She deserves better.

Mum’s treatment was unlikely to ease up today. The bruises on my legs have healed, which means she’ll probably attack me there today. But I don’t care. Akina comes home today.

I can only hope she shows up before mum gets back from work. That way Mum won’t be able to hurt me. Akina would report it to the police, a luxury I don’t have since it would simply result in even worse beatings.

I throw back a double dose of painkillers to ease the throbbing of the bruises along my arms. I take so many of the fucking things they hardly work anymore, but it’s better than nothing.

I glance at the clock. 5:16. Mum’s due back any minute, but Akina also said she’d be here between 5 and 6. I try to use my shitty old smartphone to distract me from my anticipation, but it’s no use.

In the end, I find myself sitting in the living room, in a position with line of sight to the front door, but far enough away to give me an escape route if it’s mum that comes home first.

Click

The door unlocks. My heart stops. Who is it?

“Haaanji! Where are ya, ya liddle shit.”

Fuck. It’s mum. And she’s piss drunk. I should hide for a while.

I quietly step away from the sight line of the door and try to climb out the back window of the living room into the garden. For a second I think I’m safe, but I slip and lose my footing. I fall from the windowsill to the ground and land with a thud. The painkillers must have fucked my coordination.

“Theeere you are, rat. You tryna escape me or summin? Who gave you permission you little punk?”

Shit. Fuck. Sometimes it’s bearable when she’s sober, but if she’s drunk she’s probably also pissed off. I scramble to my feet and look at the doorway, where my nutcase of a mother stands, completely hammered and with an angered look on her face.

Shit. I need to buy time until Akina gets home. As mum drunkenly stumbles toward me, I try to step around her. Between my relatively quick movement and her drunken stumbling, I’m able to get past her and dart for the door of the living room.

For a second I think I’m in the clear, but I once again regret my decision to take such a large dose of painkillers, as my momentum and sudden change in direction are too much for poor coordination, and I find myself tumbling to the ground in front of the front door.

I try to drag myself to my feet once again, but I’m stopped by a heavy weight pressing down on my lower leg. She was stepping on me to stop me from leaving.

“Disobedient little brat. Whodyou think y’are, tryn run away from me.” She takes her foot from my leg and kicks me in the ribs. Even with the painkillers, it’s agony. She doesn’t hold back at all when drunk. As I writhe in pain, she grabs my hair and tries to drag me to my feet.

Click

“Hey Hanji, I’m he-“

Akina walks through the door to the scene of our mother dragging me like a rag doll.

Time stops. Mum and Akina stare at one another. I can’t see Mum’s expressions but Akins’s is some mix of shock, horror and uncontrollable anger.

“Drop the girl right now.”

Akina squares up to Mum, who begrudgingly let’s go of my hair.

“Living room. Now.”

Akina’s anger is beginning to boil over already.

***

“I can’t fucking believe you. You promised me you’d be a better parent if I left her with you, that you’d stop the neglect. Now you’re openly abusing her? Coming home drunk from work and beating her? You scum.”

Akina’s been yelling at her for a few minutes at this point. I’ve never seen her so livid in my life.

“You’re a failure. A failure as a parent, and a failure as a human. I’m talking Hanji with me and reporting all of this to the police. I hope they lock you up to rot fore-“
“YOU LEFT ME!”

Mum suddenly interrupts Akina’s onslaught. Her voice is practically shaking from anger.

“Not only did I lose my husband, I lost my daughter! I was still grieving, and you fucked off to university! Halfway across the fucking country! And you left me with nothing but this fucking rat!”

As Mum points at me and calls me ‘rat,’ Akina finally loses it. She punches her square in the jaw, making mum stumble backwards and fall to the ground.

“Come on, Hanji. Let’s get you away from the evil bitch.”

I run up and jump into Akina’s arms. It had been so long. I’d had to endure that woman’s torment for so long. But she was finally here to save me.

“Alright, alright, we can hug later, but for now we have to le-“

Her words are cut off by a dull thud, and her grip on me goes slack. I open my eyes to see my beloved sister sprawled on the floor, blood pouring from her head. And there stood my wretched excuse for a mother, holding her favourite thick glass ashtray, covered in the blood of her own daughter.

Thud

Thud

Thud

It’s a sight that nearly makes me throw up. She was slamming the ashtray into Akina’s head over and over again, drawing more and more blood each time.

In that moment, I don’t scream. I don’t panic. I don’t whimper in the corner. I’m filled with nothing but hatred and rage, all directed at the vile woman before me.

I run into the kitchen, seeking the cutlery drawer.

Butter knife? Too blunt.

Steak knife? Too small.

Bread knife? Perfect.

Carrying it in one hand, I run back to the living room where my mother is still violently beating her own daughter to death, and sink the sharp side of the knife into her neck.

The sound she lets out is the most visceral, sickening and guttural sound I’ve ever heard in my life. The sound of a woman gurgling on her own blood. The bread knife had cut deep, likely piercing into her trachea. No words come from her as she slowly drowns on her blood, the little light left in her eyes slowly fading away.

For a second, I stand there, looking down at the corpse of the woman who had made my life hell. It was that easy. A single swing and my torment was over. I momentarily revel in my victory before a terrible thought comes to my mind.

“Fuck, Akina!”

I turn from the corpse of the mother I detest to the dying body of the sister I love. The blood loss is bad, and it’s likely that the skull is cracked. She’s unconscious, but a quick check of her heartbeat tells me she’s just barely clinging to life.

No time. Call emergency services.

“119, please describe your emergency.”

“Need an ambulance quickly! My sister is bleeding out and I think my mother is dead, please, I need someone here now.”

“Ok, kid, you’re gonna have to calm down. I need your name and your address.”

“Ah- right, sorry.”

I gave the woman on the phone line the information she needed, and an ambulance came in a mere few minutes. The paramedics bring me and the bodies of my two family members into the ambulance and rush us to the hospital.

“Sorry kiddo, but you’re gonna have to wait out here. You’re not gonna wanna see the rest.”

And with those words, I was separated from the sister who had tried to save me at the cost of her own life.

***

“And… that’s pretty much where everything climaxed. Mum was beyond saving, I had severed the carotid artery so she was already brain dead by the time we arrived. As for Akina…”

Hanji paused. Her expression before was distant, but now there’s no way to describe it but devoid of life. As if simply recalling these events had killed every ounce of her spirit for life.

“…Akina survived, but it wasn’t good. I was right in thinking the skull had been broken, and her brain had suffered some… pretty severe damage. She’s been kept in a hospital ever since. She still remembers me, but she can hardly speak, and her motor functions are fucked. It’s a miserable state to live in.”

The story leaves me speechless. Hanji’s endured more than any man, woman or child could ever possibly deserve to endure. I can’t find a single word to say, but my heart aches worse than it ever has.

This girl has lived a hell I can’t imagine. Here I’ve been, acting hard done by, while the person who’s reignited my love for life has been suffering more than I ever could have imagined.

She deserves so much better than me.