The clicking of his dad's lighter

Twenty one years ago ...

“He's just a boy!” yelled his mum. “Why are you doing this to him?”

Yota wailed as she ran cool water over the cigarette burn on the inner side of his left forearm, struggling to free himself and getting nowhere. He had expected his dad to tell him to take the cigarette butt and throw it in the bin. The searing pain in his skin had caught him completely off guard and made everything so much worse.

“Because you both deserve it,” said the man himself from somewhere in the living room behind them.

Their old sofa, a deep blue and dirty specimen, creaked but Yota couldn't bear the thought of looking over his shoulder to confirm what it meant.

“But he's your son,” said his mum unsteadily. “He's our little boy.”

“Huh, he's not my son,” scoffed his dad. “Even if you put a dress on him, I still wouldn't even call him my daughter.”

The circular spot of pain on Yota's arm started to subside but his heart felt like it had been stepped on.

“Don't say that.” His mum's words were barely audible as she picked him up and carried him over to the stairs with their first aid kit in her other hand. “He loves you.”

“So did you,” retorted his dad, crossing his feet on the coffee table. “Until life got hard.”

Yota couldn't tell if he was the one trembling or if he had grown too heavy for his mum's arms. His dad always had a lot to say but he barely understood any of it. Why wasn't he good enough to be his son? What made him less of a boy? What had he done to make the older man so angry all the time?

His mum set him down on the edge of the mattress on his bedroom floor and knelt before him.

“M-mama?” he asked in between sobs as she stopped him from clutching the burnt skin. “Did I m-make Dada hate us?”

She paused for half a second, then finished smearing a cooling cream on to the cigarette mark.

“No, baby,” she replied. “You didn't make him do anything.”

But she didn't meet his eyes the way she usually did. She didn't give him any other explanation about why his dad treated them like they were the worst people in the world, nor did she tell him why her husband had now started to burn him on top of the usual beatings they both frequently received.

When he tried to get answers to those same questions, his throat closed up and his unstable breathing interrupted his thoughts. His mum covered the wound with a tightly wrapped yet breathable bandage.

She took him into her arms and held his close to her chest until he stopped crying. He hung onto the cage pendant she kept around her neck as she kissed the top of his head over and over again. As if she thought it would distract him from the missing heart shaped jewel that used to be inside it, and the sensation of warm tears falling onto the same spot.

And he still didn't know what he had done wrong.

~

The itch of his burn mark woke him up much later that night. He didn't have a clock in his room but he could tell it was past midnight from the stillness of the air. He pressed a palm against the wound to stop in from itching and knew that the itch would only worsen if he gave in and scratched it.

He left his room and wondered if he would be able to reach the first aid kit. If he couldn't use the cream, he would have to look for some ice or a chilled milk carton in the fridge freezer. They used to have special strawberry milkshake frozen into cubes during the summer, a few years ago now. That had been before the his dad had started insulting them. Before the beatings had begun.

He avoided the creaky floorboards on the stairs carefully but easily enough, holding onto the banister and its spindles whenever he needed to swing himself over any of them. A loud snore from the longer sofa in the living room below froze him for several second and he gulped once or twice before he found the courage to continue his journey to the lower floor.

Halfway down, he turned to ice again.

Whilst it wasn't strange to find his drunk dad passed out on the sofa overnight, one arm hanging off it, the other resting heavily on his protruding stomach, Yota hadn't expected to find his mum standing over the unconscious man.

She had a plastic bucket of oil in one hand, which she slowly started to pour around his dad. Trickling it across the cushions behind him, on the carpet in front of him. She hesitated as he snorted and squirmed, visibly shaking as she held the bucket aloft, then drizzled the remaining liquid all over his chest and hair. As if she didn't want it to touch his skin directly.

Yota covered his mouth with both hands, the string of his burn mark nothing compared to the dread that spilled over his own head and down his face, drenching his entire body in undiluted terror. He wanted his dad to wake up before it was too late. He never wanted his dad to wake up every again.

By the sofa, his mum dropped the bucket and Yota jumped but his dad barely stirred, mouth open, filling the room with his thick snoring. His mum lifted the item in her other hand, rolling her thumb repeatedly over the top of it until a flame burst from its top.

The clicking of his dad's lighter stopped.

It was the same one he had used to light he cigarette that he later pressed into Yota's skin. His mum had always warned him to be careful in the kitchen especially when she was cooking. He knew how dangerous hot oil could be but wasn't well versed on just how quickly it could catch alight.

“I should do it,” murmured his mum.

Her soft voice had never sounded more out of it place than it did on their living that night. With empty beer cans scattered on the coffee table next to her and on the ground by her feet. The imperceptible ticking of the clock as its thin second hand moved back and forth, the way it had been for a few years now.

The room still smelt like the curry and steamed rice she had made for dinner, even though she usually washed the dishes and aired the place out while he was sleeping. Perhaps she had forgotten to do so today.

“Yota deserves better than to have a father like you,” she continued. Her words brimmed with anger and disgust, yet her voice somehow managed to sound utterly hollow at the same time. “You're a monster. A demon.”

She lowered the lighter, holding it over the patch of darkened fabric on the front of his shirt. Her black hair hung, long and listless, down to her shoulder blades. Her wide shoulders, rounded by years of poor self defence, seemed weaker than ever. He was glad he couldn't see her face. Her tone was already enough to make his heart feel like it was about to break apart like a glass filled with boiling water.

“A demon like you deserves to burn,” she said, but she didn't let go of the lighter straight away.

And Yota realised that she hadn't taken a step back away from the man on the couch. Did that mean the flames wouldn't start off large straight away? If she dropped the lighter, would she have time to get out of range before they were both in danger? Was she planning to run to his room and wake him up as soon as the oil caught fire? Was she going to leave once she was sure the blaze had started to spread?

Or had she been planning to stay there, until the end, and watch their past, present, and future burn away into nothingness as if none of them had ever had the right to exist from the start?

An involuntary sob squeezed its way out from between his fingers. His mum stiffened and he had a second to believe she hadn't heard him properly before she turned around. He pressed himself against the wall and stared at her through the wooden spindles of the banister.

“Yota?” She didn't sound as scary now but her expression pressed against his memory like a hot iron.

Her eyes were wide and unsteady as she sought out the right words for him. Her mouth opened and closed as if it had forgotten how to guide air down to her lungs. Her mask, the one she tried to wear for his sake all the time, broke piece by piece until there was nothing left but a few extra polished shards that only made her tarnished humanity stand out more.

Yota sniffled, rubbing his right arm across his nose. He wanted to cry out for her but her hands made no move towards him. And he couldn't risk making any noise because then -

His dad's hand closed around his mum's wrist, pulling her around to face him.

The lighter fell and Yota stopped breathing even before it was caught in the man's grimy but oil free hand. A chill rose from his soles to his skull and he forgot how to feel anything else for a few seconds as his mum looked down at the one who's life she had nearly taken.

“What the hell is this?” he snapped, hurling the item across the room and scanning his stained surroundings.

It struck one of the few vases they had left in the corner of the living room, shattering it on the spot, and Yota started to feel light-headed.

And that was when his mum started to laugh.

A high pitched and humourless sound that pierced any feelings of security he had ever had. A noise that reflected the agony of a soul losing its grip on hope for the final time. He realised right then that he had never heard her laugh so loudly, so uncontrollably, and so helplessly before that night.

He didn't know that he would never hear her do so ever again.