The blood-covered pus of a reopened cut led me to
believe that the wound I had received from my father
a month ago would never heal. I remember the broken
beer bottle jabbed into my chest. I never went to the hos
pital and never got stitches, only a box of band-aids. I
covered the deep gash with the band-aids. This morn-
ing. I was sitting on the steep stairs that lead to the dark,
dusty basement. My quiet, little bedroom was down
there in that desolate place. Then suddenly without a
moment's notice, my scrawny brother pushed me. I
plunged down the dark stairs and fell on a sharp shred
of my brother's broken plastic phone that he had left
there earlier that day. I opened my shirt and looked.
The shred of that broken toy phone had given me a
second gash. The floor filled with blood. I looked at my
brother and yelled. He ran up the second flight of
stairs screaming and crying. I grabbed the bloody wound
and took the shred of plastic out of the gash. I walked
up the stairs. I washed the reopened wound and went
to wash the blood covered floor.
That night my drunken dad came into the dark, empty
house. My brother and I were sitting in a dreary cor
ner. My grubby dad sat on the grungy couch with his
beer and remote. Broken glass on the blood-stained
carpet reflected in the light of the television. I got up
and got my little brother ready for bed. I went back to
the smoke-filled room where my filthy father sat.
NO RELATION
48 THR
Max Schaaf
Matt Dov