Chapter 8

Suddenly, his footsteps stopped when he saw Eli who had just come out of the bathroom and was only wearing a towel covering her body. The young man glanced around, smiling slyly as he followed the steps of his younger sister who walked towards the room with her head bowed.

Eli, who was about to close the door to her room, was immediately stopped by her older brother. The young man held Eli's room door so it wouldn't close. Eli looked up with a frightened face, she felt bad but she couldn't scream, her voice was always stuck in her throat.

"W-what do you want?" Eli asked quietly, she tried to close the door to her room.

“Eli, let me in!” 

"No...! No, you can't!" Eli said tremblingly. She didn't want the previous incident to happen again. This was a really unpleasant incident for her.

"You want to fight, huh? Do you want to hit me? Quickly open the door!" Tod started to get angry, he pushed harder and harder on Eli's bedroom door until it opened.

Eli was frightened, her feet slowly retreated backwards. Tod looked at Eli's body from head to toe. Her head was full of bad thoughts, this was the umpteenth time he had done something inappropriate to his sister.

An hour later, their mother, who had fallen asleep after smoking several cigarettes, immediately woke up when she heard something was wrong. The woman checked her children's rooms one by one, her guess was correct. In Eli's room, Tod was lying on Eli's thin mattress while Eli shuffled in a dark corner of the room, sobbing uncontrollably.

"You stupid! Tod, come on, get up...!" The woman shouted while kicking the body of her son, who was only wearing jeans and was shirtless.

"I'm sleepy," he said in denial and fell deeper into sleep.

"Wake up, stupid! What are you doing? Wake up...!" The woman became even more annoyed and immediately threw Tod's head with her shoe.

"What?"

“What are you doing here? What are you doing?" She shouted, hitting her son on the head.

"I sleep!"

"Sleep you say? How many times? How many times did you do that to her?" She asked, increasingly furious.

"I forgot, I really have to count." She said without feeling guilty.

“You stupid brat! If your father finds out you will definitely be killed. Quick, get out of here, your father will be home soon!" She shouted with a red face, after Tod came out the woman immediately looked at Eli with a cynical look. As if there was no pity at all for her daughter.

"Don't cry anymore! Hurry up and help me cook. Your dad will be home in a minute!" She walked away and Eli died alone in her room which was kept dark.

Eli wiped away her tears, she could never argue against her father, her mother and her brothers. She doesn't know what a real family is? What she knows is that a family is a group of people who curse and hurt each other.

***

Tonight, father came home like every other night, always drunk and messy. Every time he staggered towards his house he always made a fuss by shouting and kicking the rubbish bin perched on the side of the road.

This middle-aged man is one of the people who is feared in his neighborhood, because of his rude style and reputation for being reckless with other people. His behavior has gotten worse since he fell into poverty because the workshop he managed went bankrupt, his bad behavior has gotten worse.

At 10 pm, he arrived at the front door of his house holding a beer bottle that was almost finished. Staggering, he screamed for the door to be opened. Neighbors already know about this middle-aged man's bad habits.

"Barbara open the door, I'm home...!" He shouted in a loud and hoarse voice, really unpleasant to hear.

Inside the house, the family was relaxing while watching television, except for Eli who stayed in her dark and narrow room. She enjoyed her solitude while looking at the stars behind the bedroom window.

"Eli...! Eli...hurry, open the door, Your dad is home!" Her mother shouted, telling Eli to open the door, even though they were closer to the door, but they did it on purpose because they already knew the man's bad habits when he came home drunk.

Eli didn't answer, he hurriedly opened the door for her father who couldn't wait to enter. When the door was opened, the same incident happened again. When his feet had just stepped in, his hand immediately threw a punch at the girl's face and hit her nose until it bled.

“Damn it, why did it take you so long to open the door? You weren't raised to be lazy...!" He snapped harshly, Eli sat in the corner, covering her sore and bleeding nose. Eli held back the tears that felt like they were going to fall, Eli knew that if she made a sound and cried she would get even worse treatment from her father.

The rude man walked away leaving his daughter who was shuffling in the corner of the door while in pain and no one cared about her condition. After her father left, she immediately walked quickly to her bedroom and closed the door tightly. She cried silently, it felt very painful, not because of the wounds she received but because of sadness over the bad behavior she had received for most of her life.

***