CALUM

It started earlier today.

Normally it starts right at six thirty, when my father returns from work and releases his suppressed emotions out on my mother. He always throws open the door with a bang, alerting the entire house hold that he has arrived. His shiny dress shoes click against the hard wood flooring as he steps inside, shutting the door loudly as he drops his briefcase overflowing with business papers onto the ground. He then proceeds to walk to the kitchen, ripping off his suit jacket and tossing it carelessly across the foyer. I always listen to this step by step process from down the hall, where the thin walls and flimsy doors can't block out the sounds that erupt from the kitchen, where my mother always is.

It's stupid that my mother is always in the kitchen anyways, considering she doesn't bother to cook. Sometimes I think she just stays in there because she figures that is what normal mothers do. Mothers who don't scream at their husbands and accept the hits thrown to her without flinching. Mothers who come in and check in on their kids, asking them about school and if they have gotten their homework done. Mothers who celebrate holidays and drive their kids to school so that they won't be forced to walk through the freezing rain. At least, that's what mothers do in the books.

Of course, my father isn't any better, considering he enjoys seeing the blood coat my mother's skin and loves the acidic taste of alcohol as it slips down his throat. Normal fathers toss baseballs to their sons and buy little pink bows for their daughters, telling her she looks pretty and that he won't ever let a boy hurt her. Normal fathers take their sons to basketball games and buys them jerseys with their favorite player's name on the back. Normal fathers care.

Today, my mother started screaming out profanities and insults early, before my father was even home. I was confused, pausing the strumming on my bass to listen to her voice. I recognized the regular insults that she usually throws to my dad, but he hasn't come home yet. My door opens a bit, and I see my older sister step quietly inside.

"What's going on?" I whisper, not wanting to risk my mum hearing. Mali-Koa creeps forward and sits down on my bed. I place my bass on the ground, making sure I don't accidentally pluck any strings in the process.

"She's on the phone," Mali answers, her voice soft. She slumps over, playing with her long, tan fingers. I watch her dark eyelashes flutter against her high cheekbones. She's too pretty for this family. She's much too pretty to have to look at the bruises all across my pretty mother's face.

"With who?" I ask, even though my mind has already figured out the answer.

"Dad." My sister mumbles. She shakes her head, blinking at the dusty flooring of my room. "Pathetic. She can't even last until he gets home to start yelling."

I listen to my mother's throaty voice, hoarse from screaming out her heart's content. I check the time. My father will be home soon, and then there will be two screaming voices in the houses. I let out a sigh, shutting my eyes and pretending that I had the gift of becoming deaf to the sound of my mother's voice, so that I could escape this cruel reality that marriage doesn't always work out like it does in the books lining my bookshelves.

"Have you gotten any letters from Ashton lately?" Mali-Koa asks, eyeing my large stack of folded scraps of paper. I look over at them, at all the pieces of paper where I have jotted down my thoughts, all to be crammed into an envelope to send to the hazel eyed boy at war. I sadly reach over, picking up a few fragments and picking through the flaps of paper, reading the scattered words scrawled down in a hurry. I replace them with the others and grab my stack of letters from Ashton, holding them carefully in my hands as though they are made of glass.

I admire his pretty handwriting, curving into perfect arches and creating a flawless art of letters filled with anguish. I shake my head, not meeting her eyes.

"No. But he hasn't-" I cut off, my voice cracking. I can't say the word. "We would get an official letter if he..." I blink repeatedly, staring down at the worn letters that I have read too many times to be mentally healthy. I rub my fingers against the torn edges of the envelope, reading my name that Ashton wrote on the front of the letter. Mali-Koa watches me with sad eyes, watching me stare at the letters my brave soldier boy sent me. I gently place them back on my bedside table, right beside my framed picture of him. He was standing in the back woods behind my house, sunlight streaming through the trees and his eyes scrunched shut as he laughs, dimples sunk into his cheeks. I admire his curly hair falling into his eyes that is probably cut short now.

"I'm sure one will come soon." Mali says, and I force myself to look up at her. I nod, halfheartedly.

"Yeah." My voice cracks though, and a few tears leave my eyes. My sister sighs, scooting over closer to me and wrapping her skinny arms around my small shoulders. She presses a kiss to the top of my head, trying to cheer up her miserable little brother whose heart aches for his love.

"He was just- we were perfect, Mali." I cry, wiping the tears that fall from my eyes. "He kept me safe from everything and everyone and he made me so happy. And now he's gone. I haven't seen him in over a year, Mali. Over a year."

