What can i do to make you love me?

The small boy lay curled up in a tight ball on the bottom of the cupboard.
His fragile, skeletal arms bent like broken wings around himself, his black and blue form was barely recognisable as a boy. His breath came in short sharp gulps which he savoured with genuine relish, as though each one might be his last.
Small snuffles escaped his juddering mouth occasionally, but aside from that he tried to stay as silent as possible; heaven forbid she find him. The long furry coats kept in the cupboard chaffed the angry, red welts adorning his back like some sort of sadistic decoration, making him want to cry out in pain. They hurt so much but she said he should be grateful; after all, they had been done with her best leather belt. They burnt agonisingly, like when she put the cigarette’s out on his bare skin.

The wooden cupboard floor applied pressure to the bruises covering his legs and abdomen, making him want to shout out n agony. He didn’t understand why mummy enjoyed hurting him so much. It didn’t seem to make sense, after all, most Mummy’s loved their children. His eyes stung from the tears which had been coursing from his eyes for what felt like years and once again they welled up at the thought of what a beating he would be in for later when she found him; she had told him to stay out of her wardrobe. He supposed he deserved it… but it was the only place she never thought to look.

He clutched his knees tight into his chest, praying that when she found him it would be with the intentions of saying sorry, though he knew this was a ridiculously high hope and highly unlikely. She said sorry lots of times. It never lasted very long thought, only until the next time she found something he could be punished for.
99% of the time she was punishing him for something that had nothing to do with him, though he felt that if he had upset her in some way it must be slightly his fault at the very least.

He slowly extended his legs out so he could lie on his stomach, careful to avoid catching the welts, that were so painful they would cause him to release the scream which had been bubbling in his throat. He lay with the left side of his face pressed down on the cold wood and closed his eyes. He was careful to keep one arm in an uncomfortable position so as to ensure he would not fall asleep. He didn’t like to fall asleep because that was when the nightmares came, carried on the memories that he thought he had finally been able to forget.
Falling asleep was like opening the floodgates to them, inviting them back in.
Falling asleep would be the ultimate mistake; he had learnt that last time.
She had found him asleep underneath her bed once.
He shook violently, remembered how she had punished him for that. He closed his eyes tight, trying to eradicate the memories from his mind already knowing he would fail miserably.

He remembered how he had awoke, to a bang so loud it seemed to have shattered the very fabric of night, but he could only see darkness and had lay in confusion for a few seconds before attempting to move. He remembered how she had awaited until he climbed out and stood on uncertain, trembling legs. Remembered how she had cruelly waited until he was standing before she had leapt out from behind the cupboard and thrown him to the floor. Remembered how she had violently kicked him repeatedly in the ribs, until it felt as though they were caving in, imploding slowly in onto his lungs until he couldn’t breathe. The flashing memories continued.
How she had taken him by the hand and led him downstairs and placed the rancid plate of food in front of him, before pushing his face down into it, smearing it all over his quivering body. Her face was blotchy, an angry red hue and her eyes seemed to bulge out unnaturally and she screamed and screamed.
He shook just recalling it. How she had made him eat every last mouthful of it until the plate was clear. Then she had starved him for 2 weeks. He had stolen the odd thing out of the cupboards once she was asleep and in bed but he could never steal enough to satisfy his hunger, as, due to the fact she rarely ate, there was never enough food to conceal the fact there was some missing.
She was never too violent when she got home from work, it was always as the evening drew on. When she opened the brandy that she kept hidden under the stairs.
She never drank just one bottle, usually two; sometimes even three of the huge containers.

She had stopped drinking once and those memories he kept tucked in the back of his mind happily.
They were special and when things got like they were now, he liked to reflect on them and sometimes… if he thought of them really hard and imagined he was still there and nothing had changed, he could even smile; though this was a rare occurrence.
But, he knew now, just as he had done then that things were too good. It had lasted just two short weeks but those weeks had been enough to give birth to a wavering spark of hope inside him.

He had thought this time she really meant it. She had seemed to so genuine and he clung desperately to her every word, stored them up and remembered every single one of them, every pointless sorry and unfulfilled promise she had given him.

He had believed every word; when she promised it wouldn’t happen again, and kissed him on the forehead and tucked him into bed. She didn’t do that anymore.
She hadn’t done that for years..

