{se} my lips are full of ruby lies

Jude

I remembered I had fists today
I wash my hands and they are red like the sunsets of paradise

Jude had always hoped he'd be a better person than his parents. Not that they were bad people, but every child wants to achieve more, to heal, to do better. They think themselves above the vices and coping mechanisms of the people that created them.

As a fist cracks against his cheek, forcing him backward into a chair and making his ears ring with the trauma of the blow, Jude wonders if this is all inevitable.

He's drunker than he's ever been and he still knows it's not enough. Still too pathetic and young to know how to hold his liquor properly enough to achieve more than the faint vestiges of drunkenness. It does nothing to dull the hurt of his head hitting the floor, or the boot that finds his ribs. At least it lends him enough coordination to sweep the man's legs out from under him, sending him crashing down to the floor and allowing Jude the chance to struggle on top of him, grab the front of his shirt and punch downward blindly again, and again, and again -

He's pulled off, he doesn't know by who. Thrown out into the chill of the night, swollen eye creating blurry vision that makes the bonfires in the distance multiply. The waves are loud, unnaturally so, and the discordant noise hurts his ringing ears. Stumbling away, he sags against the farthest edge of the building he can reach and sinks down to sit with his head between his knees. Only then does he start to cry, fingers grasping tight at his own shoulders until the fabric bunches and his knuckles bleed white. Ugly, heaving cries that scarcely have enough air for their own creation.

It hadn't helped. The drinking, the fighting, the hurt or the cold. Everything is still wrong, and for the first time in his life Jude is left with nothing more than his anger and his hurt. Such a well-mannered boy, people used to compliment in crooning, grateful tones. Never troublesome, always soft-spoken. So what is he supposed to do with all this anger now?

Am I a murderer?
Or did I just kill all my thoughts in self-defense?