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Flashback
Archer, Seven years old
Cold shaking hands pressed to either side of my cheeks, my mothers eyes staring down at me with intent as I'd watched her lips part in a rushed hurried tone. "Now listen to me baby," Mommy spoke, her busted lower lip shaking with the whites of her eyes puddled and watery, her left eye bloodshot and red after her fight she had with daddy. "Stay under the bed, you hear me? You do not come out for anyone or anything. And if someone touches you, well you remember mommy's little magic trick she showed you last night right?" Racking my brain at the memory of last night I nodded, a fear I had never felt hitting me like a freight train that was hard to understand. Mommy seemed more scared than usual. Fresh tears ran down my cold cheeks, my mothers thumb wiping them away with her weary grin. "I love you, Archer." Before I was able to speak a loud noise echoed, and my chest grew tight.
Thump thump thump, heavy handed sounds rang from behind the door down the hall of my mother and I's sell. "Get under the bed sweetie, go!" Freya Archers mother spoke in a rushed whisper, her bruised knees hitting the floor as she lifted the long wispy bed sheets. In a span of seconds I was looking at mommy to hiding under the bed with my little glowing sticker moon, one of those you put on the ceiling with a bunch of stars and plants to make your bedroom look like space the at night time. Mommy got them for me, promised me if we counted them together that each and every planet, moon and star would help carry me to sleep each night, and it had.
Moments later cries filled the room, loud thuds, heavy breathing, screaming, the sound of mommy struggling, and lastly a man cursing bad words under his breath with a sound of contact to ones skin. My heart pounded like thunder in my ears, almost making it hard to even hear at all. Turning on my side as I laid there underneath of the bed was when I had noticed all of the stickers scattered among the wall, mommy must have put them there! The last few moments I remember I was counting the planets, moon, and stars, just like mommy had shown me until the outside noise's of struggling stopped, the screaming vanished, and mommy's cries had dwindled into mere faint staggered uneasy breaths. Until everything finally went silent after what sounded like the last set of boots faded down the hall with the thud of a door. There laid little Archer counting the glowing stickers over and over again until those eye's grew heavy and body surrendered to the depravation of sleep.
"I love you, Archer"
The last words I'd ever heard from my mother, the last time I'd ever known love, the last night I chose to be scared, the last time I'd ever wake to shell of a person that once held me in their arms. I'd avenge the death of my mother, if it was the last thing I did. No child, women, nor man would know fear, not until you stood face to face with the one and only man who wore death like a grin, blood like a painting, and fear like a cross. You will weep at his feet, confess your deepest darkest sins, fears, and repent over and over again until your lungs are flat of oxygen and throat bleeding. I will be your undoing, your reckoning. I am only a product of my father.
