The only people in the world he actually felt at ease around, let alone just the Osbourne household.īut how much of a person was there really to miss? A hollowed-out teen-shaped figure who was too skinny, too quiet, too cowardly to ever be properly missed by anyone. That and the thought of leaving behind Debs and Kenny and Les. It was the reason he had always forced himself to ignore the idea up until that point. That was more than enough for Liam to realise that the mythical experience of running away from everything you knew portrayed in movies and books was not the way things were. His cousin had once been inspired by this so-called adventure and consequently run away for two and a half days. He’d read about teen runaways in books – had soaked up their irritating unrealism, tried not to scoff at how fanciful they were, as if it were all such an adventure. Liam’s chest crackled with a laugh, bitter as burnt caramel with all the sharpness of an apple it encased.Ĭountless years of dealing with his father and that was the catalyst that got his cliché escape bubbling and fizzing away in his mind.
TWISTED INSANE FLOOR BOARDS CRACKED
Left her out to get her bones cracked by chill, her skin to get taughtened by frost. For what he had scolded himself for even considering for the last sixteen years.īut, he then reminded himself, also the face of someone that likely wouldn’t survive to his senior graduation if he stayed in this world of belt lashings and cracked mirrors.Īnd to think, the decision had relied on a dead cow of all things. This time, Liam forewent gentleness as he swabbed the cuts on his back, scrubbing at the blood like it was crusted gravy on a saucepan.Ī punishment of sorts, he supposed, for what he was about to do. Just watery eyes from the sting and thoughts asking why it had to be so difficult, not asking why it was needed in the first place. The awkward bending of looking at his own back in the tiny mirror he balanced on the toilet seat, the even more awkward bending as he tried to dab each gash with the rubbing alcohol and smooth it over with the cream – all so well-rehearsed that, by now, there were no longer the devasted tears of betrayal and the why, oh, why’s whirling around in his head. Holed up in the bathroom late at night, knowing no one was awake to hear him rummaging around in the medicine cabinet, he practiced the routine with ease. The reeking burn of rubbing alcohol and udder balm was a familiar experience to Liam by now. Today was the everything would change, he supposed. Your mental wellbeing is so much more important than my story. Please don’t read if that’s something that is going to trigger you or make you uncomfortable. CW: mentions of physical abuse from a parental figure, some mentions of injury, self-hatred.