Watching Family Suffer

     Every morning little Joshua gets up at 5am to walk his dog, feed his fish and start to cook breakfast. Ever sense his mother was killed by his rage-aholic father he has done all that he can to keep everything near him and his father peaceful and happy. He was at work from 9am to 10pm and was always hungry when he got home. This is exactly why after going to high school he rides his bike home and instantly starts cooking, after dinner has started he re-cleans the entire house, and finally does his homework. His dad comes home and trashes the house then passes out on the broken couch and Joshua knows that when his dad wakes up everyone is going to pay. Unless family comes to visit this is his daily routine, never carrying and never faltering due to the consequence being a saver beating.
   
         It is July 17th and his fathers family and three of his cousins are coming into town to celebrate his fathers birthday on the 18th, the usually stay for at least a week. This is one of the hardest weeks of poor 17 year old Joshua's life, because he is working around the clock to keep his fathers feud from lighting. His worst fear is watching his family suffer at the hands of his father, and it being all his fault. He wasn't going to let what happened to his mother happen to these people. Every day he lived in fear for his own life, but nothing could ever prepare him for the mentally jarring fear of his father hurting the few people in this world that are actually decent to him. They don't deserve to be unhappy so he was going to do all he could to avoid them getting even slightly upset.

    Its 5am and he is getting up to start getting the house ready for the guests and for his fathers critique. Pulling himself out of bed and into the bathroom and getting in the shower. Every morning he allows himself to relax for 30 mins while getting clean and smelling good for the day. The warm water always reminded him of the warmth of his mothers arms and sometimes imagined a sunny beach in paradise. Getting out and dressing in his usual ripped jeans and baggy T-shirt with sneakers that haven't been replaced sense about a year ago, his finally ready to leave his room. Walking out to the living room he passes by his fathers room door and is silent as he passes by, but he slips and a loud BANG is herd throughout the house. Poor Joshua shuttered at the though of the wooded door opening and his father storming out into the hall. He got back to his feet and ran to start breakfast, cooking eggs and bacon and even re-cleaning the house to insure all is good for when his father wakes up.

     After a couple more hours of making sure everything is in order he goes to wake up his father. This will be the first time in almost three years that his father was up before noon, witch means his probably going to be cranky. But he has to wake him up so the parents and such get to see him dressed and ready for the day instead of hungover and pissed. After his father is sleepily drug into the kitchen, fed and dressed, and finally given a morning beer everything is ready for his family to show up. But the poor young man couldn't have anticipated what was coming next. As family began showing up so did the problems and family drama that came with it, but unlike the usual peaceful conversations happening between family it was nothing but nonsense and over exaggerated banter. Witch as you can imagine began to irritate Joshua's father and made everyone's lives that much harder. The moment his father stood up his heart sank into his chest and he ran to try and sit him back down, but it was to late. His father was slurring and cursing at everyone, throwing things and trying to grab at anyone he could. Joshua then relized their was nothing he could do but try and keep thee children away as the adults reangled up his father, but how could he just sit by and let his father reek havek on everyone? This is when he had to choose between the safety of the other children or tiring once more to keep his entire family happy.

     For the first time in his life he decided to let the actual adults handle it and so he grabbed the kids and took them outside. The other adults called his father down and called the cops. Not even an hour later everyone was gone and the house was quiet. Joshua will never regret finally letting someone else help handle his father, and according to the officer he would never have to deal with this again.