Three Parallel Lines

"I thought I knew what my parents fighting sounded like. That night, I learned there's a difference between an argument and something that can't be taken back."

The screaming woke me.

Not a gradual rise to consciousness. Not the gentle drift from sleep to waking that I was used to — the slow awareness of morning light, of Chloe's soft fur against my cheek, of the sounds of the house coming alive around me.

This was violent.

A wrenching, tearing thing that ripped me from whatever dreams I'd been having and threw me into darkness. One moment I was somewhere else — somewhere safe, somewhere warm — and the next I was here, in the lounge room, on my mattress, my heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to break free.

For a confused, terrifying second, I didn't know where I was.

The darkness pressed in around me, thick and suffocating. The blankets that had been so comforting hours ago now felt like they were strangling me, tangled around my legs, trapping me. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air — Mum's cigarettes, from earlier — mixing with something else. Something sharp and electric. The smell of fear.

Then I heard it again.

Dad's voice.

But not Dad's voice. Not the voice I knew — calm, measured, patient. The voice that read me bedtime stories and explained how things worked and told me everything was going to be okay even when it wasn't.

This was something else. Something I had never heard before. A roar of rage that didn't sound human. That didn't sound like my father at all.

"Where is the money?"

The words came from the dining room, maybe fifteen feet away, but they seemed to fill the entire house. They vibrated through the walls and floor, up through the mattress and into my bones. I could feel them in my teeth, in my skull, in the pit of my stomach.

I lay frozen. Completely, utterly frozen. My eyes were wide open but I couldn't see anything — just darkness, just shadows, just the vague shapes of furniture that had become monsters in the night. My lungs wouldn't work properly. Each breath came shallow and fast, little gasps that didn't seem to bring any air.

"Did you spend it all on gambling again?"

The accusation sliced through the darkness. Each word was a blade, sharp and cutting. I could hear the fury beneath them, the barely-contained violence, the years of frustration finally boiling over.

I had heard my parents fight before. Of course I had. The arguments about money, about Mum's pills, about why dinner wasn't ready or why the house was a mess or why she'd forgotten to pick us up from school again. Those fights were familiar. Routine, almost. Part of the background noise of our lives.

This was different.

This was something breaking.

Mum's response was a hiss. Low and venomous, like a snake preparing to strike.

"No."

The single syllable dripped with contempt. With defiance. With something that sounded almost like pleasure — like she was enjoying this, enjoying pushing him, enjoying watching him lose control.

Even at eight years old, even half-asleep and terrified, I knew it was a lie.

"Then where is it?" Dad's voice again, relentless. "You didn't buy any food with it like you said you were going to. The fridge is empty. The cupboards are empty. Where did it go, Heather? Where did two hundred dollars go?"

"I lost it."

"You lost it."

"That's what I said."

"Two hundred dollars. You lost two hundred dollars."

"These things happen."

The casual dismissal in her voice made my stomach clench. Two hundred dollars. I didn't really understand how much money that was, but I knew it was a lot. I knew Dad worked long hours to earn it. I knew there had been nights when dinner was just toast because there wasn't enough money for anything else.

And she had lost it. Gambled it away on those bingo tickets, probably — the ones they sold at the little kiosk near Coles. I could picture her standing there, tearing open ticket after ticket, pulling back the perforated tabs to reveal the symbols underneath. Red, grey, blue, gold, green. Searching for a winning combination that almost never came. The floor around her feet littered with discarded losers while she fed note after note across the counter for just one more try. Paul and I trailing behind her through the shopping centre, bored and hungry, asking when we could go home, being told "just five more minutes" over and over until five minutes became an hour, became two.

A sound from beside me made my heart stutter.

Paul.

I had almost forgotten he was there — forgotten that we were both still camped out in the lounge room, on our mattress fort, surrounded by the blankets and pillows that had seemed so fun just hours ago. When we'd been laughing. When we'd been playing. When everything had been okay.

