Thunderous Fists

Giant, thick hands coming down over and over on my head, my body. A pounding in my ears so loud, so deafening it almost hypnotizes me, wills me to give in and give up. From that pound to the next, there is conciousness... I know I should be paralyzed by fear, but somehow my body is still moving. My legs kicking, my arms flalling, my mind retreating. Retreating, screaming to the rest of me. "What are you doing!", "What is he doing! Don't hurt him, just let him finish...". With every kick my mind yells STOP! With every punch my body screams NO! Daddy NO! He doesn't hear me and the beating goes on for what seems like forever. And then some how I'm up and I'm running or I'm just moving as fast as I can away, away... So I make it to the kitchen and I can feel him right behind me, right behind me... I pick up the first thing, the biggest thing that i can find - a chair. I point it at him like a lion tamer staring a feroceous beast in the mouth. For an instant, we both freeze. I look at him with not a tear in my heart and with defiance in my eyes. My chest heaving and the chair my only sign of weakness shaking like a leaf. He takes a step forward, I counter him backwards and again we are frozen. Our eyes lock and in the silence his roar is deafening. "When I get my hands on you" he growls, "I'm gonna kill you, I'm gonna fucking kill you." Somehow, my defiant soul responds, "you fucking put your hands on me...". Suddenly, the phone rings. Once - the silence hasn't yet been broken. We are locked in a joust, repeating ourselves, waiting for the other to back down. Almost from a distance the second ring is heard. On the third ring he blinks, snaps out of his trans, turns and walks away. I stand there my arms trembling, my eyes locked on him as he moves slowly away from me. I stand frozen My father just told me... My heart broke and from it oozed crimson tears as I crumpled, exhausted to the ground. That was it... and yet the tears would not fall from my eyes, because my eyes were not deceiving me. What I witnessed was something a child should never have to see. How did I feel that day?
Beaten not by his fists but by his rage, by the humiliation he had imposed upon me. He was supposed to love me and yet the look in his eyes...