It shouldn’t have been, but it was satisfying, really, seeing my hands covered in blood—not my own blood, of course. Although there might have been some of my own on my knuckles, which were torn from hitting That Bastard in the face. I might have broken my hand, too, but that wouldn’t be the worst of my problems.
That Bastard laid on the scuffed-up linoleum floor. Specks of his blood dirtied the black and white patterns. He was still. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t dead. No, he was still breathing—as much as I wished he were otherwise.
The adrenaline from our little scuffle had faded a long while ago, so my hands were steady as I dug my hands into my pocket, not caring that I was leaving blood all over my jeans. Bits of red stained my cigarette as I held it to my lips, and I felt better immediately even before I drew in the first puff of smoke—not that I was feeling bad really.
My sister would be pissed if she found me smoking in her kitchen. She hated the smell of tobacco (Hell, we all hated the smell of tobacco, but the shit’s hard to quit after fifteen years), and it probably the only thing she ever raised her voice over, hating how it hurt her body as well as ours.
A bit annoying to think of that when the reason this whole thing started was because I saw those welts on her back from That Bastard putting a belt to her just because she was too damn tired to remember to clean everything in the house.
It brought acid to my throat to think about how long this must have been going on without any of us knowing. They had started dating when she was just a sixteen-year-old, and he had been older—too much older, in my opinion. He’d waited to marry her until she was eighteen, but if I got Lili to open up about it, she’d probably say the signs had been there long before marriage—without even realizing there had been signs.
Blue and red flashed through the open window of the kitchen, and the loud “whoop” confirmed that someone had heard us while we were fighting. He might have been unconscious now, but if That Bastard was chicken enough to hurt a girl as tiny as my sister, then I was sure he would press charges against me, even if one of the nosy neighbors hadn’t noticed.
It had been stupid, really, to have come all the way to Lili’s house to show That Bastard his dirty secret wasn’t a secret anymore, but as I got up to answer the door, there wasn’t a single notion of regret going through my mind.
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