The Cost of Living

The last short story in the Deadlines for Writers Short Story group is due today. The prompt is "price" with a wordcount of exactly 300 words. Here is my entry. 

The Cost of Living

If there was anything Marti had learned in her twelve years of the chaos that was her homelife, it was that everything has a price. If she wanted supper, the cost was obeying Daddy’s drunken directives quickly and without giving him “any mouth.” If she wanted to go to sleep at night, she had to give away a little of her reasoning power and believe that the yelling she could hear, AGAIN, through the wall of her bedroom, was just the television.  Protecting her little brother had cost Marti a few false confessions and the enduring of punishments he had earned. She sometimes had to spend a little of her integrity and pretend to be at the library working on a project when she needed time with her friends.

Now, holding her hastily-packed bag in one hand and Billy’s hand in the other, Marti stood knee deep in the creek beyond the woods. The stinging skin on her behind and the ache in her jaw was beginning to numb now that they had almost outrun the echo of the back door banging like a gunshot behind them.

Marti and her little brother turned to look at the orange glow they’d left behind. Above the trees, smoke billowed up almost blocking the big glowing zero moon in the night sky.

“Are we going to Grandma’s?” Billy looked at Marti, wide-eyed with fear, but trusting.

“Mama will pick us up there when she gets off work,” Marti affirmed.

Having paid the price for their freedom, the children stood in silence. Devoid of any external comfort or human sound, the silence was deafening. Still Marti could hear the echo of her father’s last words on Earth, as belt in hand, he growled, “Stop crying like a baby, Girl! Just buck up and take it!”