I slowly walked on to the counter. Skin bruised, joints aching and with the taste of blood in my mouth I climbed the barstool and put the two bottles on the counter.
" 2 refills please. " I say, placing the crumpled money with the bottle.
" Oh my God!! Are you okay? " I looked at the barmaid asking me the question.
A brown haired girl with a full chest and a concerned expression on her face.
I looked at her name tag, Tina, another new girl.
"Can you hear me?", "Hey?" Her constant whining made my already aching head, ache some more.
I winced as the sharp pain came when I tried hissing in disgust.
"Hold on, let me get the manager." She quickly ran to the back.
A minute later, an aged man, probably in his late 60's came out.
"Hey there Leo." He hesitated, looking at me with the kind of pity you give a raccoon who was run over by a speeding truck. I felt worse.
He quickly got over the shock and took the bottles.
"The usual?" He asked, I nodded and gingerly got down from the bar stool.
Staying on it for so long had made my legs used to the stagnant kind of pain, now moving them out and reminding them they had to make another grueling trip to the house of terror was a worse kind of pain.
Now on the floor, with my cargo in a black bag, I slowly started walking back.
"Leo!!" I turned to see the old man walking towards me.
He knelt and put something in my hand. "Get yourself something to eat, and maybe treat that gash on your head."
I simply nodded and pocketed the money, knowing that he knew I wouldn't use it. I couldn't use it.
That was another kind of pain, the pain of kindness, giving me a rope to help pull me out of the water but in reality it would just be used to pull me deeper and maybe strangle me in the deep.
As I walked on, the door to the bar opened and there he was, my fear personified.
Immediately the noise of the bar muted.
In my point of view, everything faded to white, only one thing I could see clearly.
The storm of violence in front.
'He was supposed to be asleep, did I really stay that long?' I looked at the clock in the front of the bar and saw that I had been out for at least 30 minutes.
He shouldn't be active by this time, I concluded.
"Hey Leo." Immediately I heard his graty voice, goosebumps came all over my body.
I shivered at what those two words meant: He was active and his mind was clear enough to recognize me.
I didn't know what to do, so I instinctively did what I had been taught to do for 3 years.
I took the bottle from the bag, ran and knelt at his legs, offering him the spirit.
My eyes were trained at the ground but I felt his gaze shift from me to the bottle of alcohol and back to me.
'Just take it and go, please.' That was what was going through my mind and I'm sure through the bar owner's mind too.
I felt his grip on the bottle and my body eased up, thinking he had taken the peace offering.
I was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when I felt the kick to my side.
I flew and crashed at the nearby table.
"You little runt. How many times do I have to tell you to open the bottle before serving it to me?"
He asked, walking towards me and grabbing a mopstick leaning on the walls.
At his outburst, the patrons of the bar quickly exited the scene.
The news of the abusive policeman and his abused son was well known and everyone knew how cruel the policeman was to anyone who stopped him from 'disciplining' his 'spoilt' boy.
My eyes moved from the patron to the other bottle in the bag, I saw pieces of liquid flowing out of it.
It was broken, meaning that was another reason to be flogged.
I saw him raise the stick and closed my eyes getting my body ready for another round of bashing.
Another 10 seconds later and the hit didn't come.
I opened my eyes to see the bar owner holding the mop stick turned cane and in a fierce glaring battle with the man carrying the title of my father.
"What do you think you're doing?" My father asked.
"I could say the same to you." The bar owner replied back, the same level of aggression said in his voice.
"I'm trying to inculcate some manners into my son and you're stopping me from doing my parental duty." My father said, now fully turning to the old man.
"You can do your parental duty anywhere but here, but I know for a fact this isn't how any parent treats his kid."
"You question my parenting skills?" My father asked and the bar owner faltered.
I have seen this conversation numerous times, any answer the bar owner gives now is a wrong one.
It was a small village far from any other place of civilization, communication with other villages was scarce and nearly non-existent and my father was the only law enforcement officer posted here. Meaning my father was the law and his law was absolute.
The bar owner knew this too, any answer he gives now could lead to his ruin.
I couldn't let my father transfer his aggression to anyone else, slowly I crept and held his leg.
I looked at him, tears in my eyes and my whole being shaking from terror and the pure stupidity of what I had just done.
"You call this a disciplined child?" My father said in disgust.
Holding my neck and picking me up.
He then threw me down, with my arm hitting a table.
Immediately my head felt light, my throat hurt and I heard someone screaming.
After 5 seconds I realized why my throat hurt so much. I was the one screaming. The last thing I remembered before passing out was seeing my hand at an abnormal angle and a little piece of blood on the floor.
I woke up in a strange room, there was a blanket over me and my hand hurt less, it was in a cast.
Slowly I tried standing up, but I stumbled back down.
"You shouldn't be getting up, Leo." I looked at the bar owner as he sat on a chair looking at me.
The room was dark and I couldn't see any clock nor could I sense how much time had passed.
"Don't worry, you're safe for now." I looked at him, knowing that he knew I could tell that was a blatant lie.
"Try and eat something then rest, your father gave you till tomorrow afternoon to come back before he comes to destroy the bar." I looked at the covered plate next to me.
"Personally I don't want you to go back Leo, it's even miraculous that you woke up in 3 days, your hand was and is messed up."
I looked at the cast on my hand, while I tried eating the cold plate of rice and stew.
The rice was hard and the stew was salty but it was good and it was filling. I drank the glass of water and slowly put my head back on the pillow.
"Can you please wake me up 30 mins before my deadline?" I asked quietly.
He said something else but I was already going to the bliss of sleep.
I woke up the next day feeling like I was about to be hit, I quickly scrambled up and saw that it was just the bar owner about to wake me up.
"It's 11:30 If you want to go back, it's best to go now." He informed me.
I nodded in thanks and brought out the money he gave me yesterday.
"A bottle please, the other one you gave me yesterday broke." I asked him
He collected the money and sighed
"You should run away Leo, he's not a father or even human."
I nodded and collected the chilled bottle from him.
It wasn't the first time someone had told me to run away, nor was it the first time I had thought about it, yet I couldn't.
Although I feared my father, the one thing I was terrified of was leaving him and running away, then finding someone who was worse.
For one thing you should be terrified about isn't the devil you know, but the angel you do not.
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