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Before the World Fell Apart
My life before the apocalypse had already been tragic. People said the end of the world was cruel, that it stripped everything away. But me? I didn't even have anything to lose.
I grew up in a house where every corner felt like it was waiting to swallow me whole. My father tried—God, he tried—to protect me when he could, but it was never enough. My mother's cruelty was endless, sharp and unpredictable, like a storm that could never decide whether it wanted to rage or pass.
There was a night—I must've been around ten—when my father and I tried to run. We left while she slept, hearts pounding, shoes slipping on the wet pavement as if the city itself wanted to hold us back. I thought, just for a moment, that we'd made it. I clutched my father's hand so tightly my fingers went numb. But by morning, there were posters with our faces plastered on telephone poles, and the police found us within hours.
When they brought us back, she didn't scream at first. She just smiled—a cold, thin smile that made my stomach twist. Then she grabbed a bottle, slammed it over my father's head with a sound that still makes me sick when I remember it. He collapsed, blood spilling into his hair, staining the carpet. She turned on me next, her hands and the jagged glass striking again and again until I lay on the floor, blood soaking through my shirt, warm and sticky.
I didn't cry. I had stopped crying long ago. Tears only made things worse. And so, as the pain burned through my ribs, as my skin split beneath her blows, I wore the same neutral expression I always did—because showing nothing was safer than showing weakness.
Despite his injuries, my father crawled to me. His hands shook as he lifted me against his chest, blood from his scalp dripping onto my face, mixing with my own. He whispered words I couldn't quite hear—soft, broken fragments like "I'm here, I've got you, you're okay."
But I wasn't okay. I never had been.
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The Kindness That Hurt
Sometimes, though—sometimes she was kind.
She would smile at us suddenly, out of nowhere. Not the cruel smile, but something gentler, something almost human. On those nights, she would bring out real food. Not the rotten vegetables or stale bread she usually threw at us, but warm meals—chicken, rice, soup that filled the air with an aroma so comforting it almost felt like we belonged to a family.
Once, she even let us sit at the dinner table with her. I remember holding the spoon too tightly in my hand, half-afraid it was all a trick, that she'd lash out the moment I tasted the broth. But she didn't. She just sat there, smiling, like a mother should. For the first time, I thought maybe she could change.
But those nights were always followed by something worse.
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The Night She Took Too Much
One evening, my father accidentally spilled a glass of water as he carried it to her. Just water. A small puddle on the floor.
I saw her eyes darken instantly. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and I knew—I knew—something awful was about to happen.
She grabbed the bat from the corner of the room. I thought she was going to hit the floor, or maybe throw it, but no. She brought it down on his head. The sound was sickening—thick, heavy, final.
Blood poured down his face as he collapsed.
I screamed. I dropped to the ground beside him, shaking his shoulders, begging him to wake up. "Daddy, please—please get up!" My hands slipped in his blood as I slapped his face, pinched his arms, anything to make him move.
But he didn't.
My chest heaved with sobs I couldn't control, the tears I had long trained myself to suppress spilling freely. It wasn't fair. He was all I had. The only person who tried.
"Why won't Daddy wake up?" My voice cracked, shrill and desperate, a child's plea to a world that never cared.
When I looked up, I saw her face. For the first time, my mother wasn't furious. She wasn't smug. She wasn't cruel. She was pale, her eyes wide, her body pressed back against the wall as if she were the one afraid.
My screaming carried into the night, and it wasn't long before the neighbors called the police. Twenty agonizing minutes later, red and blue lights painted the walls of our broken home. The officers stormed in, pulled her away in handcuffs.
I sat in the corner, shaking, holding my father's limp hand until they pried it from mine.
They brought me to the station, the fluorescent lights buzzing above me, the chair too big for my small body. I remember watching them drag her away for questioning, her wrists bound in steel.
And in that moment, I noticed something strange. Her gaze wasn't filled with hatred. It wasn't the burning malice I'd come to expect.
It was… something else.
Almost as if she was scared. Almost as if she regretted it. Almost as if, deep down, she didn't know why she did what she did either.
And that's the part that haunts me most.
Not the bruises. Not the blood. Not even the emptiness of losing my father.
It's the question I can never answer: If she didn't hate me, then why? Why had she hurt me? Why had she ruined us?
Those were questions I desperately wanted her to answer... Why? Just why had she done this to us?
I visited her cell sometimes and I asked her those questions, she never once answered me.
Causing me to think...maybe there was something deeper behind this, but I never got to figure it out.
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