The sound he made was barely audible. Just a tiny catch of breath, a whimper that escaped before he could stifle it. The sound was so small, so vulnerable, that it made my chest ache.

I wanted to reach out to him. Wanted to grab his hand, to feel the warmth of his fingers wrapped around mine, to know that I wasn't alone in this darkness. But I couldn't move. My body had turned to stone. My arm lay at my side, heavy and useless, and no matter how hard I tried to lift it, it wouldn't obey.

"Well, you won't be getting any more."

Dad's voice had changed. The rage was draining out of it, replaced by something worse. Something that sounded like surrender. Like a man who had finally stopped fighting a battle he knew he couldn't win.

"I'll keep doing the food shopping myself from now on."

The creak of springs as he settled back onto the couch. A long, heavy sigh that seemed to carry the weight of years.

The confrontation was over.

We could go back to sleep.

Everything would be—

"Come and fight me."

Mum's voice. But wrong. All wrong.

There was something in it that I had never heard before. Something manic. Something unhinged. An edge of wild, reckless energy that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my skin prickle with goosebumps.

"Come on." Her voice was rising now, taking on a sing-song quality that was somehow more terrifying than the screaming. "Get up and fight me like a man. Or are you too much of a coward?"

"I don't want to fight you."

Dad sounded exhausted. Defeated. The voice of a man who had fought this battle a thousand times before and knew exactly how it would end.

"Just go to bed, Heather. Please. We can talk about this in the morning when we've both calmed down."

"I don't care what you want."

Her words sliced through the darkness like razors.

"I'm not finished with you yet."

"Heather—"

"Don't you 'Heather' me." She was spitting the words now, each one loaded with venom. "Don't you dare. You think you can just sit there and judge me? Look down on me from your high horse? You think you're so much better than me, don't you? Perfect bloody Noah who never does anything wrong."

"I never said—"

"GET UP!"

The sound of rapid footsteps. A guttural cry that was more animal than human — a sound that seemed to come from somewhere primal, somewhere ancient, the sound of a creature that had stopped being a person and become something else entirely.

The sound of reason giving way to pure, unadulterated rage.

A thud.

A crash.

Something heavy hitting the floor.

And then Mum was there. Right there. On the floor at Paul's feet, so close I could have reached out and touched her.

I saw it happen in fragments, in the dim light that leaked through the curtains from the streetlamp outside. She had launched herself at Dad — I'd seen the blur of movement, the pale flash of her dressing gown — and he had... pushed her? Dodged? I couldn't tell. But she had gone down hard, hitting the carpet with a sound that made my stomach lurch.

Paul recoiled.

He drew his legs up to his chest so fast he nearly kicked me, pressing himself back against the edge of the couch, trying to make himself as small as possible. His face, caught in a stray beam of light, was a mask of pure terror. Eyes wide and white-rimmed. Mouth open in a silent scream. Every muscle frozen.

He looked the way I felt.

Mum's moan of pain transformed almost instantly into a howl of rage.

"I hate you!"

She was scrambling up, her dressing gown twisted around her body, her hair a wild tangle that fell across her face like a curtain. In the dim light, she didn't look like Mum anymore. She looked like something from a nightmare. Something that had crawled up from a dark place where the rules of the normal world didn't apply.

She spat at Dad.

Actually spat. I heard the wet sound of it, saw the movement of her head, and my stomach churned with a revulsion so strong I thought I might be sick.

"I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!"

Each repetition was louder than the last, building to a scream that seemed to fill the entire house, that seemed to press against the walls and windows like it might shatter them.

Paul and I locked eyes across the dimly lit room.

For just a moment, our gazes held. Mirror images of terror. Two brothers, frozen in place, unable to move or speak or do anything except witness the destruction of our family.

In that moment of shared horror, I felt something pass between us. A connection that went beyond words. Beyond anything I could have explained even if I'd had the words to try.