He wrapped his arms back around his naked upper torso, searching to fathom some kind of warmth as he tried to stop his body shaking, tried to banish the cold that seemed to permanently envelope him, like a disease to which there was no cure.
Suddenly, one of his ragged fingernails caught on the cuts laddering his arms. (Mummy had done those herself… she said he deserved every single one of them for his insolence and his naughty behaviour… she had used the big kitchen knife she kept under the sink. She had even made him do a few of them himself. She had laughed the whole time until he passed out at the sight of so much blood; she knew how he hated it.) The pure shock almost made him shriek. He stared down at it fixatedly and thanked god it hadn’t drawn blood.
He hated blood.
Mummy found it funny.
The cuts covering is arms were encrusted with large clumps of dried blood, like protective scabs over the wounds that would take forever to heal. As if trying to hide what she had done. Then again, why bother? Nobody would ever believe him. She had already told him that.
Mummy was very important, she wore expensive clothes and she always looked professional. Her day to day attire varied slightly but she always wore clean, smart, presentable clothing.. Even if she was staying in the house. If he ever became curious enough to enquire as to why her response would be “just in case something comes up.”
He didn’t know much about his mother’s profession, only that sometimes it required her to go away to places for long periods of time, sometimes just weeks.. other times months and this time elapsed far too quickly for his liking.

Whenever she got back from these trips she was always very stressed, more intense than usual and her arrival this time had been no exception.
As soon as she walked in through the door, the cold look in her eyes had said it all. And the speed with which she had marched in and carelessly thrown her baggage onto the table. The babysitter had bent down and kissed him gently on the head, saying goodbye until next time mummy would have to go away. He resentfully remembered how his eyes had welled up and he had been so close to begging her to stay, how his small hand, deformed from where it had been broken so many times before had clung to finger tips. He liked her more than mummy.

The sharp clattering off her stilettos rang out from another room, possibly downstairs, jolting him back painfully from his reverie of moments before. The intervals between the shrill footsteps was uneven, not in the usual rhythm of someone casually walking at a steady pace.. He could tell she was drunk already.
The noise seemed to be growing closer and his heart beat faster as though threatening to force its way up through his throat and make a hasty exit through his tightly puckered mouth. He clamped his lips together as much so as possible without drawing blood, as he tried to steady his breath so she wouldn’t hear. His heart beat so forcefully he was terrified she would hear it ricocheting backwards and forwards of his fragile ribcage.

He fixed his gaze upon the single narrow beam of light illuminating selected parts of the cupboard walls and tried to forget the situation, attempting to slow his breathing to its usual pace, He could hear the clattering coming closer, until it was of a seemingly deafening volume, but still only barely drowning out the blood pumping furiously through his ears. His palms were so sweaty and sore he could feel them dripping puddles of bloody perspiration. He heard her once again, getting closer and closer this time, her footsteps not wavering like before and the calm breathing pattern it had taken him so long to achieve began accelerating before rupturing into dry panting as thought he was running at breath-taking speeds.

The noise came closer until he knew she was nearing the room, if not already inside it.
Suddenly the shaft of dim, dirty looking light leaking in through the crack vanished. He could sense her out there, waiting; and it made the situation so much more real. Her pungent perfume leaked in through, along with the overpowering stench of cigarettes and alcohol.
He knew she was hunting for him, stalking its prey as though a cat, ransacking the house as though possessed and he was sure that by this point she must know he was in this room, if not quite possibly his exact location. From listening to her footsteps earlier he was sure she had been through every room in the house and at this point the cringed, knowing it would later be his job to clear up the path of destruction she had left in her wake.
He also knew if everything did not go exactly back to its original positioning he would be punished most severely.
He curled back into the tight foetal ball of before involuntarily as the first loud smash rang out, splintering the eerie silence.
He could hear her pacing like a caged animal baying for blood. He lay there in silence, with his eyes squeezed closed, his body brutally shaking for some time while he listened to her screams of pure rage. He listened to every crash and bang as yet another object was hurled viciously at the wall and tried to guess what it was.
He could hear everything.
Her unsteady panting as she tried to catch her breath.
The sound of her hurling her favourite vase at the wall.
The sound of a thousand teardrops of glass fall as it made contact.
Another ash tray being flung to the floor.
The vile, never ending string of abusive exploding from her mouth in an acidic spray.
Her heard her throw something at the large mirror on the wall.
He listened to the glass splintering into thousands of tiny, razor sharp shards. He bit down hard on his lower lip, feeling the pointed edges of his incisors piercing deep down into it and felt the blood well up as he tried to force the scream threatening to relieve itself through his shaking lips back down into his pulsating chest.
Abruptly the cupboard walls shook as something particularly heavy hit the floor with a hollow, somewhat muffled thud. It took him a few seconds to realise he couldn’t hear anything. The silence seemed unnatural, like an oppressive blanket had been thrown over him, smothered him within its suffocating folds, blocking out any noise.
There was nothing… Just silence.
The boy realised something had happened to make her stop. Something had made her stop her vicious tirade. He could no longer hear her screaming, or hurling objects; he could not even hear the soft sound of her breathing permeating the silence, but even so, he waited patiently. He had to wait until he could be completely sure of her absence.
It took what seemed like forever for the first hour to pass but after three he had heard the phone ring at least 12 times. By this point he was sure it must be safe, mummy never let the phone go unanswered in case it was an “important business call” as she liked to say, before proceeding to tell him to keep away from the phone, followed by the usual torrent of curse words she aimed at him.

