Shattered Innocence, Why Me?

The house was too quiet until it wasn’t.

Billy sat curled in the corner of his room, knees pulled up to his chest, his threadbare teddy bear crushed against his ribs as if the old toy could shield him. The single bulb overhead flickered, coughing out a pale-yellow light that left more shadows than it chased away. Each shadow ticked and trembled on the wall like something alive, like the panic twisting inside his stomach.

Below him, the floorboards trembled under the weight of angry footsteps, each one thudding closer. The voice came next — his stepfather’s, sharp and hoarse, words jagged and cruel, crashing into the walls with the power of a fist.

Billy wasn’t just cold; the cold lived inside him. It wasn’t the kind that passed when you found a blanket. It was the kind that dug into the bones and stayed there — the cold of waiting for something bad to happen, again.

He buried his face in Barnaby’s matted fur, smelling the faint scent of soap and the older, comforting memory of his mother. That smell was fading now. Everything safe was fading.

Eight years old, and the world already felt too dangerous to survive. The man who was supposed to protect him had become the monster in every corner. Scars marked his thin body — some on skin, most buried deeper. Each one was a whisper of the nights that never seemed to end.

It hadn’t started this way, not at first. The anger had trickled in slowly, like a leak no one noticed until the floor rotted. A slammed door. A curse muttered under breath. A plate hurled in frustration. Billy had whispered to himself that it was temporary — Dad just had bad days. But bad days grew into bad weeks, then bad years.

Now, fear was the wallpaper of his home.

He’d learned to read danger from the smallest things: the rhythm of breathing downstairs, the thud of a mug set down too roughly, the tone of his mother’s voice when she tried too hard to sound calm.

The shouting started again. His body tensed before his mind caught up.