Fractured Minds (Rebels of Sandland 3)

I hadn’t even been home a day and my parents were already getting on my last nerve. I hated this shitty council terrace house. It was rotting from the inside out, and it wasn’t just the mildew and rising damp that was the problem. Nothing good had ever happened here. Nothing worth a damn ever resided here, not even us. But God help anyone if they peered beneath the cracks of our doomed existence. Our life was like a Monet painting; best viewed from afar.

My mum currently felt the incessant need to drone on about how proud she was of Alice for moving out, never stopping to think why she’d left late at night with two overstuffed holdalls and nothing but the change in her pocket. I knew my mum’s not-so-subtle digs were aimed at me and the fact that I still lived under their roof. I didn’t want to, and it was at the top of my to-do list to find a sofa I could crash on, or a park bench maybe? We lived in the crappiest part of Sandland, but she’d still berated me the minute I left the hospital and came home. Apparently, my getting beaten up had brought shame to her door. Her shining reputation and what the neighbours thought took precedence over what I actually felt. Funny, because when her brother went down for armed robbery, she didn’t blast him. No. That mantle was solely reserved for me.

Did I care?

Not one fucking bit.

As for my dad, he was either shadowing Mum around the house, waiting for her to give him guidance on what he should do next, or polishing his pointless, prized fishing trophies. The single thing he loved most in the world, apart from Mum. He was obsessed with fishing, but he’d never taken me. He said it was his chance to get some peace, why would he want to invite the craziness along to join him? The pair of them irritated me beyond belief, but they didn’t notice. They never did. My parents were too wrapped up in their own world to ever care what happened in anyone else’s, especially their children’s.

I don’t know why they ever had kids. We never did the things that normal families do. We didn’t have days out or go to swimming lessons. They never came to any school events, plays, or parent’s evenings. Don’t get me wrong, they loved each other, but there wasn’t room for anyone else in their lives, even us. We were the product of their relationship, and yet, we were always the outsiders. It was always them and us. Or rather, them with Uncle Tony, and us.

He was my mum’s brother. A constant in our house since I was five years old, and my parents thought the sun shone out of him. He bought them bottles of beer and wine most nights. Plied them with free cigarettes, and on the odd occasion he could get it, a joint to really knock them out. He kept them up into the small hours, joking and laughing until they fell into bed in a stoned or drunken stupor. They didn’t realise he did that for a reason. They were both so pissed-up, they didn’t hear a thing that went on after the lights went out, or was it that they just didn’t care?

One particular day, just before he was put away for armed robbery, it looked like the tide might be turning for Uncle Tony and his little arrangement. Dad had noticed bruises on Alice’s legs. She usually hid them pretty well, but on this day, Dad saw. He confronted Tony, said Alice appeared nervous, scared even, and had said he was the one to give her the bruises. He wanted to know exactly how it’d happened, and I sat in the corner of the living room, praying he wouldn’t find a reason to wriggle

his way out of this one.

We’d tried a few times to tell them how Tony hurt us, but their minds blocked out what we were really saying. They obviously wanted to believe it was all made up to get attention, or simply a heavy hand to two children who, funnily enough, wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Not once did they listen, truly listen, and hear the desperation when Alice or I tried to tell them. Our subtle clues only hinted at what went on, because in all honesty, we were too scared to say it out loud. It was too much to put into words, so you can imagine how horrific it was to live it day-in, day-out.

“She’s always been clumsy. Can’t go a day without breaking something or tripping over. Look at her now, all jumpy…” Tony gestured to where Alice stood quaking in the corner, opposite where I sat. Of course she was skittish, she didn’t know when he’d strike next.

“Those aren’t bruises from falling over, they’re finger marks. I can see––”

“You see what you want to see,” Tony snapped, cutting Dad off. “Did she tell you what happened? If it wasn’t for me, it’d be a lot worse. I caught her outside, climbing the ladder. Stupid cow was about to fall and break her bloody neck. Yes, I grabbed her, and maybe a little too hard around the thighs, but it was only ‘cos I was stopping her from landing on the concrete and spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Isn’t that right, love?”

I stayed in the armchair, watching as Uncle Tony’s eyes turned to steel behind my dad’s back and he dared Alice to try and challenge him.

“You said he hurt you.” Dad turned the interrogation back to Alice, but not in a concerned, fatherly way. His words were like darts, pinning her to the wall and shredding her will to fight into tatters. “Is this another one of your sick jokes? You can’t go around accusing men of things like that, Alice. He hurt you for a reason. I’ve a good mind to give you the belt myself for causing trouble like this. You should be thanking your uncle, not making up stories.”

Alice swallowed nervously, and plastered herself against the wall in fear. I could tell she was seconds away from bolting. Once again, any effort we made to expose him was futile. He always managed to twist our words and turn our parents against us.

“I… I…” Alice couldn’t even get a sentence out. Her eyes darted from the furious face of our dad, to Tony’s smug smirk. He shook his head slightly as if to say, ‘Not this time, Alice. You won’t beat me.’

“Say sorry, right now. Apologise to your uncle,” Dad shouted, causing Mum to barrel into the living room to see what all the fuss was about.

She took one look at Alice and then turned to face the men of the house and groaned.

“What has she done this time?”

“The usual. It doesn’t matter though, she’s going to say sorry, aren’t you, Alice?” Dad threw her a vicious glare and she recoiled further into herself.

Alice looked petrified, like she was about to throw up, and I wanted to speak up for her, but I couldn’t find the words.

“I… I’m…” She didn’t look at anyone else in the room as she stuttered and cowered in the corner. Instead, she hung her head in shame.

I felt it too.

The shame.

When was all this going to end?

I had to find a way for us both to leave, run away before he ended us completely.

“I’m sorry. I said the wrong thing. I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“You certainly did and you have. But it’s not the floor you need to apologise to, young lady. Look at your uncle and give him the apology he deserves.”

I felt sick. I didn’t want Alice to have to go through the agony of looking at him and uttering any sort of kindness. But she did. Like the fighter she was, she took a deep breath and lifted her head, held her hands against the wall behind her to keep her upright, and she glared right at him.