cw: blood, violence

pt. 1 | pt. 2 | pt. 3 | pt. 4

The sight of blood causes his vision to tunnel as he hauls himself off the floor. Casey swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, heaving air through lungs that have turned to stone — nothing in, nothing out. “Get lost before your mom gets back. Don’t let me see you out here again.”

And so he does, because even scrambling into hiding is somehow less humiliating than passing out in the middle of the kitchen over a little blood, but Casey can only hold himself up for so long; as soon as he reaches the bathroom — as soon as the door is sealed shut — he collapses against the wall and huddles into himself, his arms shielding his head as if he’s taking cover from a falling ceiling.

He can’t breathe. He can’t stop himself from shaking, despite the excruciating ache it causes. If he cries any more, he'll throw up, but he can't stop that either. In the kitchen, he hears Allan slamming dishes around in the sink, hollering something about how Jennifer wouldn’t believe him if he told, and he’s not wrong. Jennifer hadn’t believed Casey’s lie about the whiskey in the bathroom, nor the very true story of Allan locking him in a closet while she was gone. She won’t believe this either. She won’t even ask.

After a few minutes, he finally manages to pull himself up again, though the strength it took is quick to falter once he gets a good look at himself — the blood dribbling off his chin, the mangled hair, bloodshot eyes. His lip doesn’t even look real, bright red and swollen entirely out of proportion. When he touches his fingertips to it to catch the blood, he realizes it’s gone almost completely numb.

This is his life. The realization of that makes his chest ache. This is his life, his lip, his too-tiny apartment. His absent mother. His sorry excuse for a new step-father, or babysitter, or whatever else she chooses to call him. His blood.

A sudden banging on the door causes his heart to jolt again, where it’d previously stopped short at the sight of his face. Casey holds tightly to the counter to stop his hands from shaking, but lets it go, thinking Allan might go on ignoring him. No such luck. After a few more obnoxiously aggressive knocks, Casey flings the door open. “What do you want?”

They stare at each other for a long time, but Casey can’t figure out whether Allan is feeling remorseful or not. For some reason, the part of him that had once naively regarded Allan as a harmless goofball clings to the idea that he could show some semblance of humanity and apologize, but he doesn’t. “I changed my mind, you can come out and help clean this up.”

Casey looks beyond him. The only thing left is the blood on the floor. He feels woozy all over again. “No,” he snaps. “That’s technically your problem.”

“I’m not gonna tell you again, get out here and help clean this. The hell’s the matter with you? Didn’t your mom teach you to listen when someone’s in charge of you? C’mon.” Allan latches onto his arm.

It’s fight for flight; a knee-jerk reaction in the wake of desperation. Hitting hasn’t worked in the past. He’s not strong enough to yank his arm back, so instead, he hawks a mixture of spit and blood into Allan’s face. With his arm free, Casey stumbles back into the counter. Everything stops.

Casey and Allan stare at each other, jaws both identical in the way they come completely unhinged, but neither say a word. Allan wipes his face slowly, looks at his hand in some kind of disbelief and then sees himself out, slamming the bathroom door behind him, causing Casey’s entire body to ignite. He missed his chance. Pent up adrenaline propels the fist that would have been headed for Allan into the door, then again and a third time before he finally recedes right back to the wall where he had been, huddled up in hiding. Unable to catch a breath. Crying, again? Right back to square one. “What the f***…”