Only Time Will Tell

You can't stop running. Your side hurts, and you can't tell if you've got a stitch from running, or if it's the gash in your side. You try to keep your hand on it to staunch the bleeding, but the crimson stains your hands, running through your fingers, dripping. You gasp for air, begging your tired lungs to take in just enough to keep you going. Tears stream down your face, but you don't stop. You can't.

Who knows if you'd survive.

This isn't the first time they've done this. It's not the first time they've made you bleed, or had you running for your life. You know this isn't normal. You know that most six year olds probably don't have to lie awake every night, begging the powers that be for just one more day, always afraid of when your last will come, hoping that one day won't be as bad as the rest. Most little kids have mommies and daddies who protect them.

Your mother tries. Gods, does she try. It's hard to protect another life, though, when you're trying so hard to preserve your own. You know what a burden you probably are to her. Everyone but her tells you so constantly. If she didn't have you to take care of, maybe she would be able to protect herself better. She could be safe, happy. When you entertain these thoughts, those are the only times in which you stop wishing for that one more day. Who are you to wish for something you have no right to? But your mother constantly assures you that she never wants to be without you. She says you're precious to her.

You don't see how.

Maybe, if you had a father, these things wouldn't happen to you. You wouldn't be hurt, victimized. You've been beaten and kicked and pushed and cut and violated and nobody's stopped them. You like to imagine what your life would be like if you had a father. You imagine him, with everything your mother's told you about him. In your head, he's kind, and loving, and you imagine him protecting you from the people who hurt you. Scaring them off and bandaging you up and promising it'll never happen again.

Until you trip, scraping your hands and knees as you fall. The other children converge on you before you have the chance to scramble up and start running again. Your blood stains the ground, and you tremble, knowing what's coming. A foot collides with your bleeding wound, and you cry out. You whimper as they pull you up by your hair, just hoping against hope that it'll be quick.

You close your eyes and go back to your fantasy, blocking out the pain, their jeering voices and sneering faces. You imagine you have a father, imagine his smiling face, a warm hand picking you out of the dirt.

But you have no father. You have no one to protect you.

You can only close your eyes tightly and wait for it to end.