My sister rubs my arm soothingly, catching the teardrops that dribble down my chin. "I miss him. I love him so much, Mali. So much." I continue to cry in the arms of my sister, who has no idea how to comfort me. Nothing you say comes out right when your love is put on the line of death.

"He loves you too." Mali says, and I know he does, I know that, but it's hard to let the words sink into your bloodstream when you are only reading them on a flimsy sheet of paper. We fall into silence, and we let it engulf us. Silence is a beautiful thing. I don't understand people who don't cherish it. I figure those people live in happy households, full of bright smiles and big hugs, where sound is something that warms the heart, not crushes it.

I love silence. I love the entire aspect of it. When silence is so strong, it overpowers your thoughts as well. I love that about the quietness, how it silences your mind, so I am free of my torturous thoughts as well. My thoughts are dangerous. My thoughts are of Ashton, and that brings on thoughts of guns and blood. War isn't a beautiful thing. War is war, and war is death. Death isn't pretty. Perhaps death would be pretty for me, lying under layers of dirt with a blank tombstone with a few dead flowers. Death seems nice to me, just because I would be rid of this world thick with blades and cuts. But overall, death is not a beautiful thing. It is powerful, pushing through earth and taking down people with it.

I don't think about death a lot. I think about death associated with Ashton, because what else am I supposed to think about? We have no more memories to dream about, so I am left with the fantasy of blood. I don't wish to be dead, and I don't find joy in being buried six feet under the ground. However, I am not scared of it. If I die, I die, and that is that. I will stand like a ghost here on top of the dirt, and I will fall into the pit without a care when the time comes.

It takes a moment, but Mali-Koa and I both jerk with surprise when we realize how quiet the house is. My mother has stopped shrieking, and instead muteness has replaced it. The air is thick, and we breathe in the suffocating air. Mali looks at me in confusion, and then we hear the door open, slamming against the wall and shaking the mirror hanging on my wall. It must be six thirty.

We wait, we hear his papers drop onto the floor, we listen to him stomp into the kitchen, and then it begins. The fighting. The screaming. The arguments about nothing worth arguing about. Mali lets out an inaudible sigh, getting to her feet. I do the same, careful to avoid stepping on my guitar. I grab my wallet from my closet and turn to my older sister.

"I'll get dinner tonight." I say softly. We take turns every night. I don't know when my parents eat, but they haven't dropped dead yet, so I suppose they get their nutrition somehow. Mali nods at me, slowly slipping out my door to disappear into her own room. I move to my window, unlatching it and sliding it open. I slip through the gap, my feet dropping onto the dirt. I shove my wallet into my pocket as I close the window behind me, leaving it cracked so I can get back in. I move out from behind the bushes, and walk on the sidewalk to my bike.

I climb on and begin riding away from the house, letting the breeze blow back my short hair as I ride towards the village near our house. I arrive quickly, considering I live very close by, and park my bike on one of the neighborhood roads before crossing the street and into the busy crowds as families and friends walk around the shopping center. I move through the crowd until I find the pizza place, and duck inside, letting the aroma of italian fill my nose. I walk straight up to a girl behind the counter and order a pepperoni pizza and a cheese. She hands the two boxes to me and I pay for them quickly, mumbling a thank you before leaving the shop.

I return to my bike, struggling to hold the large pizza boxes and ride the bike at the same time. The bike swerves across the empty roads multiple times as I near my house, my palm burning form the heat of the pizza inside the boxes.

I finally reach my house, ditching the bike at the end of my driveway and carrying the boxes up to my window. I squeeze behind the bushes and push open the window, shoving the boxes inside before crawling in myself. I plop down on the ground, moaning at the impact. I open my eyes and stare at the blurred ceiling, waiting for my sight to focus before getting to my feet, picking up the boxes and placing them on my bed.

Mali slips inside my room and shuts the window for me before joining me on my bed, picking up a slice of pizza and bringing it to her pretty pink lips. We eat in silence, listening to the nonstop screaming of our parents and avoiding our thoughts as much as possible.

Mali's eyes trail across my room, landing on a framed picture of Ashton and I sitting on my desk. It's a Polaroid picture that Ashton insisted we take of the two of us. We were at the old bookstore that sold books that are too aged to understand the language the words were written it, but we fell in love with the atmosphere anyway. He was singing soft songs under his breath as he ran his hand over the binds of books, tilting his curly head to the side to read the titles. I just sat and watched him, watching his pretty lips purse in concentration as he found a particularly interesting book, pulling it out and opening the dusty pages. Ashton always had a love for reading. I wonder if he gets to read while he's at base camp. Probably not. He's told me it is quite boring, but at least it is peaceful.

