• He pressed his ear to the door and listened to the yelling coming from the other side. Mommy and daddy were fighting again.
    “I told you never to say that to me!”
    “Well maybe you should come home when you say you will instead of staying late from work to go out to dinner with your ‘boss’, you have a son to think about!”
    “Damnit, woman!” There was a loud slamming sound. The little boy ran to his room then shut and locked the door and pushed his toys in front of it. He heard someone stomping down the hallway towards his room and jumped when his father slammed on the door several times.
    “Paul, open the door!”
    “No!” the boy yelled back. “Not until you go away!”
    “Paul, I’m going to count to three, and if your door isn’t open by the time I get to three, you’re going to be in very big trouble.” The boy started to panic and looked around frantically for something to use as a weapon.
    “One…” Nothing in his toy box…
    “Two…!” Nothing in the closet…
    “THREE!” Then the boy found a plastic baseball bat under his bed and raised it as his father bashed in the door, breaking one of the hinges and making a hole in the wall.
    “I told you to open your door, Paul!” The little boy threw his bat at his father and backed against the wall, shaking his head slowly. His father nearly had him when his mother ran in the room with bruises on her face and arms, and blood running down the side of her head.
    “Paul, run!” was all she said as she tackled the boy’s father, so he ran out of the house and into the woods beyond the backyard and stopped for a moment to look back and see silhouettes wrestling around behind the curtains in his room. He wiped away the tears that were now running down his face and ran into the woods without looking back again.