We were soldiers in the same war. Survivors of the same shipwreck. Bound together by something that no one else would ever understand.

Mum launched herself at Dad again.

This time I saw it clearly.

She flew at him with her hands raised, her fingers curved into claws. Her nails — long, painted red, the same nails that had stroked my hair and cupped my face and wiped away my tears — raked across his cheek.

I heard the sound.

The wet, tearing sound of flesh being opened.

The sound of my mother's fingernails ripping through my father's skin.

Dad cried out — a sharp, shocked sound of pain — his hands coming up too late to block her. She'd caught him off guard. He hadn't expected it. Even after everything, he hadn't really believed she would hurt him.

"Jesus Christ!"

Blood.

There was blood on his face.

I could see it glistening in the dim light, dark and wet, running down his cheek in three parallel lines. It dripped from his jaw onto his shirt, spreading in dark blossoms across the pale cotton.

My father was bleeding.

My mother had made him bleed.

The world tilted. The room seemed to spin around me. I pressed my face into my pillow, trying to block it out, trying to make it stop, trying to wake up from this nightmare that couldn't possibly be real.

The fabric was damp against my lips. Salty and bitter.

When had I started crying?

"Get out."

Dad's voice was raw now. Ragged with pain and something else. Something I had never heard from him before.

Real anger.

Not the weary frustration of a man dealing with a difficult wife. Not the resigned disappointment of a husband who had learned to lower his expectations. This was genuine, burning fury. The kind of anger that comes from being pushed too far, hurt too deeply, betrayed too completely.

"Get out of this house."

"You can't throw me out!" Mum was screaming now, her voice cracking with rage. "This is my house too! I have just as much right to be here as you do!"

"GET OUT!"

"I'm going to kill you!"

The words hung in the air.

Everything stopped.

The whole world seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

Mum's voice had gone cold. Quiet. Deadly serious. Not the screaming rage of moments before — this was something worse. Something calculated. Something that sounded like a promise.

"I'm going to kill you," she repeated, and the calmness in her voice was more terrifying than any scream. "I swear to God, Noah. I'm going to kill you."

"Mum—"

The word escaped me before I could stop it. Small and broken and terrified. A child's plea for his mother to stop, to come back, to be the person she was supposed to be.

She didn't hear me.

Or if she did, she didn't care.

What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion.

Dad grabbed her.

His hands closed around her upper arms, fingers digging into the flesh, trying to hold her still. But she kept fighting, kept thrashing, kept clawing at him with those red-painted nails. He grunted in pain as she opened new scratches on his forearms, blood welling up in thin lines.

And then he grabbed her hair.

Her hair.

His fist closed in the tangled mess of it and he pulled. Hard. Dragging her backwards.

She screamed — not in rage this time, but in pain. A high, keening sound that made my blood run cold. Her hands flew to her head, trying to break his grip, but he didn't let go. His face was twisted with something I didn't recognise. Determination. Desperation. The look of a man who had finally decided that enough was enough.

He dragged her across the lounge room floor.

Her heels scrabbled against the carpet, trying to find purchase, trying to resist. Her dressing gown rode up, exposing pale, flailing legs. She was still screaming, still fighting, her nails leaving bloody trails down his forearms as she clawed at anything she could reach.

"Let me go!"

"I'm done." Dad's voice was tight, strained. "I'm done with this. I'm done with you."

"Let GO of me!"

"You're out. You're gone. I can't do this anymore."

The sight of my parents locked in this violent embrace was surreal. Impossible. Like a scene from a horror movie I wasn't supposed to be watching. Like something that happened to other families, in other houses, in other lives that had nothing to do with mine.

But it was happening. Right here. Right now. Right in front of me.

And I couldn't do anything to stop it.

The front door opened.

Cool night air rushed in, carrying the smell of grass and eucalyptus. A different world out there. A normal world, where people were asleep in their beds and children didn't have to watch their families tear themselves apart.