I remember him turning to me, the book in his hands, and giving me a smile. His eyes gazed down at me from where I was sitting on the love seat, my hands clasped together and my dark hair falling into my eyes. He walked slowly over to me, carrying the open book in his hands as he squeezed down next to me on the small couch, pointing to a passage in the book. He read me a quote, but I didn't listen, watching his eyes trail along the words and his lips move. He had looked up and noticed where I was looking, smirking slightly.

His hazel eyes looked down to my lips, cutting between them and my brown eyes, before he dropped the book and cradled my face into his large hands, pulling me to him and pressing his lips against mine. We moved our lips together in synchronization before I shifted, crawling into his lap for a better position. I have always been small, especially compared to Ashton, so Ashton had no trouble carrying my weight on top of him. His hands dropped from my cheek down to my neck, and then they moved down to my sides until they landed on my hips.

I remember teasingly biting his bottom lip, and the boy dropped his hands down under my thighs, standing up and picking me up with him. I wrapped my legs around his torso and the boy pushed me up against one of the ancient bookshelves, the wood creaking slightly.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and detached my lips from his. Ashton looked at me questioningly, his eyes lovingly staring into mine, as I gently press my face into the crook of neck, enjoying the simplicity of just being in my love's presence. A laugh rumbled from Ashton's chest from where I was pressed against him at my actions. He continued carrying me, and I kept myself wrapped up in his arms, my head cradled on his shoulder.

"You are the cutest thing ever, Calum Hood." Ashton said, and I could feel him smile. He turned his head and pressed a kiss to mine, right above my ear. He then carefully placed me on the ground and pulled the Polaroid camera from his pocket, insisting we take a picture. And so we did, all tousled hair and swollen lips, but the memory lasted.

"Calum." I hear Mali's voice float back to me, and I blink out of my daydream, the view of my room coming back to my senses. My sister sits beside me, staring at me sadly. She sighs, wiping her eyes as we both stare at the picture. She pats my back, getting to her feet and pulling me into an embrace.

"He'll come back, Cal." She whispers. I open my mouth to say something to her, but no words come out, lost somewhere in the fiery pits of my mind. My sister lets go of me, leaving my room without another word. I clench my jaw, rubbing circles on my hands. I stare at that stupid photo across the room, wanting nothing but to relive it.

It wasn't Ashton's choice to go to war. It wasn't at all. No, he wasn't drafted, but it was not his choice. It was his father's, and he was just the victim.

Ashton was never someone who wanted to feel brave. He was never someone who needed to claim his manhood and prove everyone he was strong by joining the army. He was none of that. He was strong before he joined and he is strong now. Ashton was okay with the idea of going to war, but the thought of leaving me harassed him. It harasses me. I have no one without him. I had no one before him, and now I have no one after. He is the only person who knows about my screaming parents, my love for music, my dark secrets that seem to spill out with my tears. He is the only one who cares.

We needed each other. He was lonely, stuck between his bad childhood and his unspoken need to fit the image his parents wanted him to be. He hid the faded scars on his wrists with bracelets and long sleeved band t-shirts. I have no physical scars to hide, but I never take off my sweaters. He was a dusk figure pushing through school and trying to get by without being noticed. I was a hurt figure crumpled in the back of the classroom, never raising my voice over a whisper in fear that my voice would replicate my parents, and they are the one thing that I never want to ever become.

The hazel eyed boy was the only one who cared to find out why I never went home after school, sitting in the corner of the playground that the children play on, staring at my black shoelaces as though they could suck me out my calamitous life. He was the only one who cared to sit beside me, keeping his distance but letting me know he was there. He was the only one who bothered to notice me sliding out of my window at nights, and bothered to strain his ears to hear the shouting from my house. He was the only one who wondered. He was the only one who asked. He was the only one who cared.

It took me a long time to accept his comfort. It's surprisingly a hard thing to do when you have pushed people away for years, believing that everything has a bad outcome. It took me a while to warm up to the boy. It took me a while to allow myself to break down in front of him, tears sliding out of my eyes as I pushed myself up against the wall, letting my walls crash into a pile of ashes.

I remember that day. It was the best and worst day of my life. I had let down my guard, let my insecurities show, and I loathed myself for it. What I didn't expect was for him to wrap me into his embrace.

I sit on my bed, staring into open space and listening to my parents scream about everything and nothing. If only I were in his embrace now.

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A/N this will probably be a fairly sad book. idk. war isn't something glorious, so there is no use making it seem so.

it would mean a lot if you voted and commented x feel free to ever message me if you ever need to talk about stuff. love you guys, bye