Blake's POV

For a moment, I felt alright. It felt good to have said it. "I am your son". To have defeated him and his curled fist with four little words. It felt even better to see him crack, even just for a moment. To see something other than rage fill his eyes.

And then I saw him. Ted – standing there frozen with his mouth open, this look of utter horror on his face. I felt my chest tighten and I headed for the bathroom before he could do or saying anything. I knew I couldn't leave the apartment – yet - or I would be following quite literally in my father's footsteps. So I waited. I turned on the tap to make it seem like I was actually using the room for its intended purpose. I wasn't, of course, but that didn't matter.

After a few minutes, I emerged from the bathroom, and there he was again. "I need some air", I told him, though I'm sure neither of us really knew what that meant. All I did know was that I couldn't look at him. And I couldn't let him look at me. Not like that. I knew from experience that if he looked at me in a certain way, I had no choice but to be vulnerable. I wanted so badly to be brave, to stay, to let him in, but I couldn't. And I knew it was inevitable – that look - so I left.

I only made it as far as the steps outside our building. I sat there on the cool concrete with my elbows on my knees and my hands scrunched in my hair. Breathe. Just breathe, I told myself. I didn't know whether I wanted to scream or cry, whether I was angry at myself or at my father, or whether the man I loved would still love me after everything he had just seen and heard.

My life seemed to move in circles, never forward, and my past seemed always determined to ruin my present. And this time, it had. Suddenly, I was eighteen again. Running again. Afraid again. And hurting the very people I cared about most.

As I watched as the cars stream by, their headlights piercing through the balmy evening fog like needles, I remembered that awful night – the night that was just like this one in so many ways, when I left my home and my family more than a decade ago.

I returned from my part-time job and opened the front door of my house to find my three year old sister climbing the baby gate at the top of the basement steps. "Gracie, what are you doing?" I yelped, darting to grab her before she toppled over the other side and tumbled down the cascading blocks of concrete below.

"I was asking daddy for a snack, but he's sleeping" she said, lifting up her right arm and pointing to the basement.

I followed the tip of her tiny finger and peered down the staircase. "You're right" I told her, doing my best to mask the sudden rage that flooded my body. "Daddy is sleeping."

Of course, he wasn't 'sleeping' at all. He was passed out in his favourite recliner as usual, mouth agape, his hand still wrapped around the base of a scotch class sitting on the table to his left. I would have gone down to check if he was still breathing, but it was easy to see his sizable gut rising and falling with every breath, even in our dimly lit basement.

"C'mon, Gracie" I said, heading to the kitchen with her on my hip. "Let's get you a snack".

Soon I was greeted as I nearly always was by a large pile of dirty dishes in the sink, a counter lined with remnants of the day's meals, and an overflowing trashcan that looked like a volcano about to erupt. I rolled my eyes and suppressed the urge to groan, pushing the familiar, loathsome sight from my mind.

"Now, what would you like?" I asked her, hoping she wouldn't want something that required me to actually cook. I had already made dinner earlier that evening and given my increasing exhaustion and the state of our kitchen, I wasn't keen on whipping up yet another meal.

Without stopping to think, she blurted out her request: "Cheewios", she said. Despite my forlorn mood, I couldn't help but smile, both because of her inability to pronounce the brand of her favourite cereal, and because pouring a bowl of that cereal required absolutely zero culinary effort on my part.

"Okay. Cheewios it is" I said, playfully mocking her childish mispronunciation in an attempt to brighten both of our moods.

I turned around and grabbed the jumbo-sized yellow box from the top shelf of our pantry. Thankfully and shockingly, it was almost full. I should have put her down at this point, but instead I tried to juggle her and the cereal like some sort of octopus. I grabbed the milk, her favourite pink bowl, a small spoon and somehow managed to pour her a pint-sized helping of cereal – not too much milk, the way I knew she liked it. But as I turned to place the bowl on our kitchen table so she could eat, her elbow collided with the oversized box of cereal. It toppled over, but remained on the counter, teetering on its edge as the little O's fell to the floor like rain.

I closed my eyes and internally spouted about a dozen curse words. "Uh oh", I heard Gracie say.

"It's okay", I told her as I finally set her feet down on the floor. "Come sit and eat while I clean this up."

I put the bowl on the kitchen table like I had meant to and grabbed the broom as she took a seat and began shovelling spoonfuls of the remaining O's into her mouth.

It wasn't long before I realized that those little bits of cereal had gone everywhere. Literally everywhere. And I knew if I didn't get every last one up off the floor, I'd hear about it the next morning. So I got down on my hands and knees to retrieve the few pieces that had wedged themselves underneath the stove. That's when I heard a crunch.

