My back smacks against the wall and my head whips back, my skull cracking against the solid object behind me. A groan escapes past my lips as I lift a hand and feel for blood. Thankfully, it comes back dry and I relax until the next hit.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" My father roars at me with so much malice and anger in his voice my body starts trembling on its own as reflex. I'm not scared, no I stopped being that a long time ago when these beatings became routine.

God, how pathetic does that sound?

I laugh bitterly on the inside unable to contain my sardonic smile. It only infuriates my father more. Before I can even see him move, his hand is colliding with the side of my face. Everything goes black for a few blissful seconds. When my vision comes back I look up at the two people I used to call parents. The two people I, somehow, still manage to call my parents.

Are they really that anymore, though? Are they?

My thoughts go to my brother and I know what he used to call them. Monsters. Horrible, horrible monsters. Worse than the type that hides away under the bed or in the closet waiting to attack.

'Those monsters,'

My brother used to say.

'Those monsters are the ones that are easy to handle. The ones that are our parents, they're the ones that you need to fear, April, because you can't just close your eyes and wish them away. These monsters that live with us, that eat with us, that go so far as to breathe the same air as us. These monsters are the ones that'll kill you.'

I bark out a laugh filled with sorrow and hatred because, not even a week later, my brother was gone. He was gone and never coming back.

I guess when you're buried six feet underground it would be difficult to come back.

"How can you be laughing right now, April?" My mother hissed, pulling my attention from my thoughts and to her. She glowers down at me with those vicious eyes I'd inherited from her.

"I remembered something funny."

She's not pleased with my answer as she tosses all of my failed test papers at me. I flinch and watch as the papers float to the ground.

"You're such a disgrace. You completely humiliate us with these! Are you trying to be a failure?" My father asked next, anger still radiating under the surface. I push myself up, standing on unstable legs.

"You say I humiliate you? God, just think about how humiliated you'd be if the news got ahold of this juicy story." I spit out and that does it. His hand lashes out and I feel the pain on my scalp like a fire burning me alive as he pulls my hair with the ferocity of a lion attacking its prey. A cry of pain escapes past my lips before I bite down hard on them to stop.

It's okay.

I tell my brother in the heavens as my father drags me down our hallway. My hands are clasped around his wrist, finger nails digging into his skin as I try to lessen the pain even by an inch.

It's okay because I can handle this. I'm stronger than you think.

As the words fill my head, though, I'm not sure who I'm trying to convince. My dead brother or myself and, as my eyes meet my mother who's trailing behind my father and I, the only thing to fill my head after that are my brothers words.

'These monsters are the ones that'll kill you.'