Slowly over a period of at least 15 minutes, he uncurled himself and managed to gain enough courage to push one of the heavy wooden doors open, as quietly as he possible could. Gradually he stretched one bruised leg out, then another before landing lightly on the floor below, careful to avoid knocking the backs of his legs on the protruding draw handles below. His small eyes scanned the room before falling on the small heap on the floor. He moved cautiously towards it, knowing instantly it must have been what made that final thud; the last thing to fall. He furrowed his brow slightly as he realised it appeared to be clad in one of his mothers best suits.
He bent down and poked it gently and indeed it was as soft as he had earlier assumed. It took all the courage within him, along with all the strength held in his fragile arms to pull it towards him, trying to make it roll over.
After some struggle the thing rolled over and the boy recoiled violently, taking a sharp inhalation falling back slightly as the room grew blurry and a burning feeling of nausea danced within his stomach.
The soft thing wasn’t an it. The soft thing was Mummy and Mummy didn’t look very well.
Her face was of an odd purple hue, her eyes seemed to be protruding out of her face and her tongue lolled lifelessly to the left side of her blue lips. He cradled her head in his lap, crying softly and watching with morbid fascination as the tears ran down from his face to pool on hers.
The scream that had been developing all afternoon escaped in a deafening shriek, piercing the silence that had descended. He got up quickly and ran down the stairs as fast as his thin, battered legs would move.
He didn’t ant anyone to think he had done that to Mummy because he would get in trouble.
If he pretended he hadn’t noticed, pretended he hasn’t seen it then he could pretend it was there.

For the first time in his life, he walked into the kitchen and helped himself to whatever he wanted. He didn’t think Mummy would mind after all. He sat in front of the TV for hours, watching everything and nothing at all, though it had taken him a long time to figure out how to use it, as, like most things in the household, he wasn’t allowed to use it. He got himself a drink and drew in his favourite colouring book, one which he had not seen for many years as she had confiscated it. He continued like this for many happy hours until the moon seemed to be descended rapidly from the sky and the black starlit canopy hanging above the house began to fade into pastel shades of pink and blue.
The phone rang again and he watched in fascination as the little red button flashed and he wondered whether to answer it. After several minutes it stopped and the decision was taken out of his tiny hands.
The phone rang a lot over the next few hours but he never did pluck up the courage necessary to answer it. He settled himself back in his mothers thick, plush arm chair and went back to watching the television, his eyes slowly closing and flickering as sleep began to envelop him.
***************************************************

Several hours later he was dragged out of sleep and back into harsh reality by the ringing of what he initially thought was the phone but upon awakening he realised was the doorbell.
He crouched low on the sofa, terrified he would be seen .
He knew he would be in big trouble when they saw what had happened to Mummy.
However whoever was at the door was determined they would get an answer and after what seemed like hours he managed to drag himself to the door, carefully opening it a fraction of an inch and peering out uncertainly .
The spectacle the two men were beholding must have been shocking and something that would linger in their minds forever, an image they would take to their deathbed.
It isn’t every day that you knock on the door of a large luxurious house in search of a missing woman who hasn’t been in work for 4 days and have a small boy, no more than 8 years old answer the door wearing nothing but a pair of tattered, old shorts, showing an enormous variety of injuries off to their best advantage. In their line of work it shouldn’t have shocked them as much as it did, but it was a scene no man could get used to, no matter the level of exposure towards it.
They stared past the little boys broken frame at the battle field that covered the expanse of hallway visible through the doorway.