I looked up and realized it wasn't my hands or my knees doing the crunching, but my father's feet. He came lumbering into the kitchen, carelessly trampling over several O's as he did. Truthfully, I was surprised he could even walk.

"Wonderful" he drawled sarcastically, looking down at me with a stupid, drunken grin on his face.

I rose to my feet and could immediately smell the alcohol on his breath. "I was just cleaning this up" I told him, as I hurried to place the fallen cereal box right side up on the counter. Then I directed my attention to my sister. "Gracie, why don't you go eat that in your room, okay?" She didn't need to be around to witness her father drunkenness, even though I knew she had seen it many times before.

"I'll be in to say goodnight in a minute" I told her, as she took the bowl in her hands and teetered off to her bedroom.

"What a fuckin' waste" my father spat bitterly, before she was even out of earshot. "Scuze me, I need a drink" he said, pushing past me and reaching into the cupboard over the stove.

My oldest sister Jenny and I had nicknamed it "The Booze Box". It was home to nearly every type of alcoholic beverage imaginable, although scotch was his favourite, which made no sense at all to either of us, as it was also among the most expensive items in the liquor store. But it never seemed to matter that we didn't have a penny to spare. Booze always came first with my father - before his wife, before his children, before his bills, before everything and everyone in his life.

"Don't you think you've had enough?" I asked him as nonchalantly as I could, trying not to let the anger in my body find its way to my voice. But it wasn't a question really, more of statement. One look at his wobbly legs, red eyes, and drooping eyelids told me he had more than his fill.

"I'm thirsty" he said, looking at me sternly. That was always his excuse - as if liquor was the only liquid capable of relieving his supposed dehydration. The truth was, he'd probably never gone long enough without a drink to experience actual thirst. He wasn't dehydrated. He was an addict.

I bit my tongue, ignoring him and remaining silent as I continued to sweep. Then I heard the familiar sound of pouring liquid, followed by a loud, obnoxious slurp. "You're unbelievable" I muttered under my breath as I continued to stare at the powdery mess of crushed cereal he'd spread across the floor. I wasn't sure whether I wanted him to hear me or whether I hoped he hadn't.

"Excuse me?" he uttered with the sternness of steal, lifting the glass from his lips just long enough to allow the words to escape from his mouth.

"Nothing" I replied, focusing once again on the broom in my hand.

I knew that confrontational tone in his voice all too well. He was ready to lose it. Booze always sent him looking for a fight. So I suppressed the frustration bubbling in my veins and decided it was best to simply leave the room without making any unnecessary eye contact. I put the broom back in its usual spot between the fridge and the stove, left the kitchen, and headed for the bathroom.

"You're not done in here!" I heard my father call out. But I was done. I was done with him. I was done with everything.

Just when I thought I was rid of him, I heard his footsteps thundering behind me. "I've gotta use the bathroom", I said without turning back to look at him. I focused instead on the little red room at the end of the hall and quickened my pace. A few more steps and I could shut the bathroom door behind me and forget all about him. But before I could reach my destination, I felt his hand clutch around the back of my neck. He shoved me forward into the bathroom, my feet almost lifting from the carpet as he tightened his grip.

"What are you doing?" I yelped in equal parts anger and fear, wincing as his fingernails dug into my skin.

"What day is it?" he barked, holding me firmly in front of the bathroom mirror.

"What?" I asked him, forcing my clenched eyelids open.

"What day is it?" he repeated, this time with even more force.

"F-f-f-Friday?" I said, stuttering like some scared idiot. I hoped that was the answer he was looking for.

"That's right!", he said. "It's Friday. You know what that means? That means I've worked five long days to support this family and now I wanna have drink in my own Goddamn house! Is that too much to ask?"

"Let go of me" I gritted through my teeth, pulling at his arm. I wasn't about to answer his question. I was determined not to.

"Come on, Blakey" he cooed in his usual condescending tone. He knew it angered me more than anything.

I looked at him bitterly and clenched my jaw closed.

"ANSWER THE QUESTION!" he screeched.

I winced again as his grip around my neck tightened with the rising of his voice.

"I'm waiting…" he said, returning to that tone I hated so much.

Still, I said nothing.

"C'mon, Blakey…"

"You're hurting me", I told him. I don't know why I thought it would make him stop.

"Time's a tickin' and I'm gettin' thirsty", he said. Then he smirked at me - that smug, self-important smirk that always seemed to crush my very last nerve. And I lost it.

"Go!" I screamed. "Have your drink! Go! Get out!"

