at Katherine as she opened her eyes from slumber and immediately backed away. Katherine was already a troubled sleepier she didn't need little children walking around in the night to make her sleeping habits worse. Still she had a soft spot for her little brother Johnathan so she hoisted him up on the bed and out him on her lap seeing the tears that were now streaming down his face. Katherine wiped away his tears smiling down at him while she cuddled him to her chest. What the hell had their life came to? They used to be so happy, what had happened to her family to turn it into this?

"Hey buddy, what's wrong?"

"It's dad again."

Katherine sighed as she squeezed her brother tightly. Of course it would be their father that had upsetted him. Putting down her brother, Katherine sat him on her bed as she crawled out of it ready to go see what had frightened him so.

"I'll be right back buddy. I promise."

Johnathan nodded as Katherine opened the door shutting it tightly behind her trying really carefully not to make noise. If her father had heard her she was in major trouble. She touched the scar above her right eye as a memory pulled her in stopping time itself.

Katherine Pierce: Age 11

"There is no way in hell you're taking my daughter away from me you stupid bitch!"

Katherine's eyes snapped open as her father's voice bellowed around the room snapping her awake and making her sit up on her bed as she listened wondering what her father was doing to her mother now. This wasn't the first time she had waken up in the middle of the night fearing for her and her mother's life.

Crawling out of her bed, Katherine opened the door and walked to where the voice was still yelling. Beer bottles scattered across the floor and the kitchen bar as Katherine took in the horrifying sight of her mother on the ground bleeding fro almost everywhere on her body as her father's fist smashed in her face repetitively with no tattle tale sign that he was going to stop anytime soon. She had to do something before he beat her mother to a bloody pulp.

Without a moments hesitation, Katherine reached for one of the nearby beer bottles and smashed it into her father's head. He groaned slightly but all it seemed to do was make him angrier as he backhanded Katherine causing her to lose her balance and hit her head on a corner of the counter. Pain radiated through her as she hit the floor now placing a hand on her bleeding eye. She must have split it open on the fall.

Sitting up as carefully as she possibly could she ignored the tears and the tinge of red vision in her eye and squinted at her mother still breathing on the floor but barely recognizable with her now swelled up cheeks and new bruises forming around most of her face. One of her eyes were swollen shut and blood pooled from her mouth. Her clothes were torn and her breast and other parts were exposed in a raw fashion that made Katherine wish she had turned away as he father sat up and spat on her mother adding insult to injury.

"Don't you ever threaten me like that again you stupid cunt. If you ever threaten to take my kid away from me again I will end you."

Her mother managed a weak nod as her father stumbled to their room locking the door behind him making sure that her mother would have to sleep on the floor that night. Katherine ran over to her mother ignoring that more blood was coming now as she grabbed her mother and with great strength managed to get her to Katherine's room placing her on the bed where she watched over her mother all night until the day she promised to do it no more.

Katherine touched the scar above her right eye bringing her back to the present as she walked down the hallway into the all too familiar sight.

Over the years her father's drinking habits had gotten worse to where she would no longer recognize him at all. He was covered in sweat from head to toe as her mother was in front of him down on her knees because after so many years of being beaten Katherine's mom had finally done the worst thing she could have ever done. She had submitted to her father and his whims. Whatever he wanted he would always get.

Katherine looked upon her parents in disgust as she shook her head. This must have been what Johnathan had walked in on. Hell if she didn't know better her dad was probably doing what he did best making kids with woman and never taking care of a single one of them. Katherine had about nine other half siblings from her father's side and still wasn't sure if Johnathan's was his or a friends that he had forced her mother into sleeping with. Either way his behavior disgusted Katherine and she couldn't wait to get out of this hell hole when she was eighteen and she would take he brother with her because he deserved better than this.

Sometime in her thought process her mother had caught her eye giving her a look that she knew that she was an utter failure and she was sorry. Katherine shook her head and walked away back to her room and the only family she had ever known.