I'll Be The Brightest Someday

Vic’s P.O.V

I lay there on the living room floor, cowering underneath my dad as he beat me once again. He continued to kick at my side with no mercy as I screamed out in pain. I’m sure he’d broken a rib this time by the excruciating pain in my side. Once he stopped, silence filling the room except for my ragged breathing and crying, I thought he was finally finished, but then I realized I was wrong as soon as I was being pulled to my feet by my long brown hair. He began screaming obscenities in my face and slamming me against the wall.
“God dammit, Victor, I’m so sick of your shit and disrespect. You will respect me even if I have to break every one of your limbs. Now, get the fuck out of my face and don’t let me see you until you’ve got some respect for your own fucking father.”
With that being said as he finished by throwing me to the hardwood floor, I crawled down the hallway to my bedroom. It hurt so much to breathe which I was doing hardly any of at the moment anyway, due to being held to a wall by my throat. This was the second time he’d done this to me and it was only Thursday so far.
Ever since my mother died my dad has become a drunken asshole. He blames me for my mother getting shot. What was I supposed to do? I was only 8 when it happened anyway. I hid behind a giant trash bin in the alley like my mom told me to do when she saw the men following us. They beat her and took all her money and anything else of value. I was so scared I couldn’t move. Even if I did try to stop it, what could I do? They’d just shoot me in front of my own mother.
Once I made it to my room after crawling through indescribable pain, I lifted myself and laid on my bed and my brother, Mikey, walked in and sat on the edge of my bed, weighing it down some, making me shift my weight around to get comfortable. He looked at me with sad eyes knowing what had just happened, I’m sure he heard the whole thing. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes as I knew how sorry he felt for me and how much he wished he could make it stop. I started to actually cry as I kept thinking about how pitiful and pathetic I was that even my own hardly younger brother felt pity towards me. I deserved the beatings. Maybe it was my fault our mother’s gone. Mikey realized how upset I was as I had began crying harder now and he crawled over my bed to lay next to me and hug me to help calm me down. We both knew if our father heard me crying he’d come in here and call me a fag for crying and hit me again.
Once my tears subsided I told Mikey thanks for comforting me.
“No problem, I gotta be there for my big brother just like he’s there for me.”
He smiled while finishing his sentence and I smiled back and let out a small chuckle at his statement. That’s the first time I’ve actually smiled or laughed today. Granted the laughing kind of hurt considering a few of my ribs were obviously broken.
Mikey went back into his room after we talked about pretty much nothing. I looked over at my clock next to my bed telling me it was already 9:43pm. I changed into some pajama pants. I didn’t bother putting another shirt on. I glanced at my ribs in the mirror as they were already turning a purple black color. Great.
I fell asleep not long after that. I was dreading the thought of waking up the next day because I already knew what school would bring me and it probably wouldn’t be much different from what my father had done earlier.