His grip began to give way and he stumbled backwards as I wriggled out of his grasp. "Alright. If you insist" he said, throwing me one last drunken grin as he backed out of the bathroom.

In the silence that followed, I heard a door creek open at the end of the hall. Gracie emerged, timidly inching her way from her bedroom. I could tell even from what was a substantial distance that she was close to tears.

My father, however, proceeded to walk right past her, ignoring her whimpers as he went into the kitchen.

"It's okay, Gracie", I managed to force out with something resembling a smile.

But she continued to stand and stare, her chin and bottom lip quivering. "It's okay" I insisted in the most comforting tone I could muster. "Just go back in your room and close the door, okay? I'll be there in a minute. I promise."

Eventually, she did as I asked and I let the smile I had forced fall from my face. I closed the bathroom door and rested my forehead against it. Alone at last.

As I felt my nerves begin to steady, I turned to look into the bathroom mirror, examining the scratches and indentations on my neck. He had punctured my skin in two places and there were tiny beads of blood sitting on the surface of my skin. These days, this was the only physical contact I got from my father. Not one hug, not one pat on the head, no "thanks for dinner, son", or "I'm proud of you, son." Just this. But maybe it was better than nothing.

I knew I couldn't stay in the bathroom forever, so I washed my face and went to my room to change my clothes. I pulled off work uniform and placed it neatly on my dresser. Then I found worn pair of jeans and a grey sweatshirt and slid into them. I would have happily stayed in my room for the remainder of the evening, but I promised Gracie I would be in to say goodnight.

I opened my bedroom door and there he was, waiting for me with a freshly poured drink in his hand. "Ah, Blakey. Now you're lookin' more like a Wyzecki" he said, lifting his glass in the air as if to celebrate the momentous occasion.

I ignored his comment and walked in front of him, rubbing the back of my neck as I did to try and show him what he'd done.

"Where you goin'?" he called out.

"To say goodnight to Gracie" I told him, eager to reach her room and return to the privacy and safety of my own.

"Not until you clean that shit up off the floor", he ordered.

I didn't listen. And as my hand touched her doorknob and started to turn it, he slid in front of me, draping his arm across the doorway to block me from entering. I could tell he wanted me to put up a fight, so I didn't. I just rolled my eyes and headed back to the cereal-lined floor.

I thought I would be alone, but he felt the need to stand at the entrance of the kitchen and watch me as I carried out his orders. I should have kept my mouth shut, but I hated the way he delighted in my subordination. "I know how to sweep a floor. You don't need to supervise me", I grunted.

"Don't get smart", he warned. It was something he loved to say, though I never understood it. Wasn't that what fathers should want their sons to be? Smart? Last time I checked, intelligence was a desirable trait.

"What should I be then? Stupid?" I asked him. "Maybe then I'd really be more like a Wyzecki."

I should have known better. He came up behind me and whacked me on the back of the head. I hissed in pain as his fingernails grazed over one of the bloody spots on my neck. I wanted to get away from him now more than ever, but as I turned to leave the room, he grabbed my neck again, this time forcing me down to the floor until I was flat on my stomach with my cheek to the tile. "Does this floor look clean to you?" he raged, as he pressed my face into the ground.

"No." I mumbled, my flattened cheek muffling my voice.

"What was that? I didn't hear you."

"NO!" I screamed. It came out even louder than I had intended and despite my best efforts to keep my voice from cracking with emotion, it did.

"Aw, what's a matter Blakey?" he asked with a make-believe sense of concern. "Someone got your panties in a twist?"

"Get off me!" I wanted it to sound like an order, but it poured from my mouth like a plea. His elbow was digging sharply into my back and I winced until I was halted by the pitter-patter of tiny footsteps. I opened my eyes and her bare feet were already inches from my face. It must have been a pathetic sight. There I was, her eldest brother, her protector, on my stomach with my face squished into bits of cereal on the floor.

Having noticed her presence, my father relinquished his grip on my neck and staggered to his feet. I scrambled up from the floor just as he grabbed hold of her arm. She screamed and wailed as he lifted her and dragged her to her bedroom, dangling her from his hand all the while like some sort of ragdoll.

I managed to grab his shirt from behind just as he dropped her inside her bedroom and slammed the door shut. I reached for the doorknob but he turned to face me, his stocky upper-body blocking the entire doorway. "Let me in!" I demanded.

"What? She's in her room like you wanted" he said, throwing his arms in the air. "Now you can quit your whinin' and finish cleanin' that floor."

But I wasn't going anywhere. Not this time. "Move. I mean it." I ordered from between clenched teeth.

"Or what?" my father asked, with a laugh. "Tell me. What are you gonna do?"

