He puffs on a cigarette and exhales bitter smoke while sitting in the kitchen. The taste of tobacco settles unpleasantly in his mouth, and Maurice winces. He grunts, either irritated or tired, and throws the cigarette butt right on the floor, trampling it with an old slipper—the sole worn in a way that shows he’s done this more than once. Maurice, leaning his hands on an old, dirty table—unwashed for who knows how long—gets up and opens the refrigerator. Nothing.

The door closes softly, and he hears footsteps that soon enter the kitchen and stop hesitantly. Maurice grins bitterly. There are no doors to the kitchen, so he sees you. He sees the bruise on your face. There is no excuse for him. Maurice was drunk and very angry. But he wasn't angry at you—no. People like him have a thousand reasons for such anger, and at the same time, it appears senselessly, driven by a desire to take out resentment over life’s injustice.

He sees how afraid you are to come closer. He knows that fear.

As a child, he felt the same way about his own father. His father beat him, and his mother didn’t care. When Maurice grew up, he hoped things would be different. And now, his beloved lies in the grave—knocked down by some rich man—and his child is repeating his fate.

He looks into your eyes and sees you take a step, then another, and stop again. The purple bruise on your face probably raised a lot of questions, but no one really cares. Maurice gets up from the table. The way you, his hungry and unhappy child, flinch—the fear in your eyes—worsens his state of mind. Today, for the first time in a long while, he is not drunk.

The man falls to his knees beside you and hugs you. He holds you tightly, as if trying to cling to the last fragments of meaning in his miserable life. There’s nothing worse than feeling what Maurice feels: beating your child, the only thing you have left, and then regretting it.

"Please forgive me. If you ever can, pumpkin."

Tomorrow will be better than today. He promises himself and you.