Daddy, I Still Love You

I stumble through the back door, allowing the screen to slide back into place with a bang. Sliding the glass cover over the mesh with a clatter, I stand there, doubled over, lungs heaving from the sprint. I hear the radio playing somewhere in the background and the sound of water running. Looking up, I see dad standing at the sink, staring at me with flashing brown eyes, an expression of hatred on his face. Empty beer bottles lay scattered around the kitchen. My shoulders sag.
"Girl! How many times do I have to tell you? Don't slam the stinkin' screen door!" His voice is harsh and grating, his words slurred. He sways a little, catching hold of the counter to keep from falling. From ten feet away I can smell the alcohol on his breath. The vein on his forehead pulses blue, his fist clenches around the sponge he holds in his hand. His dark brown eyes darken and flash while my blue ones widen in fear. Please, oh please, not again. I can't take it anymore, not one more time.
"Dad, I'm sorry. I just forgot for a moment," I stutter out, my voice quivering with dread.
"Don't interrupt me when I am talking to you, girl!" he spits out. "How I got stuck with you while your mom runs off is beyond me. You know, I bet you're the reason your mom walked out anyway. What a terrible child."
"Dad, please," I stammer out, but that is as far as I get before he lunges across the room, stumbling a little from the alcohol he has consumed. Now I notice he clutches a half empty beer bottle in his left hand. I cringe back against the door, trying to make myself as small as possible, but he keeps coming. I watch his hand lift, and then the bottle comes sailing straight at my face. It breaks across my nose, sending streams of foul smelling liquid cascading down my cheeks. Glass cuts at my skin, tearing it apart as if it were paper, sinks into my pores, driving deep as the blood wells. I scream, tears pooling in my eyes and overflowing my lashes.
"Shut up!" he hisses, shoving me to the blood speckled linoleum at his feet. I slide down the glass, only to be yanked up again by a fist buried in my hair. Pain explodes through my scalp, traveling in waves through my body. I scream again, only to be slapped with such force, my head flies back into the sliding door. The glass shatters, slicing into my head, sending rivulets of blood streaming down the back of my neck, soaking into my Viking's T-shirt.
Now tears are running down my cheeks, mixing with inky mascara and scarlet blood. The world starts to spin in slow, dizzying circles. My eyes are squeezed shut, trying to block out this creature that was once the man I adored. Now he slaps me, twisting my face back toward the demolished door, cracked and broken just as my life is now. I feel more and more blood run down my back, down my face, work its way over my nose, into my mouth. He says nothing, the only sound is his harsh breathing and my whispered, weakening sobs. All around us is the stench of alcohol and fresh blood. It is overpowering, making me feel nauseous. The world blackens at the edges, all I see is his fist colliding with my cheek. I taste fresh blood as a blinding pain crashes through my head. I stagger, and nearly fall, but he pulls me upright by the back of my shirt, his grimy fingernails clawing at my wounds.
"Girl, I want you to know something," he growls in my ear, then pauses to spit straight into my face. " Nobody loves you, not me, not your mom. There's proof of that in the way she walked out on you. You have no life. You deserve to die," and with these words he leans back and brings his knee full force into my gut. The agony, the pain. Not only from the blow, but from his words as well. I crumple to the floor, lavender Converse slipping in a pool of blood, my eyelids fluttering. The last thing I see before the world fades from sight is my daddy's face, glaring with hatred at me, his only child.
"Daddy, I still love you," I whisper. And then I know no more.