He was right. What was I going to do? Even in his drunken, wobbly state, there was no way I could move him – at least not physically. He was twice my size and determined to stay put. I needed to provoke him. "Look, why don't you do us all a favour and go back downstairs, have another dink, pass out" I hissed in my sharpest, bitterest tone.

In an instant, he grabbed the scruff of my collar and slammed me up against my sister's bedroom door. "You listen here, you little shit! This my house and-"

"Your house, your rules" I muttered, finishing his sentence like the robot he wanted me to be.

He said nothing and clenched his fist tighter around the fabric of my collar.

Emboldened by his silence, I raised my voice. "Listen to her! That's your daughter in there" I told him, testing whatever love for her he might have had.

"She's fine" he said without the vaguest hint of an emotion, failing my test miserably.

"Fine? Really?" I spat out. "When I came home, she was this close to falling down the stairs."

"What're you talkin' about? I put the baby gait up."

I rolled my eyes. "She's almost four years old! She can practically climb the thing! Which is exactly what she was doing when I walked in the door."

"Well…" my father said, pausing as his alcohol-slowed brain tried to think of a response. "…She shoulda known better."

I couldn't even speak. I knew my father was capable of some saying some pretty idiotic things, but this – this took the cake.

"Oh, so it's her fault?" I asked, becoming angrier by the second. "It's her fault you were passed out drunk? Yeah, you know what? Silly her for being hungry and thinking her father would feed her. How dare she!"

"You better shut your mouth, boy", he ordered.

But now it was my turn to rage. "You know what the sad part is?" I asked. "I stick up for you – all the time. 'That's right Gracie - daddy's not passed out, he's just sleeping. That's right Gracie - daddy's not hung-over, he's just sick. Daddy's not angry. Daddy loves you. Really he does.' Only you don't give a fuck about any of us, do you?"

My father said nothing and stared straight into my eyes. I asked again, "DO YOU?"

Still, he didn't answer. And that was all the confirmation I needed. By this point, I had grown so disgusted with him that I lashed out with the only weapon I had – the truth. "Maybe you'd be happier if we all ended up like Adam!"

I knew I shouldn't have said it. "Adam" was the only four letter word forbidden in our house. You could say anything; utter any expletive or any combination thereof, but never that word. Never that name.

I saw a flash of sadness in my father's eyes, but before I could take back my words, his curled fist collided with my jaw and I hit the floor with a giant thud.

He stood hovering over me, hyperventilating as he shook the tension from his fist. I looked up at him, my vision blurred and my head spinning. His face was red and his eyes were glassy and full of rage. He looked like a wild animal. At that moment, I thought he might actually kill me – kick me, choke me, grab a knife from the kitchen and stab me. Whatever it took. So I covered my head with my hands, scrunched my eyes closed, and braced for impact, but he punched the door instead - my sister's door - stumbled backwards and ran from the house.

After what felt like an eternity, I felt my senses begin to return – the familiar metallic taste of blood in my mouth, the hard wooden floor beneath my body, and my sister's screaming filling my ears with a piercing, terror-filled sound.

Dazed and dizzy, I struggled to pull myself to my feet. My legs wobbled beneath me, as if my father's fist had somehow passed his drunkenness on to me. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and a smear of bright red blood coated the grey fabric. But I didn't care that I was bleeding. I never cared anymore.

I opened Gracie's bedroom door and shut it behind me quietly. I couldn't see her, but her cries were deafening now. They filled the room with such force that it was nearly impossible to tell where exactly they were coming from. I checked under the bed - my favourite hiding spot when I was her age, but she wasn't there. "Gracie" I whispered.

As I neared her closet - the only other discernible hiding spot in her minuscule bedroom, her cries stopped. "Gracie, it's me" I told her.

I slowly opened the closet door, doing my best not to frighten her, and was greeted with what was, and what remains, the single most heartbreaking sight I have ever seen. She stood there looking up at me with her mouth agape in a silent scream. She had screamed so loud and for so long that her tiny lungs had emptied, but she just carried on screaming. Her skin had reddened from the lack of oxygen in her body, her cheeks were coated with tears, and her light blue eyes were puffy and bloodshot. She had her arms outstretched in front of her, her little hands grasping at the air, desperate for something or someone to cling to. So I lifted her into my arms and immediately felt her chest contract against mine as she gulped in a large breath of air. Her voice returned and her cries rattled my left eardrum. "Shh, I got you. I got you" I said as I rubbed her back, feeling the dampness of sweat that had soaked through her pyjamas.

