Half Full

"Damnit!"
The man threw his pen against the wall and threw his hands against his
head, slamming then into his throbbing temples. Counting to ten, he
took a deep breath. He did this again and again attempting to calm his
raging frustration. In a fit of anger he swept his hands across his
desk, causing everything to clutter to the floor. The glass
paper-weight from his wife shattered into huge, jagged chunks and
littered across the tiles, leaving a large spiderweb-like crack where
it had crashed.
"Damn this!"
He threw back his chair and stood abruptly. Marching across the room,
he snatched up his coat and shouldered his way through the slightly
open door. It slammed aginst the wall, just barely missing the potplant
that stood in the corner.
"Dana, foward all calls to my voice mailbox. I'm leaving now. Clear my
schedule for the rest of today!" he bellowed at the petite brunette
woman sitting at the front desk of the small law-firm office.
"Yes, sir" she timmered, seeming to cringe under his anger, "Have a
good evening, sir"
"Whatever..." he mumbled hotly under his breath.

"That'll be thirty-six pounds seventy, please"
The woman stood in the queue, watching the woman in line in front of
her. Most of them were well dressed, as she was.
Most of them had either a baby under their arms or a small child
attached to their hands. She guessed that most of them had children
that were at school at that point in time. She was the same. Her little
girl was sitting in a classroom that was kept up by very high monthly
school fee.
Most of them had overflowing shopping trolleys in front of them, filled
up with expensive grocery items, just as hers was.
She assumed that most of them had nipped out during their luch break
and collected their kiddies from the daycare to do some monthly grocery
shopping, the same as herself.
But she also guessed that most of them were happy. Completely ignorant
to stress other than that of the everyday life of a working mother. She
smiled at the irony of it. How similar they all seemed, yet how
different in truth they were.
"Hi, can I help you, ma'am?"
"Hello," she smiled at the pretty girl behind the till, and started
unloading the items in her trolley onto the counter.

"I'd like you to pay attention, please. This is your homework for the
weekend..."
The girl slouched over her desk, her mind sub-consciously soaking up
all that was said by the teacher in front of the class. She was
preoccupied with a doodle on her desk.
She was jolted out of her daydream by a hand landing heavily on the
desk.
"So, little madam. I see you'd rather scribble on my desks than listen
to the old bat that is being paid by your lovely mummy and daddy to
teach you something of value, hmm? Well, let's just see what the little
artist is drawing... ah, a little family is it? Well, looky here, it's
mummy and daddy and their precious little girl! How charming! What do
you think, class?"
She felt her face burn red as smans ricochetted around the
classroom.
"A bit of a strange thing to be drawing on a desk isn't it?" the
teacher hissed
"Yes, sir" she replied softly, "I guess, for me, it is..."

"Charlie, I want a double scotch whiskey, on the rocks"
The man threw his coat over the sticky bar counter and slumped onto a
barstool.
"Hectic day, eh?" said Charlie sympathetically, pouring the drink into
a thick glass.
The man grumbled a reply, snatched up his drink and took a long gulp,
relishing the warm, tingling sensation that it caused in the back of
his throat. His lips parted from the rim of the glass for just a second
before he downed the rest of the firey liquid.
He ordered another couple of drinks before he stepped out, and before
he downed the last drink, he lifted his glass and slurred a
toast:
"Here's to the world, up yours asshole!"

"Honey, I'm ho-ome!"
The woman's head jolted as the slurred greeting met her ears. She
struggled up from her slouched position in the armchair by the window
and pulled her knees up against her chest. Her body felt heavy from
sleep and her neck ached from having nodded off in such an odd
position.
She pulled the blanket tighter around herself with thick fingers. Her
daughter must have draped in over her when she arrived home from
school.
Guilt immediatly washed over her as she realised that she had not been
by the school to pick up her daughter after work.
She had been so exhausted when she had arrived home that she had not
even unpacked the groceries, which were still sitting in paper bags on
the kitchen counter. She had collapsed into the armchair with a mug of
coffee. She looked to the sidetable next to her and saw her half-full
mug of coffee sitting there, ice cold.
"What the hell are you doing sitting there! I expect to come home from
a hard day's work with supper on the table and a smiling wife to greet
me and I'm greeted with this, what the hell do you think I am?"
Even from where she was sitting, she could smell the alcohol on his
breath.
"No, what the hell do you think I am? Your bloody slave?"
"Go to hell!" he thundered and started towards the little girl's
room.
She knew that if he got in there, he would hurt her daughter so, in
desperation, she flew from the chair she was sitting in and threw
herself at him, "Don't go in there! You're fighting with me, why don't
you just face it like a man? Oh yeah, that's right, because you're not
a man! A very poor excuse for one if I ever saw it! You come home like
this every night, pissed out of your bloody tree because 'you can't
handle the pressure'! Well, you know what? Get over yourself! I said,
don't go into that room!"
"Damn you woman! Go to hell!"

The little girl sat cross-legged on her bed.
"Don't use that tone of voice with me!"
"I'll speak to you however I damnwell want!"
"You've had it now woman, who the hell do you think you are?"
Tears filled her eyes as the blows struck. Once. Twice...
Her head hit the pillow and her tears soaked it through as she tried to
prevent her sobs from escaping. Her body shook as the blows started to
hurt.
'Don't let him see you crying, don't let him see you crying...'
There was quiet on the other side of the house now. She could no longer
hear screaming. Sobbing filled her ears.
"Don't cry mommy," she whispered, "please don't cry."