Author: Mexx
Disclaimer: I am not, nor will I ever be Joss. Go figure.
Feedback: Is the best thing since sliced bread, better in
fact.
He's drunk again, it's time to fight
She must have done something wrong tonight
The living room becomes a boxing ring
It's time to run when you see him
Clenching his hands
She's just a woman
Never Again
I hear her scream, from down the hall
Amazing she can even talk at all
She cries to me, Go back to bed
I'm terrified that she'll wind up
Dead in his hands, She's just a woman
Never Again
Faith huddled in the corner of her bed, terrified for
herself. Her life had always been like this, the pain and tears were something
she had often experienced, sometimes it was her own tears for being bad, mostly
it was her mother’s.
Her father had left when she was seven. Two months later
came Pete, he would be nice to Faith’s mom and laugh and spoil Faith when he
got home from work at 3:30, then he’d go off to the pub and come back stinking
drunk, swearing and breaking furniture and pulling the head off the unused
Barbie dolls that lay scattered around Faith’s room from lack of use. Faith’s
mom, Irene, would stand in the corner crying as Pete would call her a whore, a
bitch, a bad wife, a bad mother. Faith would stare up at the man with terror in
her eyes, where was the kind man from hours before who ate dinner and told her
jokes he heard at work. Pete would yell at Faith for staring, insulting her
with words that she’d heard on a movie she’d stayed to late to watch, when she
repeated what he said he threatened to wash her mouth out with soap. He never
hit her though, no matter how much verbal abuse Pete would hurl at Irene and
Faith, the only things he would hit were walls and furniture and pillows. The
next morning, when Pete would wake up sober he would apologise and make
pancakes and fresh orange juice for breakfast.
A year later when Faith was eight, Pete disappeared from her
life and for several months she was happy, would play in an unused quarry just
out of Boston. Her mom would give her money to buy ice cream and call her
‘spitfire’ when she heard of Faith’s adventures with her friends. But then
Irene lost her job at a clothes factory and there was no money. She got a job
at bar and would work in the evenings, leaving as Faith ate her dinner and
arriving after Faith went to sleep. On the weekends Faith would stay up late to
welcome her mom home only to find her as drunk as Pete had been, she called
Faith just as mean things and would slap her across the face when she tried to
run back to bed.
Been there before, but not like this
Seen it before, but not like this
Never before have I ever
Seen it this bad
She's just a woman
Never Again
Another six months followed and Irene introduced Faith to
her new squeeze Miles, he moved in the next week. He didn’t work, he didn’t go
out to drink like Pete had and Irene did, he stayed at home in front of the
tube and watched sports drinking a six pack a night, sometimes more. Miles
wasn’t nice some of the time like Pete had been, even when he wasn’t drunk he
told Faith off for leaving her toys around and being home late for dinner. He
didn’t just hit the furniture like Pete had, he hit Faith across the Faith and
threw her down the stairs and when Irene came home from work he’d do the same
to her.
And one day when it rained so hard that Faith came home
early from playing with her friends and she walked in the front door soaked
from the rain Miles shouted at her and threatened and called her bad names and
threw her against the wall. Irene screamed at him to stop; she was just a baby
girl, she didn’t deserve this. Miles let Faith slump to the floor and she began
to cry when the blood from the gash on her forehead dripped into her eyes.
Miles hit Irene and Faith screamed again. Miles was mean and bad and why didn’t
her mommy make him go away. Faith watched with blood shot eyes as Miles pushed
Irene against the wall and whispered bad words to her and hit her and then
twisted her arm behind her back. He stopped when it crunched. A horrible noise
that made Irene’s eyes widened in pain and stopped Faith’s tears from sliding
down her red cheeks.
Just tell the nurse, you slipped and fell
It starts to sting as it starts to swell
She looks at you, she wants the truth
It's right out there in the waiting room
With those hands
Lookin just as sweet as he can
Never Again
Seen it before, but not like this
Been there before, but not like this
Never before have I ever
Seen it this bad
She's just a woman
Never Again
Faith sat in the small cubicle of the hospital with her
mother, squeezing her hand tightly. Irene had a plaster cast on her left arm:
broken in two places and the bone had jutted out of her broken skin. The nurse
who smelled like coconuts put stitches in Faith’s head to stop the blood and
gave her an ice pack to stop the bruising.
“Are you two going to be ok?” The nurse asked. Her voice
echoed around Fait’s aching head and the intense ceiling lights made everything
bright like heaven. The nurse wasn’t asking about their wounds, they would
heal, that’s what people like when they were hurt, heal and move on. The nurse
was talking about the mean man outside in the waiting room, mean man who made
little girls bleed and broke women’s arms.
Faith nodded slightly and took her mom’s hand, leading her
outside to the waiting room where Miles sat staring at the floor. When he saw
them he stood up and marched out ahead of them.
Father's a name you haven't earned yet
You're just a child with a temper
Haven't you heard "Don't hit a lady"?
Kickin' your ass would be a pleasure
He's drunk again, it's time to fight
Same old shit, just on a different night
She grabs the gun, she's had enough
Tonight she'll find out how fucking
Tough is this man
Pulls the trigger just as fast as she can
Never Again
The next week Irene came home from work drunk, she told
Faith she had to stay in her bedroom, she wasn’t allowed to come out. She had
to stay even if she heard screaming, she told Faith she had done some bad
things and Miles would be angry at her. Faith cried, she screamed and wailed
and begged her mommy to hide in her bedroom with her. Her mommy held her tight
and whispered in her ear that it would be ok. Her mommy smelled of smoke and
booze and Faith clung to her sweater. She screamed and cried and ran around her
room hitting the walls, she didn’t stop screaming and she didn’t notice when
her mommy slipped out of her bedroom and down the stairs. Her own screams were
so loud she didn’t hear the arguing downstairs, the ugly words and bad names and
tempered screams. She stopped only when she heard a loud bang come from the
room downstairs directly beneath her, the loud bang followed by two more, and
then a horrible thump as a heavy object slid to the floor.
Faith stared at her own floor in wide eyed horror. She knew
the sound, the loud bang, she recognised it from watching American west movies
on the TV with her friend Janie. Her breath hitched and her sobs diminished to
nothing. She simply stared at her floor, imagining the scene beneath her.
Finally, when she could hear the loud sirens outside her
bedroom window she opened her door, quietly, trying to ignore the loud creak
that Pete had promised to fix two years ago. She walked down the stairs on the
opposite side of the narrow stairs to the banister so that the old wood didn’t
creak too much. Finally, she stood at the foot of the downstairs hallway.
Seen it before, but not like this
Been there before, but not like this
Never before have I ever
Seen it this bad
She's just a woman
Never Again
She watched from the bottom of the stairs as two men in blue
uniforms carried Miles out in a stretcher. He had three dark red holes in his
chest where his heart would have been. His eyes were closed. Her mommy was
standing by two police men, she was handcuffed and her eyes were red and sore.
A lady police officer took Faith’s hand and lead her out of the house. As soon as the lady buckled Faith in the police car Faith began to cry again. The police lady hugged her. She smelled like cotton and daffodils and doughnuts.