I wasn't sure how long my wobbling legs would hold us, so I sat on the edge of the bed and rocked her. But it didn't seem to help. She grabbed a tuft of my sweatshirt and clung to it with all her might, her mouth and teeth resting on my shoulder as she screamed into it.

At that moment, I wanted to kill him. I kept thinking about how I would have, if he were still in the house. And it terrified me. It terrified me because I knew he would be back. And I would be here too. And this would happen again. And maybe I would lose it completely. Maybe I would become him. And I couldn't let that happen. So I left.

I waited for Gracie to stop crying and tucked her into bed, but she wouldn't even let me leave her room, let alone the house. Each time I tried to move toward the door, she started crying again, reaching out and grabbing my clothes and my limbs to make me stay. I convinced her to let me leave only temporarily, so that I could fetch an old teddy bear I kept stowed away under my bed. I had taken it with me everywhere as a kid. It was tattered, covered in stains, and missing an eyeball, but it would have to do.

I brought it to her and kneeled beside her bed, freeing the blond strands of hair that had dried and stuck to her tear-stained cheeks. "This is Mr. Teddy", I told her. "I have to go now, okay? But if you ever feel scared, you just tell Mr. Teddy and you hold onto him and he'll make you feel better. I promise, okay?" I said, trying to make us both believe it. She took the stuffed bear from my hands and I touched my pointer finger to the tip of her nose. It always made her smile. And she did.

Then she reached out and touched my bottom lip. "You're hurted" she said. I had already forgotten I was bleeding. Without hesitating for even a moment, she passed the bear back to me. "If you scared, you can tell Mr. Teddy" she said, with the sort of complete and utter innocence that could only ever come from a child. Of course, I couldn't tell that her or that stuffed bear that I was frightened of my father, and frightened of becoming him, and frightened about what would happen when I left. So I told her that Mr. Teddy could read thoughts too, and I took the bear in my hands, closed my eyes, and pretended to transfer my brainwaves to that stuffed, inanimate object.

"See? I feel better already" I told her, wearing my best wide-eyed, cheery expression. However phoney it was, she seemed contented and I gave Mr. Teddy back to her. I stayed with her a while longer, holding her hand while she clutched that stupid bear to her chest. It didn't take her long to fall asleep. All that screaming had exhausted her tiny body.

Once I was sure she was sleeping, I took her hand out of mine as delicately as I could and placed it amongst the brown, tattered fur covering that bear. My legs still wobbled as I got up from knees and made my way to her door. I paused and said goodnight to her like I promised I would, though I'm sure she never heard it. I took a moment to capture that image of her in my mind – peaceful, sleeping, as if nothing had ever happened, completely unaware that I was about to vanish from her life. Then I shut her bedroom door, took a deep breath and proceeded to stuff everything I had into an old backpack. It wasn't much - some clothes, a toothbrush, and a few dollars I had managed to scrounge together from my part-time job. Then I waited for my sister Jenny to come back from her tutoring session, because as much as I wanted to run, I wasn't about to leave Gracie alone in that house.

Luckily, she arrived home a few minutes later. She must have seen the hole in Gracie's door because she started calling my name almost immediately. She found me sitting in our bedroom on the edge of my bed, with my backpack in my lap and a bloodied mouth. Another pathetic sight, I'm sure.

"What happened? What's going on?" she asked me in a panic, panting as if she'd just run a marathon. But deep down, she knew. She started to ask what I was doing, but then she saw the backpack and the look in my eyes, and she froze.

I got up and moved toward the door but she grabbed my shoulders and just started saying "no" over and over again. Before I could even speak, she was crying. I never wanted to hurt her. Or leave her. But it didn't change the fact that I was going to.

I pushed passed her and managed to make it all the way to the front door before she stopped me again. "Whatever it is, he'll get over it!" she shouted, attributing both my fleeing and the fist-sized hole she had seen to my father without even needing to ask. But that wasn't the point. My mind was made up.

I told her that Gracie was sleeping in her room and I told her about that teddy bear too. "Make sure it doesn't get lost" I said, even though I'm pretty positive she had no idea what I was talking about, or why I suddenly cared so much about some stupid stuffed animal.

When I opened the front door to leave, she grabbed onto my arm, and dug her nails in. "You can't leave me here!" she pleaded, still weeping as she held on tight. "I can't do this on my own!" The words sounded so desperate and pained as they left her mouth that I almost stayed, just to spare her the agony.

But I knew I couldn't, so I took her face in my hands and kissed her forehead. Then I realized I was crying too. I said I was sorry, even though I knew it didn't make any difference. If I had known it would be so long before I would get to see her again, I would have thought of something better to say. Something like: You're strong enough. Because she was. Something like: I love you. Because I did.

But I just disappeared.