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Blow after blow.
With each, Kane gasped and choked and tried to keep on his feet, while his mother wailed and begged, “Leave him alone! Leave him alone! This isn’t about him.”
Didn’t she get it?
He was a part of her.
How could she count him out of her life? As if it didn’t affect him? As if he wouldn’t care?
“I’m gonna teach this little punk a lesson. It’s time he learned his place,” Justin growled, never ceasing with the blows.
One after another.
Kane tried to fight back, though his arms had gone weak, his spirit faltering as quickly as his bruised and crushed body.
A brutal fist landed on his right cheek.
Blackness vibrated, and he was so, so close to being sucked into it.
“No, Kane,” his mother cried. So quiet. But he could feel it. Could feel her turmoil.
The rush of her energy.
Her love.
He didn’t even realize she’d run out of the room before she was back, the glint of metal flashing in the bare moonlight that flowed in through the open window.
A knife.
“Leave him alone!”
She didn’t even break into Justin’s wrath.
He just kept punching, hammering fist after fist into Kane’s broken body.
Then Justin howled. Howled as he released Kane and whirled around.
Kane slumped to the floor, nearly unconscious.
But the fury in Justin’s voice kept him pinned to the horrors of this reality.
“You motherfuckin’ bitch. Did you just cut me?”
Through tears and blood, Kane watched his mother hold the knife between two shaking hands.
A vision so similar to the one that had been embedded in his darkest memories from years before. When his mother had begun to succumb to that darkness. When somewhere through the years she’d begun to believe that she wasn’t worthy of the love that she deserved.
When she’d been manipulated and brainwashed and led astray.
Or maybe she’d just been stuck.
Imprisoned by what she didn’t believe she had a choice in breaking free of.
“Leave him alone. Leave me alone.” Her words were brittle, broken pieces that fell off her tongue.
Justin took a step toward her, and she took one back.
“I mean it, get out.”