“What’s your name?” The taller man with the softly rounded features gently asked the small boy and waited patiently for the expression of terror to subside from behind his bruised, pinched features before the boy replied in a hoarse whisper, so quiet it was barely audible; “James, sir.”
The two men exchanged looks and upon seeing the glassy tears in one another’s eyes they looked away quickly.
“My names James too, and this is Andrew. We are police, James. Can you tell us where your Mummy is?” He spoke the words softly and slowly , trying to ensure the child understood every word, though he was scared of the answer.
James looked quickly from one man to the other, his eyes darting nervously from side to side.
“Mummy is…” He hesitated, “Mummy is upstairs. She doesn’t need to see,” he finished quickly.
Scooping the child up and into his broad muscular arms, Andrew whispered in his ear, as if telling a secret, “Have you ever been in a police car before?” and upon seeing the boy shake his head, his eyes lighting up with excitement, he enquired, “Would you like to?”
Nodding his head in excitement, easily forgetting the matter at hand as a child does, James was carried down the path and into the patrol car.
Hesitantly, DCI James Hugh made his way into the house, his eyes wide with shock upon seeing that the house was a brick monument to Jekyll and Hyde, its outside marvellous and grand, its inside unexpected, wild and scary in its state.
The house was like a ravaged dream, every treasured memory strewn across the floor in vicious disarray.
A worn teddy bear lay next to a broken brandy bottle, a heap of cigarette butts lay next to a slashed up pile of mother and baby photos, thousands of family photographs reduced to shreds. A leather belt, the underside splattered with what appeared to be blood lay next to what looked like a colouring book and its stench made DCI Hugh reel back in horror. The pungent aroma of leather mingled with dry, congealing blood made him gag brutally.
He inched further into the domestic war zone, the broken shards of glass making loud crunching noises under his heavy footsteps. After letting his eyes scan the hall slowly for a few minutes he started to ascend the grand staircase. It took him just a few seconds and once at the top he wondered nervously from room to room, each one worse than the last and after several minutes he entered the last bedroom, dreading what he may find.
It was quite a minimalist room. The wall were a calm shade and had been adorned with a few pictures and mirror before they had been ripped off the walls. They were now lying on the floor amidst a sea of broken glass and rubbish yet these were not what caught his eye.
Slowly he crept closer to the still figure of the woman sprawled in the middle of the room. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful as though after completing the destruction she had worked to obtain she could now rest easily. He bent down onto shaking knees and pressed two fingers against the side of hr pale neck, searching for any semblance of life.
He could feel a pulse.
It was slight; but it was there.
His voice shook as he spoke into the walkie talkie he had pulled from the back of his belt, as he instructed DCI Willis to get him an ambulance as fast as possible. He looked around in amazement, none the wiser to what had happened than when he had first arrived. The house was in ruins, the woman barely alive and then there was the boy.
The tiny child with the haunted look in eyes as cold and deep as bottomless pits.
He stood there in stunned silence, keeping a close eye on the seemingly lifeless woman as he waited to an eternity to hear the reassuring wailing of the sirens of the approaching paramedics.
****************************************************

She sat with a look of pure innocence upon her attractive features. She was a woman approaching her mid 40’s yet she had aged incredibly well, to the point with which her smooth, seamless skin refused to betray her years. Hey body was well shaped and she obviously took great pride in her appearance. Her clothes were well selected and carefully pressed, her flawless make up applied perfectly. She held the air of a professional and despite the past 3 hours she had spent stationary in the dank room she still looked calm and composed.
Today would be at least the 11th time and hopefully the last she had explained the events of a night she could barely remember. The events of a night that occurred 3 weeks ago. She sat there for a few minutes, her eyes focused on a small staple stuck in the pin board on the opposite wall but her mind was in another place. She clenched her fists tightly in her lap, her fingernails so sharp on her palms it felt as though she was about to draw blood. Her eyes became hollow and her posture lax as her mind travelled away to focus on other things.
She bit her lip gently trying to stem the flow of tears threatening to betray her true composure.
A booming voice broke into her thoughts and a suit clad man to her left arose.
“Will Miss Jessica Elizabeth Abbot please rise.”
Looking around self consciously she stood on shaking legs before staring fixedly at the toes of her well polished shoes.
“Jessica Elizabeth Abbot, you have been charged with neglect, two accounts of child abuse, two accounts of assault and three charges of actually bodily harm. How do you plead?”
Her voice wavered, as she replied, “Not guilty, your Honour.”
As her voice shook in syncopation with her knees, she held back the sob that was building in her throat, threatening to escape in a scream that she feared would be endless, drowning her and the courtroom congregation in its flood of grief and anger.
She slowly reached down, until she could feel the cold metal at her side. Stroking her fingertips up and down the reassuringly cold chrome she felt an icy semblance of comfort floor through her.
Glancing around furtively to ensure no one had noticed her, she slowly extracted the cool barrel from her waistband before holding it down at her side, as discreetly as possible although the adrenaline was already pumping through her so forcefully she was shocked her skin wasn’t glowing with every heartbeat.
She pulled her arm back before screaming a wordless torrent of hate into the room.
She smiled with satisfaction as she gazed upon the shocked faces looking up at her in horror tinted confusion.
She smiled sadistically before letting out a harsh burst of laughter.
“If I can’t have my son then neither can you.”
She sighted down the barrel of the .22 calibre pistol before firing two rounds of bullets into the shocked face of the Judge.
“You will excuse me won’t you, your honour?” She questioned sarcastically, laughing down at what was left of the old Judges face.
She turned the gun around and pushed it into her mouth, before pulling the trigger, and as the bloody grey matter painted the pale walls, her shrill, resonant laughter continued to ring out long after she hit the floor.