Grave Situation by Alex MacLean

out a
hand to her husband now. “Come. ”
    The man looked at her with a kind
of wonder. He took her hand and allowed himself to be led from the
room. The boy’s mother stopped in the doorway and turned back to
her frightened son.
    “Go back to bed,” She flashed a
quick smile of reassurance. “Everything will be all
right.”
    Her hand moved to the wall and
flicked off the light. When she closed the door, the boy expelled a
long sigh. The silence that followed was a comfort.
    He crawled back under the covers.
The ache in his back still throbbed, his heart still thumped
wildly. After a time, both seemed to ease. He gazed up at the
ceiling with his hands behind his head.
    Lower in the sky now, the moon lit
up the room in starker detail.
    The boy yawned and rolled to his
side. He was unable to sleep, despite being exhausted. Tomorrow was
not a school day and for that he was thankful. Shutting his eyes,
he tried to drive away the thoughts of his father’s drunken fit and
realized that he couldn’t. At any moment, he imagined the man
bursting into the room again.
    Minutes passed. Nothing happened.
Maybe he was safe now.
    Then another sound pulled him back
from the twilight between sleep and consciousness. Not a bang this
time, but a sound like a cry. Faint. Somewhat distant.
    The boy sat up, listening. He wiped
the scratchiness from his eyes with a knuckle.
    It came again.
    The cry was from his mother. He
could hear his father’s voice now, saying something he couldn’t
make out. Then came a loud slap and deep wail from the
mother.
    At once, the boy pictured his
father beating her, pictured her in the morning, the cuts and
bruises, the swollen lip.
    The boy felt sick to his
stomach.
    He didn’t know what he could do,
only that he had to stop this. What his father would do to him
didn’t matter; he must save his mother.
    He leapt off the bed, mindful of
the scattered pieces of light bulb still on the floor. His hand
closed over the doorknob, yet he couldn’t bring himself to turn
it.
    His arm trembled; his mouth was
dry.
    From his parent’s room came another
slap from his father, another cry from his mother.
    By a sheer act of will, the boy
opened the door slowly to minimize the grate of hinges.
    The hallway was dark. But the boy
knew the house by touch. On tiptoes, he approached his parent’s
bedroom, unsure of what he would find, unsure of what would happen.
His heartbeat was fast and heavy.
    The door was ajar. Peeking inside,
the boy saw them. There, silhouetted against the window, were their
profiles. His mother was bent over the footboard, hands reaching
towards the head of the bed. Her nightgown was raised above her
waist. Wearing only a T-shirt now, his father was behind his wife,
hips pumping wildly. With each thrust, the boy’s mother emitted a
soft moan.
    The boy stood there, unable to turn
away. He watched his father raise his open hand and bring it down
on his wife’s backside. The smack of palm against skin made the boy
flinch. He backed away from the door, unable to understand what was
going on. He crept back down the hallway, footsteps soft so his
parents wouldn’t hear. He climbed into his bed and pulled the
covers to his chin before staring up at the ceiling in the
dark.
    He wouldn’t sleep for the rest of
the night.
    At the breakfast table the next
morning, it was like nothing had even happened. To the boy, the
events of the night before seemed like a jumble of fragments, half
real, half imagined.
    His mother set down plates of eggs,
bacon and toast. His father sipped coffee, not looking at or
speaking to anyone. He seemed engrossed in the newspaper he had
folded on one corner of the table.
    Sitting at her place, the boy’s
mother asked, “Herbie, will you say grace for us?”
    “Yes, Mama.” He
folded his hands by his plate and bowed his head. “Bless us, O, Lord and these Thy gifts, which we
are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord.
Amen.”
    As he finished,
he heard