Dad shoved Mum through the doorway.

She stumbled, nearly fell, caught herself on the doorframe with one hand. Her face was contorted with rage, her eyes wild and glittering with tears or madness or both. Her hair was a tangled mess, her dressing gown hanging open, her naked chest heaving with ragged breaths.

She looked like a stranger.

She looked like a monster wearing my mother's skin.

"I hate you!" she screamed into the night, loud enough for the neighbours to hear, loud enough for the whole street to hear. "I'll get you for this! I'll make sure you pay for everything you've done to me!"

"Go." Dad's voice was flat. Dead.

"I'll make sure you wish you had never been born!"

"I said GO."

"I'll make sure you never see your children again! I'll take them away from you! I'll tell everyone what you really are!"

The door slammed shut.

The sound was like a gunshot. Like the end of the world. Like the period at the end of a sentence that could never be unwritten.

Silence.

The silence that followed was deafening.

For a long moment, nobody moved. Nobody breathed. The house seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next, waiting to see if it was really over or if this was just the eye of the storm.

I could hear ragged breathing — mine, Paul's, Dad's. All of us gasping for air like we'd been underwater too long. The distant bark of a neighbour's dog, startled awake by the screaming. The ticking of the clock on the wall, steady and relentless, counting off the seconds of this new reality.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Then Dad's voice, shaky and uncertain: "Are you boys alright?"

I couldn't answer.

The words were stuck somewhere in my chest, trapped behind the sobs I was fighting to hold back. My whole body was trembling. I couldn't make it stop. Couldn't control anything — not my breathing, not my tears, not the violent shaking that had taken hold of me.

"Boys? Paul? Luke?"

Paul made a sound. Not words — just a small, broken noise that might have been a whimper or a sob or something in between. The sound a wounded animal makes when it's given up trying to escape.

Dad moved towards us.

He stepped into the dim light from the window, and I saw his face properly for the first time.

The scratches Mum had left were deep. Three parallel lines running from his cheekbone to his jaw, already swelling, still oozing blood. It had run down his neck and soaked into the collar of his shirt, spreading in dark stains across the fabric. His forearms were covered in scratches too — a roadmap of her fury, written in blood.

He looked like he'd been attacked by an animal.

He looked like he'd been attacked by Mum.

"It's okay," he said, but his voice cracked on the words. Broke apart like something fragile being dropped. "It's okay, boys. It's going to be okay."

It wasn't okay.

We all knew it wasn't okay.

Nothing was ever going to be okay again.

But he said it anyway, because that was what fathers were supposed to say. Because he didn't know what else to do. Because the truth was too terrible to speak aloud.

He picked up the phone.

I watched from beneath my quilt as he dialled, his hands shaking so badly he had to try twice. The numbers beeped in the silence, impossibly loud. He held the receiver to his ear, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on some point in the distance that only he could see.

"Police, please."

The word hit me hard.

Police.

Dad was calling the police on Mum.

"Yes. I need... my wife..." His voice faltered. He took a breath, steadied himself. "My wife attacked me. I had to remove her from the house. She's outside now. I don't know what she's going to do."

A pause. I couldn't hear what the person on the other end was saying, but I could see Dad nodding, see his lips moving as he answered their questions. Short, clipped responses. Yes. No. Yes.

"The address is..."

He gave our address. Our home. The place that was supposed to be safe. The place where nothing bad was supposed to happen.

When he hung up, he dialled again. Different number this time. His parents' number. I knew it by heart — had memorised it years ago, in case of emergencies.

This was an emergency.

"Dad? It's me. I need you to come over. Now."

A pause.

"Yes, now. I know what time it is. It's Heather. She's..."

His voice broke again. He pressed his free hand against his eyes, and I saw his shoulders shake. Just once. Just for a moment.

"It's bad. It's really bad."