Last Time

“Oh my god! oh my god…” my mom’s voice jogs me into consciousness.

I blink my eyes open but my vision is still blurry.

I can hear Augustus taking his anger out on the furniture in the living room. I can’t see much from my position - lying motionless on the kitchen floor.

Mom crawls toward me.

“Can you hear me?” she asks in a hoarse voice. Delicately, she touches my swollen face.

“Are you, are you okay?” I move to shake my head but it hurts so much. My heavy eyelids refuse to open wide.

With the slits of my eyes barely seeing anything, my mom’s bloody face comes into view. Her hair is a mess, there’s a huge bruise on her arm and her right eye is closed and swollen.

“What…?” I try to ask what happened, but I’m still out of it. Augustus had really done a number on my head with that particularly hard blow.

She tries to get us to safety and drags me to the nearest room - my bedroom. With her own injuries, it takes her so long to get me to stand up or even to nudge me to a sitting po